“I feel guilty,” she says, holding what she believes to be a hideous piece of ceramic selected by her blind aunt while vacationing.

“I’m ashamed at how much I spent on this,” she confesses, reviewing the wardrobe society has told her she needs in order to be accepted.

“I feel like I have to keep it in case she comes over,” she says of the item given to her by her mother’s good friend who never visits.

The amount of clutter women hold onto out of guilt and obligation would boggle your mind. Or maybe not, if you’re a woman, too.

Feeling badly unnecessarily is not exclusive to women, but it is undeniably more common in women. Somewhere along the way, we were taught that it was our duty to feel guilty without just cause, feel beholden and trapped, and feel embarrassed by our humanity.

That socialization, combined with our already empathic brains, dictate what so many of us do in our personal lives, in our homes, and with our time.

I won’t pretend to know the source of your motivation. Perhaps you know how to use shame, guilt, and obligation to your ultimate advantage. For most, those emotions only serve to hold us back, keep us small, and value others’ real or imagined feelings above our own needs.

But when you consider that the spirit of your intention determines the end result, it becomes clear that shedding these limitations is crucial.

It’s high time that we ask ourselves whether making ourselves unduly wrong is constructive.

Who, really, is served when we compel ourselves to feel guilty, obligated and ashamed over something as benign as an undesirable vase? Why do we experience such constricting guilt when taking care of ourselves, while we tell the men in our life to enjoy their day at the proverbial range?

We, too, are allowed to choose for ourselves and to hold ourselves to entirely reasonable standards while doing so.

We are not here to apologize for being here. We are not here to contort ourselves in pain in order to make others more comfortable. We may have been taught by the previous generation that our job is to be small, quiet, and inoffensive, above all. This month, as classes in schools everywhere resume, we’re due for a generational unlearning.

Release guilt without cause and invite acknowledgement of our emotions, instead. Release the trap of obligation and embrace commitment. Let go of learned shame and adopt, in its place, awareness. Expand into the fullness of ourselves.