I’m Sorry, But Someone Had to Say It (On Apologizing For Everything)

  Sam Vander Wielen: A few weeks ago, I caught myself apologizing to my shower handle. Yes, you heard that right.

I thought I had hurt a cold, metal, lifeless faucets feelings. I turned off the water before I’d realized I actually hadn’t rinsed the conditioner from my hair. So I quickly reached to turn the shower back on and just as I did, I apologized to the handle for the inconvenience I must have caused it. If I still worked as a corporate lawyer, I would have written the handle a buttoned up email that said something like, “Dear Mr. Shower Handle It has come to my attention that earlier today, you were inadvertently turned off and back on again quickly due to a user error. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

We will exhaust all of the resources at our disposal to ensure this egregious error never happens again. If you feel that this incident caused you pain and suffering in any way, please forward all requests you have for reimbursement to my secretary, Christine, copied here. Sincerely, Sam.

Before I go on, I have to just tell you what you just heard and where we’re heading from here. Today, I’m trying a little something new and I absolutely need your commitment to me that you’re gonna let me know whether or not you like this, whether this spoke to you, okay? So here’s the deal.

This episode’s free, every episode’s free, but I need you to tell me whether or not you liked it. Did this work for you or not? So here’s what I’m gonna do today. Recently, I wrote an essay on Substack that I think a lot of you need to hear, not just read. And I also know that if you’re anything like me, sometimes you don’t have time to sit down and read something.

You just wanna listen, you’re out and about. So I wanna see if I can give you another opportunity to hear it. So I’m going to read my essay to you in full, but first, I want to tell you why I wrote it.

So here’s the deal. I’ve been spending a lot more time with boys in business this year, and boy, has it blown my mind?

I don’t know if you all know this, but they tend to do things a little differently than we do. And I also spend a lot of time with other authors. A lot of them are authors. And and I’ve just been sitting back, probably with my mouth, like, completely open, watching, observing, how they navigate the world, their businesses, getting book deals, all of the things. And then I think about how I navigate those same things in relation to them. And I can’t help but feel like we’re just doing things really, really differently.

And thanks to, you know, the patriarchy, sexism, a lot of other big, big issues and topics, it explains a lot of the difference in how we get treated by the industry, why certain people end up with certain deals, why there are differences in pay and advancements for us, even though we’re writing the same thing.

It just explains so much. So when I found myself in the shower the other day apologizing to the handle, this is a true story, I knew I had to give, like, some attention to this whole sorry thing.

I knew in order for me to get where I want to go, I have got to stop apologizing for my existence. So let me hop right back in, into the middle of this essay, right where we left off with the shower handle and read the rest of it to you.

Sadly, the shower handle wasn’t the first inanimate object I’ve apologized to this month. I routinely apologize in airports when I bump into a lifeless trashcan or to a door when it snaps back because its hinges were too tight. My overapologizing extends to humans too. Humans who aren’t just undeserving of an apology, but who actually owe me one.

Going to Trader Joe’s here in New York is like a competitive sport. Since I insist on going on Sunday mornings, I prepare for my shopping run like I’m getting ready for my first MMA fight. As I’m standing, staring at the eggs, trying to figure out which one isn’t going to kill me, give me cancer, or cause more harm than good to the planet, somebody usually bumps into me, shoves me aside, and reaches their hand across my face to impatiently snatch their own.

Whoops, I say, “I’m sorry.” They look at me like I’m crazy. I can’t tell if it’s for apologizing for something they actually did wrong, or if it’s because they didn’t actually realize I was there, rendering my pathetic little squeak of a misguided apology, the first time they realized I existed. I don’t know when all the apologizing started, perhaps it was when I was first brought into this world and was told in no uncertain terms exactly what my role was.

To be my mom’s assistant, an assistant who never needs to be told what to do because she just knows. She never complains even when abused. Instead, she puts a smile on her face and says, “What else can I get for you? ” I was like the assistant who serves their celebrity boss everybody knows is an addict, but is also terrified of and nobody can say anything because everyone’s on the payroll.

It’s like the best, worst kept secret because it’s only a secret since I’m their assistant who’s constantly cleaning up their mess and hiding their pills.

Growing up, I simply felt bad for existing, for doing anything but serving her needs and detracting from her beauty and thirst for attention, for having any preferences or needs at all.

