It’s open season on the Astronomer CEO scandal.

The internet is a feeding frenzy of opinions, headlines, and personal branding opportunities.

But while we ecstatically tear one woman to shreds for her choices and prop the other up with inspirational quotes and supportive hashtags, let’s not kid ourselves… nobody is walking away from this whole.

This is not just a scandal; it’s a tragedy.
For both of them.

You don’t have to excuse behavior to grieve what it costs.

And before you start throwing rocks in my direction…

I have been both Megan and Kristin.

I have been the woman who blew up her own life.
Smart enough to find a way to justify it.
Strong enough to survive it.                                    

Desperate enough to believe the rules didn’t apply to me.

And I have also been the woman left behind.
Blindsided. Heartbroken.
Watching someone I believed in - bled for - turn into a “headline” I didn’t recognize.

Both women are in pieces.
Just different kinds of pieces.

And the path forward for each of them is brutal.

But here we are, circling their pain like vultures.

Turning heartbreak into content.

Feeding off the fallout like we’ve never sat in a mess of our own.

If you live long enough, you learn: none of us are immune. 

Not from screwing up.

Not from being shattered by someone who did. 

You will either be the one crawling out of a mess you made with your own two hands or trying to breathe through the wreckage someone else left behind.

Neither version is easy. And neither one makes you less human or less worthy of compassion.

So before we crown one a villain and the other a hero, maybe we just pause.

Maybe we sit with the uncomfortable truth that real life isn’t perforated into clean lines:

Messy doesn’t mean monstrous

and broken doesn’t mean beyond repair. 

You don’t have to excuse what’s inexcusable; and you don’t have to like every version of a person to respect their humanity. 

“Grace” isn’t just a concept, it’s an intentional practice and moments like this are where it actually matters:

• Stop pretending that moral failure only happens to other people.
• Teach your kids what accountability and redemption sound like. Show them what it means to own the mess and still grow from it.
• Reach out to the friend who's going through it, EVEN IF she's the one who made the mess.
• Speak more honestly about your own mistakes, so someone else doesn’t feel so alone in theirs.

We will ALL leave a mess somewhere in someone’s heart, in our own past, in the chapters we hope no one will ever read.

The best we can do is own it and stay anchored in what makes us human.