How to Forgive

In Episode 13, your spiritual bffs dive into the topic of forgiveness. What is forgiveness? Many of us struggle with the misconception that forgiving someone who’s hurt us means we condone what they did. But is it as simple as forgive and forget? We’ll share about our personal experiences with how to let go of anger and heal from resentment or chronic blame. We’ll offer suggestions for helpful spiritual tools to help with this process, including a prayer for forgiveness. Are you struggling with self forgiveness? Or are you stuck in blame or resentment? Come join the conversation and let us know about your experience and what has helped you move toward healing.

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy,

Beautiful,

Imperfect life with spiritual tools,

Principles,

And our own personal stories.

So we're not experts,

We're not religious,

We're definitely silly.

We're honest,

Real,

And willing to share.

So join us as we connect,

Bond,

And grow together.

Hello,

Welcome back.

Hey guys.

We're together again.

Today we are going to talk about forgiveness.

I chose this topic because I am struggling with forgiving a big story from my past,

Specifically how to forgive someone when it feels dangerous or impossible,

Undesirable or unwise to loosen my idea of a wrong done to me.

Forgiveness as a concept is very broad.

There are endless philosophical and religious approaches to the topic,

But just for today,

For the sake of simplicity and my emotional sanity,

I'm just going to boil down the idea of forgiveness to one basic concept,

Being willing to let go of a resentment against myself or another person.

I can't find ease and ultimately I suffer if I'm holding onto resentment.

So as we talk about this,

Let's just make it clear that forgiveness doesn't have to mean renewed affection with an unhealthy person.

We are certainly not advocating that or approval of bad behavior past or present.

It just means letting go of resentment.

How can we find that?

For me,

What if pride,

Fear,

Even my sense of self,

Like this story I have,

What if those stand in the way of forgiveness?

How do we get to it?

Is forgiveness divinely gifted?

Can we will our way into it?

Are some things just unforgivable?

Today we're going to talk about what the practice of forgiveness means to each of us and then share the tools that we're working with to achieve this,

Let's be honest,

Lofty goal.

So Ella,

Why don't you tell us about your experience of what forgiveness looks like in your life right now?

Sure thing.

You stated that forgiveness doesn't mean we let people harm us.

In Buddhism,

There's this concept of wise discrimination,

Which means that when someone is harming us,

Wise discrimination is relief.

So for me,

Forgiveness,

I just want to say how much I appreciate that point that forgiveness doesn't mean that we tolerate abuse.

It means that we take care of ourselves appropriately.

And for me,

It has more to do with the state of my heart and what I'm carrying around,

Like what I'm bearing on my shoulders.

So I had some recent experience with this and I was thinking about if the solution is forgiveness,

What's the hindrance?

And for me,

It's blame.

So I'm blaming someone else or I'm blaming myself and it's a really sensible human strategy,

I think,

Because for a lot of us,

It's like,

Well,

Something's wrong,

Assign blame,

And then maybe you can figure out how to control it.

So it's like this pretty often traveled path,

I think,

In human brains,

It's like,

We're grasping always for a controller safety in a world that is not controllable.

The problem with that is it doesn't work and it like cuts us off from ourselves and from other people.

So what happened for me this morning is walked into our living room.

I got up at like 530 this morning to get ready for work.

The living room's kind of like all of the furniture was all moved around and I felt real like I was just like walking into a storm of chaos.

And I've been having a hard time with my body and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And so that inner feeling of chaos is pretty accessible to me at all points in time.

And keeping my house clean is like my safeguard against chaos and destruction and overwhelm.

Exactly.

So that's my strategy.

So I came into the living room and my partner who's been really stressed out was stretching in here last night.

I was just like that.

He take care of his body.

Exactly.

And so I'm like,

I'm the only one,

You know,

Like all of this like dialogue starts happening monologue in my head.

When I hop on that train,

I'm believing that if I like blame someone else or blame myself,

I can manage and control this painful,

Unmanageable situation.

The problem is that those that strategy doesn't work.

So I notice I'm blaming and for me that is that's like the most important starting point for forgiveness.

