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Posts tagged with “forgive”

Stop Telling Me to Forgive: Why This Isn’t Helpful

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“If you force yourself into forgiveness before fully feeling and moving through the layers of anger and hurt, it won’t be a clean and true forgiveness but rather a pseudo-virtuous form of bypassing and suppression.” ~Cory Muscara

A while back, I was invited to a birthday party, and I was genuinely excited to go. But then I learned that someone I no longer associate with—a former best friend—would also be attending. The news stopped me in my tracks.

This wasn’t just an “ex-friend.” She had once been one of the most important people in my life, but that changed when …

How to Stop Living in Perpetual Guilt and Forgive Yourself

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“I have learned that the person I have to ask for forgiveness from the most is myself. You must love yourself. You have to forgive yourself every day. Whenever you remember a shortcoming, a flaw, you have to tell yourself, ‘That’s just fine.’ You have to forgive yourself so much until you don’t even see those things anymore. Because that’s what love is like.” ~C. JoyBell C.

Have you ever wondered why, despite doing your best to heal and grow, you can’t seem to shake off the feeling of inadequacy and only see minimal results for all your efforts?

Maybe, …

How to Move Forward After Loss: The 3 Phases of Healing

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“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass. You won’t feel sad forever. At some point, you will feel happy again. You won’t feel anxious forever. In time, you will feel calm again. You don’t have to fight your feelings or feel guilty for having them. You just have to accept them and be good to yourself while you ride this out. Resisting your emotions and shaming yourself will only cause you more pain, and you don’t deserve that. You deserve your own love, acceptance, and compassion.” ~Lori Deschene

To this day, I still remember that call. I had just …

Forgive Yourself Anyway

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Guidance for Growth: How to Forgive and Live Without Regrets

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“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~Lao Tzu

Once believed to be conflict-free, our relationship disintegrated on a fateful evening in May 2007, revealing the facade of our supposed happiness. We always said, “We’ll be all right because we never fight.” Well, that belief shattered on my dad’s fifty-fourth birthday. What was supposed to be a dinner with my parents turned into a nightmare and marked the beginning of a harrowing ordeal.

My then-husband, bleeding from a head wound after a visit with a friend, turned our evening into chaos. As I attempted to bandage him, unease …

What Forgiveness Really Means and Why It’s the Ultimate Freedom

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I used to loathe the word “forgiveness.”

What it meant to me was that someone could hurt me, lie to me, or even abuse me, say “sorry,” and I was supposed to pretend like nothing happened. If I didn’t, they would say to me, “I thought you were a forgiving person,” or “What? I already said I was sorry.”

It felt awful, outside and inside.

I had one relationship that I knew very well wasn’t good for me and I wanted out of, but my misunderstanding of what the word “forgiveness” meant kept me stuck there for a very long …

Hate Is Just Another Way of Holding On

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How to Let Go of the Past and Forgive

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“Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As a child, I faced constant physical and mental abuse.

Several classmates would beat me up in the schoolyard, hitting and kicking me. They also chased me down the streets to my home when school was done for the day. I had to cycle at my fastest to avoid another beating. It felt like I had to go through a war zone every day.

Besides the physical abuse, these children also constantly criticized and ridiculed every single thing I did. This made me feel …

If We Truly Want to Break a Cycle and Heal

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We Cannot Conquer Hate with More Hate (Only with Love)

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I suspect that most people are victims of hate. Wars happen because of hate. Your mental, emotional, and even physical balance is lost because of hate. Hate destroys joy and happiness.

Think about the last time you felt intense emotions of hate—for another person, for a group of people, or even for yourself. Just thinking about it will make you feel not so nice. Now, as you think about those feelings of hate, simply observe yourself.…

We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Will Bring

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Forgiveness Is for Past Reconciliation

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I Forgive Forcefully (An Act That Takes Great Strength)

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“You don’t have to rebuild a relationship with everyone you have forgiven.” ~Unknown

“Forgive” and “forcefully” are not two words I have ever joined together before.

