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Posts tagged with “forgiveness”

How to Forgive That Earlier Version of You

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“Forgiveness is an action, which your mind can never understand. Your mind’s sole intent is to balance the books. In issues of morality, it only wants to get even. Therefore, practice forgiveness every day if only in trivial matters. This is an excellent way of tempering the mind and empowering the heart.” ~Glenda Green

Recently, seemingly out of nowhere, I had thoughts about a relationship that ended many years ago. I started to remember some things I had said, emotions I had felt, and things I had done. I cringed.

What could suddenly make me think of those things now? …

How to Embrace Elective (not Mandatory) Forgiveness After Trauma

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Do I need to forgive my abusive mother to let go of the past?

This is the question I found myself grappling with when I started to recover from the pain of childhood neglect. For most of my childhood, I did not have access to a consistent adult who valued me. As a result, I believed that I had no value, and I lived my life according to this belief.

I treated myself as an invaluable being by denying my needs, catering to everyone else’s, and engaging in relationships with people who sought to benefit from my low self-worth. …

4 Lessons I Learned from Leaving a Toxic Relationship

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“It takes strength and self-love to say goodbye to what no longer serves you.” ~Rumi

I promised myself at a young age that when I got married, I was not going to get divorced, no matter what! My parents had divorced when I was five, and I knew that I didn’t want to put my kids through what I’d experienced as a child who grew up in a “broken” family. I wanted my kids to know what it was like to live in a house with both their parents present and involved in their lives.

So, when I found …

Breaking Free from Resentment: My Journey to Finding Peace

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“Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” ~Saint Augustine

For years, I was unknowingly poisoning myself in nearly every relationship—whether romantic, work-related, or friendships. It always followed the same pattern: I’d form a deep attachment, throw myself into the relationship, and give endlessly, hoping that if I gave enough, they’d appreciate and value me.

But instead, it felt like they just took and took, leaving me secretly seething with anger and frustration while I smiled on the outside.

I was doing all the running—couldn’t they see that? Couldn’t they see how hard I was trying? …

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, …

Forgive Yourself

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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 …

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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Be Kind to Yourself in the Year Ahead

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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 …