And when we get to the next section,

I'll let you know how that all shook down this morning.

How about you,

Lindsey Pony?

The shakedown.

Oh,

Forgiveness.

There's a lot of misconceptions about forgiveness.

And I definitely didn't want to do anybody any favors when I'm angry.

It's a real difficult position that I don't want to be in.

I want to be angry.

I want to perpetuate that feeling of being powerful in my self righteous anger.

You know,

That's the subconscious.

The truth is,

When I am in a state of unforgiveness,

I am creating a lot more pain and a lot more hurt.

I'm flaming those fires.

There's just tons of people I didn't want to forgive in my life.

I mean,

It sounds horrible,

But good old truth.

Truth in it.

Sorry,

I'm making amends with the past.

So some of it's going to sound bad.

Here you go.

I really didn't want to forgive my mother.

I really didn't.

And I was really,

You know,

I was justified and I was angry and I felt good.

It felt a lot more safe for me to live in the anger and not have to really comb through and look at what happened.

So that's a big one.

And that's certainly not something you really share at a party.

So welcome everyone.

We're partying right now.

What was interesting is that until I was able to forgive that person,

There was no space for me to grow or get better,

To heal.

It's so worthwhile.

At this point now in my life,

The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to forgive everybody around me no matter what happens because I've recognized how that feeds the fire,

This resentment,

This hate,

This anger.

It's not a place that I'm willing to be in anymore.

But more currently,

What's been happening for me is I'm recognizing that I'm not so quick to forgive myself.

And there's many instances during the day where if I was just a little more forgiving with myself and a little more gentle,

I could really just give myself a little bit of a break.

I'm really interested in that right now.

Forgiveness of self,

That's really where my heart is now.

I was really confused with forgiveness because of unhelpful misconceptions regarding its true nature.

I was so surprised to find out that forgiveness is an effective treatment of anger and a relief of hurt.

What a notion.

Forgiveness was the key to freedom.

I would have never believed it.

Forgiveness is a pattern ender.

It ends cycles,

It ends attachments,

It ends old paradigms.

And that's definitely been my experience with forgiveness.

I love that.

I love pattern ender.

Yeah.

Forgive everyone.

Forgive them fast and then just send them love.

It's like a superpower.

Yeah.

And it feels really gross and sticky and I don't want to.

And that's especially when I just need to really send them love.

Really.

I appreciate your lady's experience so much,

Whether it's the immediate moment of how to forgive someone just in the annoyance of daily life or these deep relationships.

My experience with forgiveness,

I chose this topic because it's confusing for me right now.

I'm walking through,

Working on trauma from the past.

I shared about in our depression episode last week and it's confusing for me.

It's not really clear.

And I love knowing what things mean and how I feel and being able to have a neat bow tied around things.

And when they are messy and stuff's everywhere,

I get very uncomfortable.

And so I picked this topic and then I said,

That was a terrible idea.

I want to change the topic.

But we were already into it.

So I just had to sit with it and think,

What does this really mean for me?

In my day to day life,

I don't struggle with forgiveness,

Simple kind of transgressions with other people.

It feels easy to ebb and flow,

Especially with spiritual inventory tools.

It helps me a lot with just kind of seeing what my part is and finding some ease.

That a past abusive relationship has long occupied space inside of me.

It was a very unhealthy relationship and I was not emotionally,

Physically or spiritually well at the time.

And the other person obviously was also not very healthy and eventually became abusive towards me.

I really thought I had forgiven this person.

This was 15 years ago.

That story of that part of my life feels and felt like it occupied a big part of my insides,

Like almost if I could picture myself and with all my little organs laid out,

Like this visual image of that story was like tucked in there,

You know,

Behind my spleen and my organ and it's like making up the part of the structure of who I am today.

As this work started to come up and this trauma from my past started to become unearthed and I realized like,

Oh,

I still have some really big feelings about this relationship that I thought that I had just intellectually solved and dealt with.

I realized a lot of my unresolved trauma was I didn't know how to forgive myself for staying in that relationship.