My idea of forgiveness involved kind and gentle meekness.

Goodness.

Altruism.

Compassion.

But never forcefulness.

Well, not until I waded through the choppy waters of forgiveness after I had the courage to leave my abusive marriage.

Forgive is a Verb

Forgiving isn’t an emotion. It’s an action. It’s a process that has no time limitation or expiration date.

It can’t be ordered, demanded, or rushed.

When I first discovered that my husband had been …

My Husband Left Me for Another Woman: How Forgiveness Set Me Free

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“Allow yourself to be proud of yourself and all the progress you’ve made. Especially the progress no one else can see.” ~Unknown

I watched my then-four-month-old daughter wiggle around on the floor on her belly, arms flailed out to the side in her pink-footed pajamas, giggling hysterically. Her brother, four years old at the time, was launching himself from our king size bed onto a pile of pillows next to her, over and over. He’d land with a thud and a loud “oof,” cracking himself up,and she would break out in hysterics right with him.

I

…

Trapped in Shame: How I Found Mental Freedom After Prison

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“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown

I was in two prisons.

One physical. One mental.

The physical version was Otisville Federal Prison.

I was living so out of alignment with who I was and who I wanted to become and self-sabotaged in a colossal way, defrauding one of the largest tech companies in the world.

My mental prison, my personal hell, was the all-consuming …

How I Freed Myself from Anger by Owning it Instead of Blaming Others

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“The opposite of anger is not calmness. It’s empathy.” ~Mehmet Oz

In December last year, I went to India to study yoga and meditation. About a week into my training, I noticed I was becoming increasingly angry.

I thought that coming to this peaceful and supportive place would be all about gentle healing while perfecting my yoga practice. Instead, I was furious, very negative, and frustrated with everything.

Eventually, I talked to my teachers and shared what I was going through since I was becoming worried. They explained that since the training was intense and we were doing lots of …

Why Forgiveness Is the Ultimate Act of Self-Love and 3 Lessons That Might Help

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“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” ~Marianne Williamson 

When you hear the word “forgiveness,” what do you feel?

Forgiveness used to make me feel uncomfortable. I would physically contract when I thought about forgiving someone who hurt me. I felt like forgiving meant letting them off the hook while I was the one paying for their hurtful words and actions.

I would play a scene in my head about what it would look like for someone to apologize and admit to their wrongs… and only then would I be ready and …

How I Forgave Myself for Cheating and Hurting Someone I Once Loved

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“The best apology is simply admitting your mistake. The worst apology is dressing up your mistake with rationalizations to make it look like you were not really wrong, but just misunderstood.” ~Dodinsky

It was January 2016 and Baltimore was in the midst of a blizzard. Outside, the city was covered in a three-foot blanket of snow. Inside, we were having a blizzard party. My boyfriend, five friends, and me.

We’d been coloring, listening to music, dancing, and playing games. Already, I knew it was one of the most cozy and fun nights of my life. Everyone was happy. The energy …

How I Found Forgiveness and Compassion When I Felt Hurt and Betrayed

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“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” ~Haruki Murakami

I’ve always felt like someone on the outside. Despite having these feelings I’ve been relatively successful at playing the game of life, and have survived through school, university, and the workplace—although, at times, working so hard to ’survive’ has impacted my emotional well-being.

I have been lucky enough to have healthy and supportive relationships with a few loved ones who have accepted me as I am (quirks and all). To anyone else I’ve come across, I suspect I’ve been perceived as inexplicably normal and inoffensive.

Like many …

Mindful Forgiveness: 4 Steps to Unlock the Healing Power of Your Mind

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“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” ~Steve Maraboli

The key to healing is learning to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness will allow you to be aware of your thoughts and feelings; forgiveness will help in letting them go.

Simple as it is in theory, putting it into practice may be harder.

Mindfulness, being aware of your thoughts and feelings in the present moment, is not that difficult. But the trick is to do it amidst …