Last week, I had to do something that I had put off for awhile now. I had to apologize to someone that I hadn’t seen or talked too in about 6 years and I felt completely liberated.

Over the years, I have had many horrible and flaky friends. I don’t think I can say it any better than that and I’ve tried.

I found myself giving my all to people who would tease me and leave me.

I have been stereotyped and looked over because of my race and ignored because of my stance on certain things.

I have been ignored, left, and teased by many more people but this one girl was different.

This girl accepted me. She wanted to be around me and never made me feel less because I am black. She never made me feel absurd because of issues such as my hair falling out or my feet being abnormally big.

Yet, I left her.

At one point, I found myself being relatively “cool” (which was new for me) and she was not. Very few people in the class liked her and because of that, I decided to limit my time with her. I never spoke up for her when others spoke ill of her and I avoided her when she wanted to be around me.

So, 6 years later at a church, I wrote an apology to her. This made me feel a little anxious because I have had almost no contact with her in that time aside from becoming Facebook friends. Since I “friended,” her I spent months ignoring the fact that I owed her an apology. After all, we were young and she probably doesn’t even remember me right?

Wrong.

She replied back very graciously but that is not the point.

The point is that regardless of her response, I felt freed. After I sent that message, I felt great regardless if she were to respond.

The reason I share this is to encourage you to do the right thing. Gary V says it best;

“Doing what is right is always the right thing.”

Maybe your situation is a little bit more complicated but it is freeing. It is freeing to know that after so many years of knowing that I was actually in the wrong, I could help her by making it right!

So try it! What do you need to do, today?