And I really started to understand this concept that forgiveness of myself and of others,

That they're currents in the same river.

And I'm like,

Wow,

If I can't forgive myself,

I'm also,

There's part of me that's not forgiving this other person,

Even though intellectually I think solved,

There's a bow on it,

We put it up in the cupboard,

It's good.

So this idea just over the last year has been expanding and the idea started to come like,

If this story of like me as this person who was a certain way in this relationship and also this other person was a certain way,

Like if all of that isn't integral to like holding together my organs,

Then who am I and like what takes up that space when that opens up,

Which is kind of scary.

What does it mean?

Like it feels like maybe there'll be an emptiness there even.

I'm obsessed with donuts.

I'm sorry.

I love a donut.

It's like putting yourself through a strainer.

You know,

You're just like,

It's even feels that way,

You know,

And you're like pushing it all through the strainer and then there's just this mush that's leftover and then it's like,

But wait,

No,

It's just mush.

But then you realize you can put yourself back together how you would like it to be ideally.

Yeah.

And I think that helps me a lot when I'm having those big feelings,

I tell myself that's how it's going to go.

How do I forgive me and this other person also PS this person has never asked for forgiveness nor do we have any kind of contact,

Which is good.

I think that I have decided intellectually that I have forgiven someone,

But then my nervous system and my body and my emotional experience has a whole different story.

And then I have to have room for that when I have a lot of impatience instead.

So I have some tools that I've been using that have been helping me a lot.

But first let's hear from Lindsay.

What are some tools that you're using with forgiveness?

Thank you,

Annie.

While you were just talking,

I was thinking about just the misconceptions with forgiveness and what all of the,

I lived there for so long,

Just really confused about why would be this person's never asked,

Why would I be doing this person a favor?

From my experience,

We don't do this for the other person.

We do it to free ourselves.

So the real damage was the anger I held onto for so long.

It didn't damage anyone else.

It just damaged myself.

The more I refused to not forgive others,

The more I damaged and hurt myself.

Today,

I try to practice forgiving as soon as possible,

Not to inflict any unnecessary damage to myself.

And I thought what I would do is I would dive into really quickly what forgiveness is not,

Just to help.

I like that.

This helps me a lot.

So what forgiveness is not condoning or excusing,

It's not forgiveness.

It's not accepting what happened.

It's not forgetting what happened.

It's not possessing positive feelings.

Forgiveness is not balancing the scales as in revenge.

Too bad.

Darn,

I was so quick for revenge,

By the way.

Went there a lot.

When are we going to get that spiritual freebie?

Forgiveness is not a quick fix.

Forgiveness is a process that takes time and then also progress may fluctuate.

This tool is kind of abstract and radical,

So just bear with me.

I'm so into it right now.

I'm so glad that we talked about this because in doing this,

I am able to heal myself.

It's called the unforgiveness hook,

And it's a metaphor.

So there's the hook.

You're going to see the big fishing hook.

Being in unforgiveness is like being on a giant hook.

Next to you on the hook is the person who has hurt you.

The hook is extremely painful.

Wherever you go,

So does the hook and so does the offender.

The only way you can get off the hook is if you allow the offender off first.

The cost of not allowing the offender off the hook is perhaps a lifetime of unhappiness.

Wow.

Thanks,

Lindsey Pony.

That's an image.

It's there.

It's with us.

It's a lot to dig into.

Yes,

It is.

What about you,

Ella?

What tool are you working with right now?

Yeah,

I was talking about how when I want to move toward forgiveness,

How first I'm seeing blame.

This morning I was blaming my partner.

He left furniture,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Whatever my story was that I said earlier.

The story is very important.

I'm like,

Who even knows?

But what hot on the tail of that blame was me blaming myself for being resentful.

I'm not supposed to feel that way.

Getting stuck blaming myself for something that's not going to be positive,

Wanting to make myself let go of it.

That's why I laughed before when I was like,

Can we will ourselves out of into forgiveness?

I'm like,

Wouldn't that be nice?

For me,

That does not line up with my experience.

It's always my dream.

I'm like,

I know,

Seriously.

