Why Letting Go of Regret Doesn’t Mean Forgetting

We replay the past and ask ourselves: What if I had done something differently?

Sometimes we hold on because letting go feels too much like forgetting. Guilt can even begin to feel like proof that we cared. If we stop punishing ourselves, does that mean the person, relationship or experience did not matter?

That question sits at the heart of my conversation with Stephanie Renner, a keynote speaker, writer, attorney, nonprofit founder and creator of The Regret to Resilience Method™. Stephanie’s work grew from profound personal loss. Within six years, she lost her father, her mother and her oldest son, Jordan. She also went through a divorce and eventually left a legal career that no longer fulfilled her.

Her story is deeply personal, but the tension underneath it is widely recognisable. How do you move forward without feeling that you are betraying what came before?

Why “if only” can keep us trapped in regret

When Stephanie’s son Jordan died by suicide at 18, she found herself returning to all the things she might have done differently.

People told her, with the best of intentions, “You did everything you could.” But the words did not settle the argument taking place in her mind. She could still think of another conversation she might have had, another decision she might have made or another sign she might have understood sooner.

The turning point was not convincing herself that she had been a perfect parent. It was recognising that the search for fault was not changing anything.

Grief itself is a natural response to many kinds of loss, including death, divorce, the loss of a job and other major life changes. It can bring sadness, anger, numbness, confusion and guilt. There is no single emotional sequence that everyone follows. The American Psychiatric Association also distinguishes ordinary grief from prolonged grief disorder, in which intense and persistent grief significantly interferes with daily life. That distinction matters because a personal framework can offer language and reflection, but it is not a substitute for professional mental health support when grief becomes overwhelming or disabling.

What are “if-onlies,” and why do they feel so heavy?

Stephanie calls the thoughts she carried her “if-onlies.”

If only I had done this.
If only I had noticed that.
If only I had made a different decision.

She compares them to bricks in a backpack. One thought may not seem unbearable, but we rarely carry just one. We collect hundreds, and together they become a weight that follows us into everything.

Her practice is to take out one brick at a time and ask: Can I know for certain that this would have changed the outcome?

Most of the time, the honest answer is no.

That question does not erase the pain or excuse a harmful choice. It interrupts the certainty with which hindsight speaks. Looking backwards, we know the result, so an alternative action can start to feel as though it must have produced an alternative ending. But that ending exists only in our imagination.

This pattern is not limited to bereavement. It can appear after a relationship ends, a business struggles, a career change does not unfold as quickly as hoped or an opportunity passes us by.

Stephanie sees it in her own work today. After leaving the law to pursue speaking and writing, she sometimes catches herself thinking that she should have planned better, started sooner or spent money differently. She then has to practise the same lesson she teaches: reflect honestly, take responsibility for what is yours and stop using the past as a weapon against yourself.

Releasing regret is not the same as forgetting

The hardest part of letting go may be what we believe it says about us.

If guilt has become connected to love, releasing guilt can feel disloyal. If regret is how we keep revisiting a relationship, putting it down can feel like putting down the person. If we stop replaying a failure, we may worry that we are dismissing the effort, hope or commitment we invested in it.

But the guilt and the love are not the same thing.

Stephanie does not talk about getting over Jordan or moving on from him. She talks about moving forward and taking him with her.

“I’m never going to move on from Jordan. But I am going to move forward, and I’m going to take him with me.”

That distinction also helped her make sense of divorce. The marriage ending did not make the love, vows or years together unreal. She could recognise that the relationship mattered, carry forward what was good and still accept that it was no longer meant to continue.

An ending does not cancel the value of everything that came before it. And moving forward does not require us to pretend that the ending did not hurt.

That is not an invitation to ignore consequences. It is a reminder not to turn an outcome into a complete verdict on who you are.

How do you begin moving forward after loss or regret?

Stephanie’s first answer is grace.

No one else gets to dictate how quickly you process a death, a divorce, a friendship ending, a lost job or another major change. Comparing your response with someone else’s can add judgement to pain that is already difficult enough.

Then comes a small step.

For Stephanie, one of those steps was buying a piece of art.

After her father died, she bought a house and painted every wall white. Her plan was to fill it with art, but when the time came to choose something, she froze. She did not know what she liked, or perhaps more accurately, what she was supposed to like. The walls stayed white for almost two years.

Later, after ending a relationship and realising how far she had drifted from her own wants, she began making small choices around the house. She rearranged furniture. She bought a large, colourful painting of a woman’s face surrounded by flowers. She eventually painted her living room Kelly green and filled the house with art that felt like her.

The point was not interior design. Each choice was an expression of identity. She was deciding what came next rather than waiting for certainty or permission.

Your first step might be taking a class, beginning a hobby, reading a book or trying something you have wanted to try. It does not need to solve your life. It only needs to reconnect you with some part of yourself.

And if you do not yet know what feels like you, try something. Discovery often begins with movement.

You get to define what comes next

Regret tells us to keep looking backwards for the point where everything went wrong. Reflection can help us learn, but self-punishment eventually stops being useful. It keeps us attached to an imagined past while the life still available to us waits for our participation.

Moving forward is not a single decision that makes grief disappear. Stephanie describes it as a discipline, something she still has to remind herself of when her mind returns to the what-ifs.

Perhaps that is the most grounded form of resilience. Not becoming untouched by what happened, but learning to carry it differently.

You do not have to erase the person, the relationship or the part of yourself that existed before. You can keep the love. You can keep the lesson. You can honour what mattered without making suffering your permanent proof that it mattered.

Then, when you are ready, you can take one small step towards whatever comes next.

If you want more conversations about becoming who you know you can be, follow The Luca Savazzi Podcast on YouTube.

A note of care

This article discusses suicide loss and grief. If you are in immediate danger or worried that you may harm yourself, contact emergency services where you live. In the Netherlands, call 112 in an emergency or contact 113 Suicide Prevention by calling 113 or 0800-0113. Elsewhere, use your local crisis service. Stephanie’s framework reflects her lived experience and professional work, but it is not a replacement for personalised medical or psychological care.