“You’re so good, Sammy, “my mom would say. “You never need anything.” “Oh no, I have a lot of needs. I was just never given the chance. Being good equals being invisible, self-sufficient, never needing a damn thing. After I’d come home from school to find all my things thrown out the front window and getting kicked out

“I was eight, by the way, I’d call her from my dad’s house apologizing and desperately begging to come home. “I’m sorry for what I did to make you so upset,” I’d say through the yellow rotary phone in my dad’s kitchen, knowing full well on the inside that none of this was my fault, but to get what I wanted and needed to go home, I needed to apologize to her.

There was a part of me that convinced myself it actually was my fault because it was easier than accepting the fact that I had a mom that it could abuse me that badly and not feel badly for doing it. Becoming a lawyer certainly didn’t help. I worked at a fancy pants white shoe law firm for my first year out of law school. Out of the 10 new associates they hired that year at a shockingly and And newly reduced salary, I was the only woman.

I grew up knowing how to be one of the boys. I routinely have more guy friends than most people I know, and I see in the way that they talk to me that they see me more like a pal than a conquest.

Working in a law firm is like getting thrown to the sexist wolves. One day, the firm announced that after months of hard work, late nights and climbing over each other like animals trying to be the first one into a Walmart on Black Friday, that only two of us would be chosen to go to the next level, so to speak. It was basically like Hunger Games, underpaid lawyer edition. The two that were chosen, me and Steve.

A few weeks after the experiment started, and Steve was seemingly more interested in his after work job as a peanut boy at the Phillies Games, the senior partner called me in. “What I don’t get, “he started out, ” is why you’re so ambitious. “”I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing more than I was actually asking for clarification.

“Is that bad? “”Well, aren’t you gonna get married, have a baby?” “You’re, you know, “he said, using his hands to mimic the outline of a woman’s curves. “I wasn’t sure if he was calling me fat, telling me I had great curves, or just thought I had the hips of somebody capable of reproducing. I sank back in the leather chair across from him, stunned.”

“You know, he followed up. “They say I could get fired for saying this to somebody like you. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to apologize for being so ambitious.

Apparently it caused him such great distress as to outline the shape of my entire body. The amount of time he spent outlining what seemed like the Mount Everest of my hips seemed exhausting. My ambition was clearly a problem. It was clearly something I should apologize for.

“I’m sorry, Jerry. “I said,” I guess I figured I’d just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. You asked me to bill and bill and bill, and that’s what I do. “”Is this about Steve?” I said, asking about my competition. “Steve feels like he’s losing out to you, “Jerry told me. “Well, maybe it’s because he’s spending so much time at the ballpark, I couldn’t help it.

I’m from Philly. Sometimes things just come out. ” “We want our associates to be well-rounded, “Jerry said, defending him. “The kid really seems to love slinging peanuts.”

So, I’m too ambitious for simply doing my job, but Steve’s ambition to sell overpriced peanuts after hours is admirable, or is it that I was a problem because I was making it a little too easy for Steve to lose this bizarre Hunger Games competition to me? I guess I should have made it easy for Steve, you know, since he’s a guy.

I got it. I’m starting to get the idea.

When my book came out last year, I didn’t know whether to be happy or offended that I was trending in the Amazon category of women and entrepreneurship. I didn’t write a book about how to build your business while you have your period, and I don’t remember giving out any advice about which bra size correlates with the most business success.

My book is for everyone who wants to start a business. You know, the same thing that every guy’s business book is about, but there’s no men in business category, they don’t need it. It’s just called business.

This past year, I’ve worked my tuchus off to promote and market my book, and let me tell you, it is hard to sell books. As uncomfortable as it is for me, I reach out to nearly every contact I can find, asking if they will help me promote the book, feature the book, or have me on their podcast.

It takes everything in me to stop short of apologizing when I do, for asking for help, for needing to be seen, for wanting to be successful, how ambitious of me for bringing it to people’s attention that I exist, and I might have something to say.

For thinking that a book that took me four plus years to write is worth somebody paying $30 for. I’m so fortunate to have written a book, a gigantic, fancy, Big Five publisher bet on me, probably for the first time in my life, and it takes everything in my marrow to stop myself from apologizing to them. That despite my best effort, I still feel like my book hasn’t been enough. I feel like I’ve let them down, even though no one’s ever told me that.

I feel like I’ve been a flop, even though that’s statistically not the case. I feel like I blew my one shot at writing a book, even though nobody’s counting. Maybe what I’m feeling is how uncomfortable it is to actually be seen. Maybe it’s that I’ve been so conditioned not to have needs or desire attention that when I wrote something actually worthy of it, I said, “Sorry for thinking I could ever do this. I’ll see my way back into my hole now.”