Okay,

So I'm noticing forgiveness starts there for me.

It's like I'm noticing that I really I'm blaming myself and I'm finding fault with what's happening in my experience.

What has been really helpful for me is to remind myself in those moments,

Like I was talking about before with control that like,

We think that if we condemn ourselves,

That we'll be better able to control our behavior in the future.

It's like,

You know,

Like you're bad for binging on ice cream last night.

And the more I use those self harming thoughts,

The actually the more stuck I get in whatever the behavior site or thinking cycle is.

So I like to remind myself that I'm not going to be able to blame or shame myself into growing that the way that I grow past whatever attitudes or behaviors are really painful today is by starting first with this,

Just allowing them to be there,

Allowing my own experience to be exactly what it is,

Which is like,

Oh,

I don't like this,

You know.

And so for me,

That was happening this morning.

And I started to look at what might be living underneath that anger,

Resentment,

Indignation,

Self righteousness.

And what I found was like pretty typical.

Usually it's I'm afraid and I'm sad,

You know,

Like pretty standard Ella feeling repertoire.

So I remembered that the other day I expressed this desire to my partner that he put the furniture back when he's done doing whatever he's doing.

And I was thinking about that.

And I was thinking,

Oh,

Once I started digging into the fears and the sadness,

It was like,

I'm afraid I'm invisible and I feel like I don't matter.

That's a really tender part of myself and I can see how that needs soothing and attention in the moment.

And so I'm seeing that tenderness.

And again,

It's like I,

When I'm choosing the blame strategy over the forgiveness strategy,

What's usually happening is that I'm trying to protect myself.

I'm trying to control myself out of being hurt.

And it just doesn't work that way.

So as soon as I'm seeing my own needs,

Then I can advocate for myself or ask for what I need from whoever it is.

And my experience has been that once I ask for a need to be met,

Almost regardless of what the other person does with that information,

Because it's his or her choice whether,

Whether to do something about that.

But once I'm able to take responsibility for the need I have and address it,

I don't feel like a victim anymore.

And then the resentment or the blame or whatever kind of hardening I have against this other person can start to soften.

And so that's what was happening this morning.

And once I'm able to soften,

I can see a lot more of the picture where like if I'm blaming,

I get really myopic and focused on like,

You know,

Like I put intentionality onto another person's actions without taking into account the fullness of the situation.

So once I'm able to feel compassion for someone by,

You know,

Like taking myself out of the victim position,

It's like,

Oh,

This person has a lot going on.

Probably wasn't personal.

It's probably not about me.

I know.

And like that frees me a lot from the hook that Lindsay was talking about.

So I like how the topic is forgiveness.

I just talked about blame the whole time.

They go hand in hand.

Homies.

He's in a pod.

Wow.

Those are great tools,

Ladies.

I loved hearing what forgiveness is not.

It's really helpful to have that clarified.

Seriously.

Ella,

I really appreciated what you were saying about kind of second arrow of when you're frustrated or mad than the punishing of yourself for not for being upset about something and how that just kind of perpetuates the cycle.

And in this doing this work around forgiveness of the past,

A lot of it when I was sharing about this story,

Taking up space in my body,

It's not anger at the other person.

It really,

I realized there's so much anger at myself and anger that I feel as though somehow I'd like let this person have power over me or that I am even so kind of scared of this person and that that makes me mad and just how much there's not,

There's no space for healing when I'm kind of managing all this stuff.

So the tool that I have for forgiveness is a healing meditation.

And I learned this from my everybody take a breather.

We just had a cry break.

So important.

So important.

What these girls just shared with me is that a caterpillar right before it transitions into a butterfly turns into full on goo puddle.

And I really like that because I've always known about the caterpillar turning into the butterfly,

But I didn't know about the utter meltdown before the bloom.

That's so helpful because I was sharing with them off of recording that it made me feel really uncomfortable and vulnerable to share this stuff of like,

Oh,

I don't want this person ever to know that I was scared of them.

I just want to control stuff.

And they were being really nice to me.

