May 1, 2018
FORGIVENESS
I thought forgiveness was such an appropriate topic for the month of May. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, it a great time to think about and practice forgiveness. As mother’s, we spend a lot of time second guessing ourselves, thinking we are wrong or right, and beating ourselves up over things large and small. This post is dedicated to all the Mama’s and my intention is to allow forgiveness to flow into your space all month long and maybe even all year long. How much forgiveness will you create?Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.
What I love about the definition above, is that forgiveness is a choice. And truly the only person that is affected by your forgiveness is YOU! So, if you hold this grudge on someone else for days, weeks, or years, or forever, the reality is that you are the only one that is suffering from this choice to hold on to it. When you choose to release the anger, blame, and resentment you choose your well being, your peace and your joy! The best place to start on your forgiveness path is with self forgiveness. Once we can forgive ourselves, then we can forgive others. I spent much of my life focusing on all the things I did “wrong” or perceived as wrong. And this perceived wrongness only brought layers and layers of shame into my space, which lead to feeling really bad most of the time. Feeling bad might look like anxiety, depression, body aches, injuries, illnesses, anger, rage, sadness, emotional swings, or judgement. Slowly but surely, self forgiveness can change everything. What are you beating yourself up about right now? What if you could forgive yourself and see that you were only doing the best you could in that moment? And instead of beating yourself up about it, see it for what it was, acknowledge that it’s in the past and now, see and know, what you want to do differently. “This is where I am, and this is where I want to go” (act differently). If you can look neutrally, you will take the judgement off of yourself and this makes it much easier to embrace forgiveness. When we look at forgiving others, we must look again at ourselves. It is truly all about YOU! Children are a great example of how to practice self forgiveness in your adult life. Recently, my daughter got really mad at her brother. She was in full out rage and anger because he said he would give her something and then he later decided he didn’t want to give it to her. Her anger and rage turned to sadness and tears. I asked her to remember a time when she told someone she would give them something and then she changed her mind. She couldn’t remember ever doing anything like that, so I gently reminded her of a time where this did indeed happen. This is called her match. Then I asked her if she could forgive herself for doing that. Once she could forgive herself, I asked her if she could choose to forgive her brother. We didn’t quite make it that far, but you get the point. Ha! The next time we look at her match she may get closer to forgiving someone else. Remember it’s a practice and you don’t have to get it right every time, but you do always get to choose. It’s also an awareness that was brought into her spiritual space, and now she has more awareness, information, and self guidance available to her. The example above is a very simple demonstration of forgiveness to us as adults, but it can also be this simple with more complicated grown up situations. When you have a situation, a concern, or a person that is getting you charged up this is the best time to find a match of a time in your life where you have done something similar so that you can take that first step in forgiving yourself, and ultimately forgiving that person as well. This is a tough pill to swallow for a people of any age, probably even harder for us adults, but if you can do it, you will heal it. All it takes is a willingness and a desire for more peace in your life. YOU are the one that will benefit from going there, and YOU are the one that gets the healing. We all want to feel better and each time you practice forgiving your space gets lighter and you feel brighter. In Health and Healing,