The eight-year-old on the yellow rotary phone is still in there, apologizing for something that was never her fault, because apologizing was the only way to get what she needed. She’s the one who’s sorry, not me. I’m trying to tell her that she can hang up now, that she doesn’t have to earn her way back in, that someone bet on her and she didn’t ruin it, and she’s allowed to want people to notice.

She’s even allowed to want to do it all again. She doesn’t trust me yet, but I’m going to keep telling her.

That is the end of my essay, but I have to share with you a little bit about what it was actually like to write this, even to just read it to you again right now. I was so scared to write this and publish it because it feels really vulnerable.

For one, I have been experiencing something a lot lately that I have not, I have not talked about here on the podcast or really too many people at all.

I’m reaching this point where, like, I, I am in a room with a lot of men, a lot of men who I love and who are really cool and I am really proud of them and they deserve what they’re getting. I also see how differently they’re being treated, and I don’t want to complain about being a woman and how I’m treated, right?

Like, what a, a typical story of what it’s like to be an ambitious woman, right? That we’re supposed to, like, not want anything, be the good girl, act like you’re just lucky to be there, don’t ask for too much, like, you know, be complimentary, be all these things and just never speak up when you see the patriarchy, I guess, getting played out right in front of your eyes, which I do on a daily basis.

I don’t also want to talk shit about my mom anymore than I already have, um, which is just a really difficult thing about talking, honestly, about, you know, sharing your story, right? Like, I hope that when I talk about these things or write these things, like, you know that I’m writing about this from, or I’m trying to write about this from my perspective.

What happened to me, right, my story, my experience in, in what it was like to experience her, her abuse, the neglect, the, the mental and physical torture at many times. I, yeah, I have my own experience with it, right? It’s easy to start slipping into a place where you start talking, like, about the person who abused you and talking about it from their perspective or their, like a, yeah, just like about them.

And I really try very hard, both as her daughter, but as somebody who likes to write and, like, this is a way I like to express myself, as really sharing with you, like, what that was like for me, from my perspective in my shoes.

It’s also the truth of what happened, and, you know, not to go too deep on this, like, whole topic, because this is not what this podcast is about, but, like, in general, w- and I, I, I also wanna share this, because I know so many of you tell me that this was really similar for you, that, uh, in general, like, part of my abuse from, from my mom and others was to keep this all a secret.

And so I’m also very conditioned to be like, “I can’t talk about this stuff because that’s exposing her and that’s harmful to her.” And even in that is, like, hilarious because it’s like, it doesn’t matter that you’re hurt by this thing. We just don’t want other people to find out she did it to you. It’s like, nobody was helping me at all with, like, “Oh, she’s abusing you like that. Well, just don’t talk about it. Like, it, so it’s just a way to continue to be quiet.

So for one, I’ve, I’ve been tasked with keeping her secret, right, in my life, and was told that a lot of really terrible things were gonna happen if I ever told anybody about what was happening to me at home. So there’s that whole conditioning, but I even, even with knowing, first of all, I, well, I, currently, I struggle a lot with not knowing that she’s alive.

Like, I still very much have not, not gotten there fully. Like, uh, I still feel like she’s here or she’s, like, coming back. Uh, you really know somebody’s tortured you when after they died, I’m terrified she’s gonna come back. But I, I still feel this need to water down. So it’s so funny to me, like, when I get comments from people about, like, what I say about my mom or things I read that were so hard for them to read, I’m like, “Oh, you know what’s funny about that?

It’s like the Disney version of what actually happened. I watered it down even in this story that I just told you, that’s the least offensive thing my mom ever said to me, the least. Like, so it’s so funny to me that people will read this and think, like, “Wow, that’s so horrible she said that to you.

Child’s play, child’s play compared to what she actually did and said. Um, you know, some of that is that I don’t need to blab all over the internet, like, things that have happened to me from her, but truthfully, it’s also that I still feel this need to protect her. And I, and I’m terrified of being believed, right? Part of my abuse was that I was told that if I told people they wouldn’t believe me, part of it was that I would tell, I would find, like, a trusted teacher, and then that teacher would tell me, like, “That’s your mother, you shouldn’t say things like that about her.” Or, “Your mother’s a doctor.” I find that very hard to believe.

And I’m like, “Have you met any doctors? Are you serious?” So, you know, it’s, it is still that fear too that, like, if I say this, no one’s gonna think it’s even true.