So the tool that I have to share about forgiveness is a healing meditation.

I learned it from my somatic therapist.

She taught it to me as we've been working through this stuff over the last year.

And Ella's always talking about Instagram puppies.

So picture if you will,

Instagram puppy,

And it's in his pile of leaves and it's so freaking cute.

But then you get closer and it starts to like snarl and try to attack your ankles and you're like,

Actually,

I really hate this puppy.

And then as you get closer,

You see that under the leaves,

Its leg is like caught in an animal trap and it's all bloody and it's cut up and it's in a lot of pain and it's suffering.

And so she had me practice sitting with like the compassion that I can feel for this suffering animal.

And then of course,

Classic,

Classic healing tricks.

She made me do the turnaround and then she had me picture myself as this puppy,

Sweet animal,

Whatever it may be,

But with my leg caught in this trap.

And so envisioning the trap that at that time for me was like alcohol and co-dependence and really,

Really low self-esteem.

And just could I have compassion for this like version of myself who was really doing the best that they could with.

So then I get to practice this compassion and just sit with this love of the person I am now,

Which is I'm much more grounded.

I'm stable.

Like I take such good care of myself and I take care of the people around me.

And so like putting this love towards this kind of injured or like trapped past version of myself and just could I be compassionate and loving towards this person and just be like,

Wow,

That's a human who's suffering and doing the best that they could.

So I'd sat with that meditation for a while and just like develop compassion and then don't you know it,

We got to do another turnaround.

But this time it was the person I was in a relationship was the one in the trap.

So it's like this person's not a monster,

You know,

And they're not inherently bad,

But they too have their,

There are things that are trapping them and that are causing them to snarl and bite and lash out.

And like,

Can I just,

Can I just have compassion for this person who's also a human who is suffering and just sit with that meditation of like sending as me as a whole person,

Not the person that I was who was had really kind of broken tools,

But like this whole person that I am today and send love to this person who's suffering,

You know,

And it was so helpful and it was really uncomfortable.

And I practiced it like over a couple months and honestly talking about it right now,

I'm like,

I need to practice this,

This meditation again.

Cause I,

I was like,

Okay,

That's it.

I'm done with this tool now.

And it's really,

Really helpful.

So that's the main tool for this like deep forgiveness and just one little mini tool.

I want to throw in here.

I just got back from Nashville and I met this gentleman and he shared this awesome forgiveness tool with me.

And it's when you're frustrated with someone or in whatever situation you're in,

You can breathe in love and then breathe out their name and you breathe in love and you breathe out their name.

And if you have a higher power,

You can breathe in your higher power and you can breathe out that person's name and you can do it for people that you like for people you love.

You can do it for people that really make you angry.

You can do it for traffic.

You can do it for politics.

And it was so sweet.

We just kind of did this mini meditation together and you can take it anywhere and it's really,

Really,

Really soothing.

It's just this kind of,

Okay,

I'll breathe in this love.

I'll breathe in this higher power and I breathe out Ella and I breathe out Lindsay and I breathe out myself.

And so if you're caught in a feeling of I'm not able to forgive something,

Maybe you can just try that tool out for size.

Just try stuff.

That's so sweet.

So that was really fun.

Doing lots of crying today in the microphone.

It's okay that it wasn't fun.

It's okay.

And it doesn't have to be fun and it doesn't have to be fine.

And all of this can be here.

Thanks,

Pony.

It's really important to honor what is here.

And I just wanted to say that forgiveness is not a quick fix.

It is a process that takes time and that progress may fluctuate,

But we have tools here.

We can go back again and we can try it all again and free ourselves or at least have some attempts.

Maybe.

Yeah.

We would love to hear what you all are doing with forgiveness and what you're stuck on,

What's working for you.

Email us at prettyspiritualpodcast.

Gmail.

Com or visit us on Instagram.

We would love to connect with you.

We sure would.

And this has been so great that I thought that we'd really just spike the scales and next week,

Let's rev it up so many notches.

We are stressed.

We're going to talk about stress.

We're going to get stressed.

We're going to get stressed thinking about stress.

