Notes from the Other Side of Pride

I had just gone through one of the most painful breakups of my life. I was really in love and the circumstances were brutal. Out of nowhere, I found myself with Covid, far away from home, heartbroken, carrying all my luggage with absolutely no idea how to navigate any of it. It all felt raw. Intense. Feverish. I was really scared.

So, I did what any responsible adult does these days: I called my therapist. It gave me peace to know I had a professional in my corner — someone who had known me for over a decade. 

Of course, in those first sessions, all I could focus on were the things he had done wrong. I think that was my survival instinct kicking in — a part of me desperately trying to make him look really bad so it would hurt less to lose him. It wasn’t fully fair to him or to the complexity of the situation, but it made sense that I was using this resource. 

After some weeks, and several therapy sessions, things began to shift. The fever subdued, the panic softened, the shock lost its grip — and so did my need to point fingers. I started to lean into the story with a bit more curiosity. I wasn’t just trying to survive anymore — I was trying to understand.

But something strange happened. While I was softening, my therapist’s narrative was hardening. Instead of loosening, her story became more rigid. Whenever I tried to explore what I could have done differently, she would shift the conversation back to him—escalating the labels she used and tightening the clinical lens around my “condition.”

Something wasn’t sitting well in my body after my therapy.

I thought maybe I wasn’t seeing things clearly because of the pain, and that perhaps she was right. I trusted that I was in the hands of a professional. But after a while, I started feeling there was no sense in spending sessions talking about him all the time. It wasn’t just unproductive anymore — it felt wrong.

One day, I was sharing with her how I had been feeling between sessions. I told her, “There’s a part of me that feels I could have handled some situations better than I did in real life. That voice is actually very loud. It keeps me awake many nights.”

I added, “I’m not saying that what he did was right, or that I deserved it. What I’m saying is that I can also see how I could have done things differently. And it’s painful to recognize that. I really didn’t want to lose him. And I want to work with this, because this voice is getting louder and louder.”

She would push back again, reminding me of all the things he had done wrong, telling me I was “prone to self-blame,” and that this was a clear symptom of PTSD or something along those lines.

I left the session angry and unseen, because this was a real and conscious exploration from me — a sincere attempt to gain self-awareness in the middle of the pain. Yet I kept being pushed into a victim-perpetrator story that, in this case, didn’t really fit.

I want to pause here to say something important: I’m not naïve to how trauma, PTSD, and abusive dynamics feel. I’ve done my own work around this, I’ve studied it, and I’ve lived through it before. I’m well aware of the signs, the symptoms, and the somatic imprints of an abusive relationship. And this didn’t feel like that. This was something different. And I was looking for support to explore that difference — not to be told that I was wrong about my own experience.

One night, the voice came back — but this time, I decided to really get curious and work with her. I noticed she was living in my left jaw, a dark, ancient tightness that felt sharp and unmovable. I sat with her, with presence and curiosity, and after a long while, I could finally feel the rage — the deep, burning rage of my feminine lineage. Furious with the masculine — probably for some very good reasons, but also maybe not — and carrying so much pride that accountability simply wasn’t an option. Ever.

It was honestly terrifying to feel them.

The image that came to me was María Félix — our Mexican icon of unapologetic femininity. She often spoke about men as if they were disposable toys — lucky to have her, always at her service, always beneath her. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was unbelievably beautiful. The perfect fusion of queen, goddess, actress, and untouchable bitch. Always dressed in high couture, burgundy lipstick, moving through life as if she were a divine gift sent straight from the gods. 

Her famous phrase about men still echoes in our culture: “A un hombre hay que llorarle tres días… y al cuarto, te pones tacones y ropa nueva.” (You cry for a man for three days, and on the fourth, you put on your heels and new clothes.)

Suddenly, it all made sense. My ancestry had been shaped by this archetype of the untouchable woman on the throne.

As far back as I could remember, I had never seen a woman in my family take real accountability, especially not with men. Apologizing simply didn’t exist.

It was a powerful and humbling realization. And sitting with that shadow? Deeply uncomfortable. But also, necessary. Because this archetype was born as a weapon, but unexamined, it easily becomes a prison.

“I’m thinking of sending him a message and apologizing,” I told my therapist in our next session. “I want to take responsibility for my part — even if it doesn’t change anything.”

