Hey ladies: Sorry if you didn’t get me

Forwarded from a powerful male Facebook friend: Dear friends, loved ones, fans, supporters, my wife, my ex-wife, my children’s nanny, my wife’s sister, my wife’s other sister, my personal trainer, my personal trainer’s younger sister, my younger sister’s personal trainer, my older sister’s personal trainer, my college girlfriend, the girl I brought to prom . . . the secretary at my lawyer’s yesterday, the stewardess from today’s flight. Sorry: administrative assistant and flight attendant.

See, I’m still learning. Progress, not perfection.

I want to say, from the bottom of my very human and feeling heart (gotta “feel it to heal it,” my new life coach Käaaarl says), how sorry I am if any or all of you were (for some reason I can’t quite grasp but believe me I’m trying) hurt or angered by any of the things, real or imagined, you think you remember I did.

Many of you allege that when I forced myself into your hotel room/cubicle/bathroom stall/cockpit, I looked you straight in the eye and said, “I can make or break people in this town. Help me help you.”

I don’t remember saying that, and it doesn’t sound like me. But it’s also true. I like to help people. Especially women. It’s almost like an unhealthy addiction, but is actually an incredibly altruistic behavior. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the women I’ve empowered and rescued over the years.

In fact, for every woman who’s accused me of “crossing the line,” there are literally tens of others who have never once complained about my approach to female empowerment. But that story doesn’t sell headlines.

If this nightmare has taught me anything, it’s that I put others before myself and neglect my own needs. I’m too caring and selfless for this world. I need to practice what Käaaarl calls radical selfcare, which involves alternate nostril deep-breathing and affirmations, most of which I can’t share because they’re inappropriate for mixed company.

I’m “doing the work,” at a male empowerment retreat called: “Me Time: A Break From Sexual Harassment,” which Käaaarl leads on a private Polynesian island that has been designated a trigger-free safe space. There isn’t a woman in sight for miles, except for the ones who come from/with the island. As Käaaarl says, they are different from the women in our developed world because they are pure and untouched by commercialism and progress.

They also have a different understanding of consent and boundaries, which makes you realize how Eurocentric our discussion of rape culture is, at the end of the day. It would be a great place to shoot Mel Gibson’s next film, actually. I’ll have to tell him when I see him next.

There I go again. Thinking about others. Old habits die hard. Bringing it back to myself, perhaps my biggest breakthrough is realizing that my love for women is even more remarkable than I thought, given how much trauma they’ve brought into my life.

During a peyote eye-movement therapy session, I relived the lactic abuse to which my working mother subjected me when she fed me milk from a baby’s bottle instead of her breast. During an exfoliation/peel, I recalled feeling pressured by an aunt to eat chopped liver at a family function in my teens and being rebuffed by a girl at a school dance later that same day. I now see the cause-and-effect relationship between these two traumas.

During a past-life regression drum circle, I discovered that I was once a killer whale but, in a stroke of terrible luck, raised by sea horses, the only species whose females impregnate its males. This deprived me of appropriate gender role models and filled me with a deep sense of shame and nonbelonging.

I’d also like to share something about myself I’ve never wanted to face. While it’s no excuse for the actions some claim I took, I have reason to believe that I am a member of the extremely at-risk Zoroastrian diaspora, though I’m awaiting the results on ancestry.com before I officially declare.

I hope that you will be able to let go of the pain and anger that you’re holding on to. For your own sake. It’s really ugly. And it makes you look ugly. And old. It gives you wrinkles. You don’t need that. Trust me.

As you can see, I’m sorry.