Welcome to Trust Your Sacred Feminine Flow.
Each month on the podcast, I share my emerging wisdom about embodying our sovereignty, changing our world, and becoming the women we were born to be.
This episode is a deep, intimate dive into the healing of self forgiveness. It begins with a personal story of self betrayal, shame and healing. And it closes with an opportunity for you to experience a profound self forgiveness healing of your own.
Addressed in this episode:
- Relational Trauma
- Freeze State
- Shame
- Self Love
- Compassion
- Self Forgiveness
Listen to Softening into Self Forgiveness by clicking the play button on the audio player below.
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Read the Full Transcript Here:
Hello, and welcome to the show Beloved. If this is your first time here, I’m so glad you found us and are joining us here today. I have a special episode for you on a subject that feels a little edgy, and I can feel the place inside of me that would like to hold back about this. What I want to talk with you about and spend time with you about today is self forgiveness. I want to begin by sharing a story. It’s something that happened to me earlier this month, and it may be of use to you to hear about my experience.
So someone had reached out to me about participating in a collaboration, and I thought I had a clear understanding of what was going to happen as we prepared to work together. And then when the day arrived for us to meet things changed. And what was being asked of me was very different from what I had expected going in. And truth be told I had gotten swept up in this person’s ideas and passion and desire to take our project in a very specific direction. And I’ll just say that in the midst of all that part of what happened is that I froze, as in fight flight freeze. I froze, and I went along with something that ultimately did not feel right to me. It didn’t feel like it was in my highest integrity. And I went along with it. And when we were through, I just had this sinking feeling and I just felt horrible that that had happened. That I had allowed myself to express myself in a way that really was not in integrity for me. And didn’t feel like it was supportive to even the person I was collaborating with or to the whole.
And I just went into a 36 hour spiral of self judgment for believing that I should know better. And that here I am, someone who teaches and supports others. And how could I have let myself do that? Get into this situation, which was really a self betrayal. I had betrayed myself and betrayed what I stand for. And I just was really giving myself a hard time for that. And as I said, about 36 hours after, all this came to a head. I had woken up and I got clear what I needed to do. I got clear, I needed to reach out to this person to let them know that I could not agree to this project going forward in the form that it was. That it just was not in alignment with who I am and what I stand for, and that I would be happy to give it a go again, under circumstances that were in alignment with who I am and what my intention in my work is.
But, I just could not agree to things moving forward in the current form. And part of what enabled me to do this, or actually what occurred after I was able to get clear was really the recognition that I had been in freeze. That part of my old wounding and my history was to go along with the prevailing desires of those around me. Some might call it people pleasing or codependency, but I know for myself, it had deeper roots in relational trauma. And that may be true for you as well. You may have your own versions of that. But in that moment, as I said, when I was with this person, I went in to freeze. And when we go into freeze, we disconnect, we are immobilized from our capacity to speak for ourselves, to take decisive action, to take action on our own behalf, to protect ourselves, to honor ourselves, to really be an advocate or a stand for what it is we need. Or that may be true in regard to someone else we may freeze and be unable to be a stand or an advocate or a protector for others in moments we would like to. And rather than judging myself harshly, which I was doing, I could recognize what was happening.
That I was in a freeze state, that a wounded part of myself had gotten activated, that there was an innocent wounded aspect of me that had shut down and was not able to be a voice for herself. But as soon as I got clear about what I needed to do, all of my resources and faculties came back to me, it was so fascinating because prior to that, I had felt so shut down. And so devoid of any clarity or direction, I was just really in this state of suffering. But as soon as I got clear on the action I needed to take, and I sent the email and it wasn’t even resolved yet, but I had taken action on my own behalf. Everything came back to me. My potency came back to me, my capacity to create my clarity. My aliveness came back.