Honestly, I think I would’ve gotten a better reaction if I had told her I wanted to hire someone to beat him up. She was appalled. She told me that I was obviously severely codependent, and that I should just focus on moving forward.

As she passionately — almost viscerally — insisted that my desire to apologize was completely wrong, I could feel that ache pulsing in my jaw again.

Never apologize if you’re a woman. Make them suffer. Stay on your throne.

As she kept going, I just felt it so clearly.

 Fuck. She’s one of them: María Félix is everywhere.

And the thing is, I admire María Félix. her strength, her voice, and what she symbolized in a brutally macho society. María didn’t come from nowhere. She had survived domestic abuse, and her only child was kidnapped by his father for years. That persona wasn’t just about power or pride — it was a survival strategy born from pain and passed down through generations. Through my ancestors. Through me. And apparently, through my therapist.

This shook me.  I had always believed this message — “don't be vulnerable” — was something exclusively taught to men. But now I could see it living inside of me, too. Have you ever felt it inside you?

I sat in meditation with María Félix — as herself, as my ancestors, as my therapist, and mostly, as myself. 

And what I felt wasn’t rage this time. It was grief. So much sadness.

It was devastating to witness how life had hardened all of us. How we had not been given another option but to shut down. How we had been forced to weaponize pride as our only protection.

Yes, we were taught to win. To never show vulnerability. But at what cost?

This had become an incredibly expensive inheritance — a heavy, human defense passed from mother to daughter, friend to friend, therapist to patient. 

Most people would think this was a protection against bad men, against abusers. But no. What we’ve really been protecting ourselves from… is fear.

The fear of not being perfect. The fear of seeing that we, too, can cause harm. That sometimes, we are the abusers. 

That maybe we don’t hit — but we can cut deep with passive aggression. 

Maybe we don’t raise our voices — but our silence can be just as violent.

 Maybe we don’t leave the house or abandon the children — but we quietly abandon our partners, their emotional worlds, their erotic needs.

We’ve never been just victims. We’ve been co-creators of these relational dynamics. And no one is holding us accountable for that.

The truth is, we’re not protecting ourselves from men. 

We are protecting ourselves from the mirror men hold up to us. 

We don’t want to see how cruel, how cold, how human we can be. 

We are terrified of losing the love, the moral high ground, or the identity we’ve built around being the one who was wronged.

Because that is painful.

That is deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

But then, when it couldn't get any more uncomfortable — something else happened.

A quiet relief that came from letting the uncomfortable exist and breath.

“It’s okay,” I said out loud. “It’s okay if we hurt people sometimes.”

We are not movie stars on a screen.

We are humans. Messy. Tender. Flawed.

We are more than victims.

We are also makers of pain.

And acknowledging this doesn’t make us weak.

It makes us responsible.

And maybe this responsibility is what can finally set us free.

The María Félix mask they were all wearing — my ancestors, my therapist, me — started to dissolve. They all became themselves. Raw. Imperfect. Beautiful.

And it was beautiful to witness. Because now I could finally love them for who they really are — not for the armor they wore.

Isn’t that what we all really want? 

A partner who says: Yes, you screwed up. Yes, you hurt me. And I still love you.

Or do we want to stay trapped? 

Stuck in a therapeutic and cultural system that, without meaning to, feeds our victim narratives — and leaves no room for self-responsibility?

Do we want to keep defending our pain stories so fiercely that they become prisons, preventing us from ever growing?

Maybe it’s time to explore an alternative hero’s journey. One that isn’t linear. One that isn’t: “He hurt me. I heal. I rise.”

Maybe it’s messier. Maybe it’s: “He hurt me. I hurt me. I hurt him. I see myself. I forgive. I love myself anyway.”

Because you’re not a victim and you’re not a villain. You’re a human being.

 Who occasionally messes up. And, hopefully, has the courage to recognize it. That real power, the one that comes from self awareness, not from pride or just soothing the wound.

After my meditation, I sat and wrote the most painful apology message and sent it with tears in my eyes. I saw the two blue ticks, and I immediately felt that some deep healing had just happened for all of us. My jaw unclenched. I fired my therapist in the next session and celebrated María Félix with mezcal and her favorite cigar that same night.