Blog by Skyla Luckey
Sometimes it takes us a short time to forgive someone and other times it takes a long time. And a long time might be too long as it affects our mental health and physical being. More than a year ago, I had a situation involving betrayal, defamation, and backstabbing. I thought the long-term pain was going to literally kill me and I didn’t know how to forgive them. So how do we learn to forgive those deep wounds?
Step 1: Start with Patience
- The first thing you can do in the forgiveness process is understand that it will likely not happen overnight. This isn’t instant like sending a text message or getting directions from MapQuest. It takes time.
- Understandably, you want the pain to disappear as quickly as possible. But patience with yourself is the key to restoring inner peace. Check in with yourself. Is there something that this person or you did that is triggering the little child inside you? Once you validate triggers, start having conversations with yourself and comforting your inner child. (PsychCentral.com offers tips on how to soothe your inner child).
- Be persistent. Have healthy and loving conversations with yourself every day. Choose a time that works best for you. When you wake up, during a run, before bed, etc. This helps rewire your brain. Create a forgiveness routine.
Step 2: Pay Attention to Pain
- Don’t stuff pain. Allow it to surface. Many of us walk around with a happy face pretending everything is ok as our feelings beg to be validated so they can be released causing us misery. This is like keeping your feelings in a cage. No one, including feelings, likes to be trapped; it just makes things worse.
- Cry, scream, journal, exercise, meditate and/or go out in mother nature. Release, let go and allow the Holy Spirit to move through you. Close your eyes and imagine golden light from Source flowing from the top of your head down to your feet and back into Earth where the pain can be recycled into love. Expect ebb and flow with pain on your forgiveness journey. It will return and when it does you can work it right back out of your system with a mantra or anything that works for you.
Step 3: Love, Release and Let Go
- Stop reliving the past and ruminating negative thoughts. I’ll take you back to my forgiveness journey. Recently, I consulted Rev. Dr. Aileen Curtain, First Unity associate minister, about the pain I couldn’t release. I went into her office crying and hoping for a solution. She was straight to the point and asked me who was causing me to stay in the past. I said, “I am. I am torturing myself.” That was my wake-up call. We talked about how the past has nothing to do with this very moment. Forgetting the should haves, what ifs, vengeful thinking, etc. Do I want to keep bringing down the person I am trying to love more than anyone in the world aka me? No. Don’t you want to create space for what you want to manifest?
- Mantra: Rev. Dr. Aileen helped me create a mantra for when my mind gets on that hamster wheel of the past: “These thoughts do not belong in the here and now. It is over and done with and I’m keeping it in the past.” So that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s helping. Create your mantra to release repetitive thoughts. If you need some guidance, Daily Life has forgiveness mantras.
- A Course in Miracles: “The unforgiven is a voice that calls from out a past forever-more gone by. And everything that points to it as real is but a wish that what is gone could be made real again and seen as here and now, in place of what is really now and here. Is this a hindrance to the truth the past is gone, and cannot be returned to you? And do you want that fearful instant kept when Heaven seemed to disappear and God was feared and made a symbol of your hate?”
- Rev. Dr. Aileen said that I should forgive them, and I cried like a baby saying, “I don’t know how. I’ve been trying but it seems impossible.” She shared with me that when she is in the process of forgiving a person she refers to when Jesus was on the cross and he said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” I started doing this and it has helped me feel grounded.
- Send love to those who are difficult to forgive. Once I randomly stopped at a monk monastery in St. Petersburg, Fla., continuing to look for forgiveness guidance, and a monk said in order to forgive, you must send love to those you want to forgive. “As you pray for yourself and your family wishing health, love and peace, do the same for them,” he said. “They are hurting and need love. That is why they do these hurtful things. And what you wish, comes back to you.”
As you continue your journey on the path to forgiveness, may you be guided with healing from Source, self-love, patience and persistence. Namaste.
Forgiveness Resources
