I Claim Forgiveness
There was a period of time after I got divorced when I was lost, vulnerable, depressed, and frankly broken. I don’t particularly enjoy revisiting these years. There’s a lot of guilt and shame surrounding that time, choices I made, and people I hurt, including myself, but in the spirit of sharing openly, healing, and releasing myself from self-inflicted punishment, here we are. This is my story on how I claim forgiveness.
Let me set the stage for my mental health during the time period we’re going to tap into from my past. I was experiencing so many emotions, feelings of unworthiness, feelings of failure. I did not love the woman who looked back at me in the mirror. I didn’t even know who she was.
The Erin I knew was a fighter. She didn’t give up. She excelled at all things in life. The fact that she was going through a divorce was unfathomable. I thought I was a simple person, so easy to please. I desired what everyone else wants in life, to love and be loved.
That had all slipped through my fingers as I watched my ex pack a U-Haul with things we’d purchased together as he left to start a new chapter. My new chapter consisted of staying in the house we once called home, full of empty rooms that were intended for our kids one day, and living with the constant reminders of what was and what could have been. Breakups are difficult, and divorces are devastating even if you know it’s for the best.
I want to stop here for a minute to touch on a couple of things. I recognize now, I needed professional help after my divorce, but for whatever reason, pride, shame, embarrassment, I chose not to make that a priority. I felt as if I could handle the situation on my own.
Over time, I let go of any anger, hurt, or resentment surrounding my ex. I didn’t necessarily have the skills or know-how to do so initially, but as time pressed on, I was healing, and I had a desire to move forward, closing that chapter. I recognized holding a grudge against him was negatively affecting me and no one else. With that being said, I learned forgiveness doesn’t excuse your ex’s behavior. Forgiveness is 100% about your own healing process and allowing you the freedom to move on. Claiming forgiveness is about you, not your ex.
By forgiving your ex, you release yourself from negative emotions, which speeds up the healing process. Being angry with your ex prevents you from all that life has to offer, limiting you from moving on to bigger and better things.
Luckily for us, we did not have children together. Still, I can only imagine that ongoing conflict and resentment toward an ex is damaging if you have children together, whether you recognize it at the moment or not. Forgiveness can help you be a better co-parent, a better communicator, and serves as a character builder. By being the bigger person, you’re emulating a skill your children can learn; you’re showing them the power of forgiveness.
Here are five ways to start the forgiveness process:
Embrace positivity. Identify negative thoughts, replace them with positive thoughts, rather than saying “Why Me?” replace that with “Teach Me.” Reflect on what you were meant to learn from the experience.
Accept responsibility. Own up to your stake in the demise of the relationship, learn from your mistakes so you can prevent history from repeating itself. You can’t control someone else’s actions, but you can control your own.
Be patient with yourself. Forgiving is a process. Some days it may feel easy, others it might feel difficult, almost impossible even. Give yourself grace and allow yourself to feel all the feelings: anger, sadness, frustration, you’ll eventually find relief and acceptance.
Script your forgiveness, which is essentially like faking it until you make it. You may not be ready to let go just yet, but you know you need to head in that direction, so you start by acting as if you’ve already forgiven your ex, maybe you journal about it, say it out loud to yourself, visualize what that freedom would feel like. Putting this into practice can help you make major strides.
Not only do you need to forgive your ex, but you need to forgive yourself.
Forgiving yourself can be difficult. I know it’s been challenging for me. For some reason, I hold myself to a different standard. I think this is a common practice for women. In the same way, we compliment a girlfriend, speaking kindly to her about her appearance, achievements, or what have you, we have a tough time extending that kindness to the woman we see reflecting back at us in the mirror. This is hugely detrimental to our growth and our ability to attract the things we want into our life. I’m going to explain why, but I want to go back to my story about the poor choices in my past to illustrate my journey to claim forgiveness fully.
After my divorce, I found myself in a peculiar situation. Saying it out loud reminds me it happened. It is part of my story, like being sexually assaulted and getting divorced is part of my story. It’s what makes me the person I am today. I entered a relationship with a married man. Oof, words I never would have thought I’d utter, or own up to. But here we are.
I had never cheated in my years of dating, nor did I condone cheating. I still don’t, but somehow, I found myself in this situation. There’s a lot to the backstory of how this relationship came to be, but that’s not particularly relevant right now. Here’s what I feel is relevant to paint an accurate picture of my life at this time. This is in no way me making excuses for my behavior.
