The Quiet Place Of Private Reconciliation

This essay was originally published in 2022 on my Substack. It still holds true.

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There are two perfect moments for private reconciliation to take place. One is the instant you wake up in the morning, before you open your eyes, before information from the internet and outside world has barged into your brain. The other is right before bed, after you’ve laid your cellular device to rest, when you are once again left alone with your thoughts.

The idea of “privately reconciling” has grown on me throughout my twenties. In short, it is the practice of making amends with oneself and learning to get validation from the inside. I think it is something we have down as kids—a sense of quiet yet unbridled self-acceptance—and then have to find our way back to as adults. While learning to sit with oneself seems like it should be easy enough, like reuniting with an old friend, it’s not.

I’ll speak for myself: I have certainly done the opposite of privately reconciling. On some days, I’ve craved external validation and looked for markers of approval in every realm. I’ve let my inner bully ruthlessly take over and then sought solace in the wrong places. I’ve come out of conversations with myself battered and bruised. And I know I’m not the only one. Modern triggers of self-defeat make self-annihilation a piece of cake. In the age of being extremely online, comparison is at our fingertips and low self-esteem can be temporarily cured with a quick internet applause. What I’m getting at is, I don’t think we’re talking enough about the importance of getting really, really quiet.

It wasn’t until several years ago, after a few unexpected hiccups (earthquakes) in my personal life, that I felt a growing need to turn the volume down on external voices and to find out what I actually think, sans input. After a breakup that led me to question myself and my own belief system, I found that these moments of quiet solitude remedied the confusion and uncertainty that were left in in the wake of an emotionally disorienting relationship.

Time alone was the only way through. For the first time in my 27 years, I realized that no one else’s words were going to make things right or cure my anxiety or make pain go away. The only remedy available was time and my own mind.

I started asking myself questions, the ones I had been too scared to face. Do I like how I choose to take up the space that my body encounters? Do I like how I approach the world around me? Do I like the energy I bring into a room? The words I use? Can I stand by them? How do I want to land on the other side of this? Can I lay in the bed that I’ve made for myself, with the ease of knowing that I am down with this bitch, i.e. me?

That part, I’ve found, is the private reconciliation: a sense of peace that comes from a series of negotiations that has absolutely nothing to do with any bystander. It is deciding one can bear to become friends with the person within, to spend time with themselves, to champion their own strengths, to confront their faults (honestly, gently), and to commit to the growing pains that come with being truthful with oneself. No more made up stories, no more white lies to soothe the mind, just quiet observation. It was in those moments that no one else saw that I started to feel better.

During that same period, I began watching early Maya Angelou interviews. I learned that she was a believer in private reconciliation. In her 1973 interview with Bill Moyers, she shared that as she gets older, she has found this sense of self-responsibility and self-belonging. “I’m very proud of that. I’m very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much. I like her humor and her courage. And when I find myself acting in a way that doesn’t please me, then I have to deal with that.”

I watched this particular interview after flying back to San Francisco after the aforementioned life event to do that very thing, “deal with that.” It was the onset of the pandemic, which meant extended periods of isolation. While it was a bitter concoction of discomforts, it was also an opportunity to get to know myself in the midst of heartache and change. In more raw moments, I reached out to friends for comfort and sound boarding. But the real work came with writing until I understood myself, hushing my inner critic, confronting my oversights, and making a quiet promise to be a better patron of my own thoughts. At the time of this interview, Maya was in her forties and had recently published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It makes sense that while writing an autobiography, one might become well-acquainted with their inner monologue, thus perfecting the art of a promise with oneself.

By summer, I learned Joan Didion was also an advocate of the quiet peace treaty. I first read her essay on self-respect, published in Vogue in 1961, just after returning to California for a long stretch of introspection. Didion breaks down the ingredients that amount to any ounce of self-regard: “There is a common superstition that ‘self-respect’ is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all… but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation.”

There it was again. By Didion’s logic, a person with self-respect is a person with self-responsibility. Not only do they recognize their mistakes—they own them, they resolve them, they move on. Rather than begging for sympathy and amnesty from another, they make peace with themselves. Didion notes that the refusal to sleep in the bed one has made “is the phenomenon sometimes called alienation from self.” It’s not about doing what is right or good. It’s just about co-signing one’s own actions and decisions. It’s self-alignment. I finally started to understand what self-respect actually meant: If one continuously makes decisions that reflect an allegiance to their truth—the opposite of self-abandonment—then a fear of abandonment becomes far less threatening. The payoff is sleeping in a well-made bed.

Still, to emphasize the importance of private reconciliation is not to dismantle a need for support. Countless studies show that relationships are the main source of human fulfillment, and I wholeheartedly believe in the superpowers of support systems. Where would we be without the communities and people who remind us who we are, especially when we need it the most? I can also attest to the power of friendships—I get teary eyed thinking about how grateful I am for the women in my life. I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last few years without them. But I’ve also learned that placing too much emphasis on another’s input makes it easy to forget how to think for myself.

For me, knowing my support system was there gave me strength to take on all of that alone time I needed to heal. It allowed me to show up as a better friend on the other side. While spending time to consider what one thinks of themself, for themself, may sound like a narcissistic endeavor, it is actually the opposite—it creates space. I have more to give when I’ve taken time to make sure my inner being is in check, to clean up my own backyard. When the backyard is clean, there’s more room for hosting at home.

Whether or not Angelou and Didion mastered the art of private reconciliation is beside the point. Their commitment to understanding it is far more compelling, and each of their observations is clear: Making peace with oneself is not a destination where one simply arrives. Rather, it is a friendship that grows with time—a friendship that has taught me to like myself, to commit to myself, and to genuinely enjoy what I’m building.

If I had to locate the place where private reconciliation happens, I’d say it’s deep in the gut, the same place where I can feel it when something isn’t quite right, where shame festers, where forgiveness is granted. It doesn’t happen online or in social gatherings. It is a place of solitude. When tended to with care, it is a source of truth. It is a place where I often already have the answers I’m looking for. And I think, or at least I hope, that a sense of trust in that place strengthens each time one chooses to be a friend to the person who lives inside—the only one who, no matter what, is there right when you wake up in the morning and just before you drift off at night.