I'm going to be so stressed out writing about stress.

I'm just going to keep the stress ball stressing the ball.

Stress that ball.

I don't even know what that means,

But I'm like,

Yeah,

It sounds good.

It sounds appropriate.

That's what's happening next week.

We can't wait.

Bye.

Till then.

Love you so much.

Bye.

Reviews

I really appreciate how you kept things real. I too am struggling in forgiveness specifically towards God. So much of what you said I could resonate with. I really hope I can take away something now to aid my own healing and ability to move forward. Thank you so much.

I'm in tears, you girls cracked my heart wide open. It felt good to be in the room with you. 😍

I'm pretty old and most of my ancient stuff has been forgiven and released. Frankly, with some people who were in my life, if there ARE other lifetimes, I don't want to meet up with them until they've done a ton of evolution, or not at all! What's hard for me is the here and now, specifically my nearly middle-aged daughters. I used to say that I didn't know how wrong I was until I had three daughters. Their father abhorred confrontation, so, sadly, he didn't support me or teach the girls to respect me. They can talk the talk but they don't necessarily walk the walk.
Each one is an amazing woman in her own right, rational, intelligent and capable, and they are excellent friends and mothers, but they can be hard-hearted and judgmental where I am concerned. I guess they did it all on their own, right?

I have a ton of work to do in forgiveness…you gave me a start. Thank you.

Thank you for you’re vulnerableness. This was beyond helpful!

They share some great tools for working through resentment and blame, to come closer to forgiveness. Thank you

Raw and utterly brilliant!

At her request to reconnect, i have a phone call scheduled with my niece, who is also my Godchild. We've barely spoken for the past 10 years. The last time I saw her was at her daughter'daughter's wedding, 5 years ago, or so. I was reminded of how she abandoned each of her 5 children. She recently became a first time grandmother 3 times in 4 days. Her eldest gave birth & 3 days later her next eldest gave birth to twin boys. since then, she reached out to me about reconnecting. I adored her and supported her as a young teen mom, who initially tried SO HARD, but then; didn't. I watched her children be bounced around & suffer. Though I realized they were not my responsibility, and I tried to support & love them where & when I could. I felt a lot of guilt for not taking on more. I have so much anger & blame towards her that I am working to let go of. I know it's a process. This podcast was so helpful this morning. I am SO GRATEFUL for the this tool. Thank you Insight Timer & the brave women who made this podcast. I will continue to use & share it.

Another gold mine. Love the tools and also the acknowledgement that forgiveness can take time and progress can fluctuate. Thank you!

I was crying with you. This really touched me. Thank you for the wonderful tools ❤️ loving your energy girls!

A very insightful, heartfelt and helpful podcast. I found particularly helpful the link between held ‘resentment’ against the self or another and chronic pain in the body. Thank you again for sharing your experiences with me.

Always total identification with your experiences and I appreciate the tools which sound so logical! Why did I think of them?😊 Thank you❤️

Amazing 💗🧡 brave & beautiful. Thank you for sharing 🐛✨

Thanks for your wisdom & vulnerabilty. :-)

Thank you lovely ladies. I have recently been through a rough break up that falls within the long shadow of childhood trauma. Forgiveness is hard but I think it is my way forward. This podcast was a great help.

So amazing. Feeling every single emotion but mostly felling relieved hearing how not alone I am in struggling to forgive.

This was so powerful! Filled with so many mind shifting tools! 🙌

Wow. The puppy analogy really hit home. Gave me lots to sit with. I'm very grateful for having found this podcast. Just what I've been needing and looking for. Thank you for sharing your experiences, thoughts and tools.

Thank you for this get to the real nitty gritty of the discussion on forgiveness. I am searching for ways to free myself from the box on my life of blame and resentment. I know it is through forgiveness, but being able to do that from the heart is easier said than done. Thank you especially for the key of getting in touch with our compassion for ourselves. That is very helpful.

Love the hook analogy so true...I ask myself ‘What’s the state of my heart? What am I carrying around’ ?

Great podcast and appreciate the tools. 🙏🙏🙏