He pursued me. Until a romantic relationship formed, I had never looked at this man that way and had known him for years. I was aware he was married but I had convinced myself that he and his wife weren’t in love.
I also believed she knew about our relationship and chose to ignore it. Yes, our relationship was more than physical. We did things that people in relationships do: went on dates, to dinners, concerts, on trips, exchanged gifts, and love notes. He was my boyfriend. I was his girlfriend. We just kept our relationship to ourselves. Oh, was that hard. Can you imagine me being so secretive? I share my life openly, so this was extremely hard, especially for my friends and family. I kept a journal during this time. It makes me sad beyond compare reading what I was experiencing and going through at that time. It’s heartbreaking. I had lost myself. I had no one to confide in. I was devaluing my worth. I was hurting someone else, who I knew and cared about. I was broken. And I could not escape. I tried several times to end it. But every time I had the strength to call it off, I’d get sucked back in until I did the unthinkable. Erin, who hates confrontation never wants to disappoint or hurt anyone’s feelings, outed herself to his wife.
Again, this is not something I am proud of in the slightest. This is one of those scenarios where you wish you had made a better choice, but for whatever reason, you didn’t, and you’re left to deal with the aftermath of your actions. I accepted the consequences. I had hit rock bottom. This is where my journey to finding self-love started. And this involved claiming forgiveness, specifically forgiving myself.
Now I tell you this piece of my past to illustrate that I too am human. I too, make mistakes and have made some pretty big ones in my day. But I also share because this time in my life taught me so much about who I am at my core, who I want to be, and what parts of myself I needed to improve and work on. This experience jump-started my pursuit to be a better version of myself each and every day. That healing could not begin until I chose to forgive myself. And that wasn’t easy. I so desperately wanted to cling to the hurt, sadness, disappointment that I inflicted on another human being. I wanted to punish myself indefinitely.
Part of my healing journey was sharing this part of my life with my friends and family, which included seeing their disappointment, talking about difficult things, and my poor choices. I came to terms with the judgment that accompanied my choice. It was hard for people to put themselves in my shoes or to envision themselves in such a scenario. But their opinion of me didn’t matter. At the end of the day, the only opinion that mattered was my own, and I needed to get to a place where I could look myself in the eye again and truly forgive myself, and move forward. So I set out on a journey to do the work to get there.
It started with these four sentences, repeated over and over again, out loud, in my head, written on Post-it notes, saved as the wallpaper on my phone, I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. This is an ancient Hawaiian practice that combines love, forgiveness, repentance, and gratitude in four powerful phrases called: Ho’oponopono. These four simple phrases heal the soul.
Claiming forgiveness, whether it’s forgiving yourself or someone else, is important. We are energy. When you show up in a certain vibration, everything that’s like that vibration comes pouring in. It’s like a magnet. So when we are in the space of shame, fear, guilt, self-doubt, unworthiness, or even anger, that’s what we’re attracting. There’s no positive charge at the head. We can become addicted to these feelings because the mind releases chemicals that coincide with these feelings, and the body becomes addicted to them. Releasing these unwanted feelings, claiming forgiveness allows us to get out of our resistance and opens ourselves up to the quantum field of possibility. We then raise our vibration and everything like that vibration we attract. We have to release ourselves from living in fight or flight, which makes us more matter and less energy.
Commit, right here, right now, to either forgiving yourself, or if you’ve been holding onto something for some time, commit to forgiving someone else in your life. Pretend you’re Elsa and let it go.
Takeaways from this episode to stash in your tackle box:
Forgiveness is 100% about your own healing process and allowing you the freedom to move.
Holding onto feelings like anger prevents you from all that life has to offer, limiting you from moving on to bigger and better things.
Utilize the ancient Hawaiian practice that combines love, forgiveness, repentance, and gratitude in four powerful phrases: I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. to guide you toward claiming forgiveness.
When we hang onto shame, fear, guilt, self-doubt, unworthiness, or even anger, that’s what we’re attracting more of, it’s like a magnet with no positive charge at the head.
Everyone is worthy of forgiveness.
Thank you so much for listening
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additional resources
Click here to download the worksheet that corresponds with this episode: I Claim Forgiveness.
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YSC Unfiltered
I read from my journal at that time and illustrate how far I’ve come from the girl who once was on YSC Unfiltered.
