The Power of Releasing Blame: How Taking Ownership Changed My Life

“If she’d never met and married Bobby Brown, she would have never gotten on those drugs” I heard a young lady say from a few lanes over as I stood in line at the grocery store.  She was having a rather loud conversation with another lady standing in line with her, who responded “I know that’s right. It’s a shame that he got her on that stuff, and now she’s dead.”  

Though many people across the world share the same feelings as these two women, I thought about how easy it is to pass the blame to others for the choices we make.  But Whitney Houston's good friend BeBe Winans told CNN's Piers Morgan, "No one is to blame." Although there is power in persuasion; association brings about assimilation; birds of a feather flock together; and environment leads to entanglement, at the end of the day we all must make our own choices.

This was a lesson I learned after many years of mistakes and heartaches.

In my lost years – the time I spent doing my own thing – I found it much easier to pass the blame for the shameful, sinful, silly things I did.  My target was my biological father.

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