And some of that was enabled. A lot of that was enabled by my capacity to forgive myself, to forgive myself for having these wounded places that can still get activated, to forgive myself for behaving in a way that I don’t typically do. But that used to be a way of life. Self betrayal was a way of life. It was a survival mechanism for decades in my life. And while that isn’t how I operate by and large these days, those places can still get activated within us that are tied to, or that are rooted in our old wounding. And when they come up, guess what they’re coming up so they can receive healing so they can receive love so they can receive our compassion and kindness. And it is so easy for all of us to either go into shame, which I did. I did go into shame.
My first thought is what would people think if they knew I had betrayed myself. And even as I was preparing to do this recording, I could feel the part of me that wanted to hide this very human aspect and go into that shame of there is something wrong with me. And guess what? That is, how our victimization, that is how our wounding, that is how our suffering gets perpetuated. It gets perpetuated by the silence of our shame -when we go into that place of self criticism and self judgment and shame hiding what has happened rather than recognizing the truth of, Oh, I have just reopened or reconnected with one of my old wounds. And this is a place that needs my care. My love, my holding and my compassion. It does not deserve my judgment. And of course, sometimes when we act from those old places, as I did, there are amends to be made. There is reconciliation that is meant to happen, but it is not from a place of self judgment or shame or condemnation. It is from a place of deep love and honoring of what we most needed. Love and honoring of how we most want to conduct ourselves.
So Beloved, I’m sharing this with you because we are all human. And we all come upon those times and moments when self forgiveness is required. So I offer you my story as a reminder, and I provide you this opportunity today right now, to open to greater self forgiveness. And this is for you, particularly if somewhere harbored deep within your being is a hidden belief that there is something you have done or said in your life that is completely unforgivable.
The voice of your critic may be telling you that. It may be giving you that message, whether it’s related to something that happened yesterday or something that happened 20 or 40 years ago. So this is your opportunity Beloved. This is your opportunity to open to forgiveness – to open to self forgiveness. So we’ll take a moment to work with that energy of self forgiveness today. And if you can, I invite you to close your eyes and to let yourself rest into your breathing without needing to change it, just allowing yourself to rest more fully, and then bringing your awareness down deep, deep, deep into the center of your heart space.
And in this space, there is an altar and notice what that altar looks like. And on that altar, I want you to lay anything known or unknown that requires forgiveness. Anything that you have done, said, or not done. And lay it on the altar. And take a moment and light a candle in that space, on the altar. And as you’re doing that, I want you to notice that on your left side is a younger version of you standing beside you. She is the expression of your eternal innocence, your Divine invincible, innocence. And on the right side, I want you to notice that there is a wise ancient figure standing next to you. And she is the embodiment of your Higher Self wisdom. And the three of you are beholding what you have laid on this altar and that each of them, this younger innocence and this older wise self begin to offer prayers and blessings, and they may have Holy water or sacred smoke or oils. They may be speaking in light language, but together they are with you and working with you to absolve and forgive all that’s been laid on this altar, and you are the witness and you are the receiver.
So as you breathe in, do your best to soften, to receive the truth of your deserving, this forgiveness. And then when the time is right, these two beings that are aspects of you come together with you to create a Trinity and you take their hands and you are there together. And then they bring you into the center between them again. So they are holding space and holding hands around you. And they are beaming through their own hearts spaces, compassion and love, and grace and warmth and kindness for you. See if you can let yourself just bask in that and drink that in and receive their blessings and their absolution.
You may notice that the old frozen shame or self criticism or self punishment is falling off like a dead old skin, and that you can be reborn in the truth of your invincible innocence and beauty and self worth. And when you feel complete, the three of you seal this healing of self-forgiveness with an embrace and a knowing that these two aspects of you are always present and available to you and taking a full deep breath. Begin to bring your awareness back to the present moment. And orient to the time and the space where you are moving forward with more freedom into your day. Having laid those burdens down and having been blessed and forgiven as you move forward, be gentle with yourself, be tender with yourself as you integrate this healing. I send you my own blessings from my heart to yours and I close with the reminder to always trust what your heart knows Beloved.