I would say from an apology perspective, I’m still just struggling the most with, like, everyday apologies. Like, the other day in the airport, I apologized to a trashcan after bumping into it.

That was true, uh, well, everything in there is true from my perspective, but, like, that was a real example of what happened. Um, but I honestly feel like on a deeper apology level, having been in this yearlong mastermind with more than half of the people in the mastermind being men and just having a lot of guy friends in the industry, I am getting a little bit better at not feeling so bad for wanting to do well in this industry because they are a shining example for me where I’m just like, “Wait, you think that you can just, like, do that?

You think you can just, like, take up that space? Like, you think you deserve that? Like, why do you think you can write about that topic? How are you qualified to talk?” I’m like, “Oh, you just do. ” And so I can either, like, get in or be left behind. That’s kind of, that’s kind of how I feel. And so I’m not apologizing or I’m trying not to for wanting to be successful, getting a lot more eyeballs on my work, thinking that I could even be somebody who could write a book that’s way bigger than the one I just wrote or could make a New York Times bestseller list, right?

They don’t feel bad about it. They think it’s, like, inevitable. They’re just, like, waiting in line to get on. And I’m like, “Am I allowed to get in line? Can I join you? Am I … Okay. Do you want me to leave?” I’ll just leave, you know? So it’s a totally different attitude. I’m never gonna be a, um middle-aged white male.

It’s not gonna happen. So I’m, I’m gonna have to adopt a little bit of the mindset of one, you know, in order to be in this industry that’s full of them, honestly.

I still struggle a ton with feeling sorry for needing and asking for help or being seen as weak or a diva, as I like to call it. So it’s, like, diva part of me that when I ask somebody on the team and I’m like, “I need you guys to put the link in there for me to find it.

It seems like such a dumb thing, like, and I, I always imagine that from their perspective, they’re like, “Lady, get the link yourself.” But I have so many things going on throughout the day that is, like, so hard for me to balance that it actually is helpful when I ask them to do these kind of, you know, seemingly small things.

And then I struggle so much on my end being like, “Oh my God, what do they think of me? They think I’m a diva. I can’t handle anything. I can’t do it myself,” you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that’s a whole mental gymnastics situation that I deal with on a daily basis.

Also, as I mentioned in the piece, still feel sorry for asking a person in a position of power for help or a connection or a favor, um, or even maybe some of their time, like reaching out to a big podcaster and asking to be considered for their podcast, I will then spiral for days being like, “Who the hell did I think I was to think I deserve to be on this thing?”

And then I will literally stand there and watch person after person go on that podcast who is just as qualified as I am. And so all I’m doing is hurting myself. That’s it. I’m just literally putting myself on the sidelines, like voluntarily, taking myself out of the game.

So I would really love to know as you’re gonna, you already promised me, don’t forget, this is a contract. You already promised me on the front end that you were gonna reach out to me and you’re gonna tell me whether or not you even like this episode. But I also wanted to share a reflection with you that you could either do as like a journal prompt privately.

Obviously you’re always free to share with me if you want to reply to my email or send me a DM on Instagram @samvanderwielen, but I wanted to invite you to think about where you apologize unnecessarily in your life and within your business, where do you do that within your marketing? Maybe, your pricing, your conversations, maybe with your team if you have one or VA.

Like in your business, are you apologizing for your marketing being like, “Oh, I know it’s like so self-promotional. I have to talk about this. Like you have a business. It’s okay to talk about your product. Are you apologizing for that? ” When you talk to people about your pricing, do you apologize for it being so high and then try to justify and explain why you deserve to get paid for what you do, right?

Or even if it’s not high, just, I know a lot of you have written to me before being like, “I feel like I have to justify why I deserve to get paid and like I just want to take on everybody for free because it’s easier because it allows me to just be like, Oh, I don’t have to pretend like I’m worth getting paid for this. I’m so curious how this comes up for you. Again, use this as a, a private prompt or share it with \ me in my DMs or my inbox. I would love to hear from you obviously confidentially. , But with that, let me know how you like the style of episode.

If there are future essays I write on my Substack called Beyond Business, which by the way, if you don’t subscribe to, I’ll leave a link down below for you to subscribe now. Um, it’s completely free, but if you like this, then in the future, if I have certain essays that I think apply to you here, which I imagine that this one probably spoke to a lot of us, then I will share them this way.

So I’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. I will not say that I’m sorry for taking up your time because I am not sorry. I hope that it was good to listen to, um, and I will chat with you next week. Have a good one.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.