If you know anything about me, you know that I talk about love. A lot. And I write about love, dream about love, and believe that love is pretty much the reason we are here.
But, there is another reason why I think we’re here too.
Forgiveness:
An act of letting go.
The ultimate form of holding space.
The ability to accept someone exactly as they are.
An acknowledgement and complete acceptance of another’s flaws.
Responding to anger/fear/blame/guilt with unconditional love.
A dropping of negative emotions against the offender and replacing them with well wishes.
Forgiving yourself and others. Over and over again. Because as we know, it is inevitable that we will disappoint/anger/embarrass/annoy others and ourselves many times a day. We do the best we can, but we are only human after all. Many of us are really terrible at forgiveness.
Forgiveness and love go hand in hand to me. I’d even argue that you can’t have one without the other. To love is to forgive and to forgive is to love. When I forgive myself, I am allowing myself to be flawed while loving myself completely through every single mess up. When we forgive someone we see ourselves in them; We understand and acknowledge that we too have gone through what they are going through. And we can relate to and excuse their acting out from pain. When I am forgiven, I feel safe and free.
Like they say in love- You have to love yourself first before anyone else can love you- the same is true in forgiveness- You can’t forgive another unless you learn to forgive yourself. It makes perfect sense right? Of course you can’t love unconditionally if you are still only loving yourself under certain conditions.
My first four days as a 27-year-old woman have been powerful teachers with many lessons and much wisdom. If this is an indication of the intensity that 27 will bring, I say bring it.
What 27 has reminded me of and taught me so far:
Every day, forgive yourself from the moment you open your eyes in the morning to the moment you go to bed, for being a gorgeously flawed human. Send yourself strength to get through the rough patches and promise yourself that you will strive to always be a little bit more honest and loving than you were the day before. Remind yourself to laugh when you are being difficult and to ask for help. Being brave and alone sometimes is just plain stupid. Remember to be receptive to assistance and forgive yourself for not being able to “handle it all”. Maybe we aren’t supposed to “handle it all”.
The more we work on forgiving ourselves the more we thrive in relationships. If I can accept and love myself at my worst, then I will have a lot better chance at accepting and loving my partner at his worst. If I can forgive myself, chances are better that I will be able to forgive my partner.
May we strive to create space for ourselves to mess up, and in turn allow our partners the space to breathe and inevitably mess up too. Let us all celebrate the act of forgiving ourselves and remember that life can be joyful (it is up to us!). And let us look each other in the eyes and say, “I love you”- meaning that we love every single piece (even the ones that we attempt to hide).
PSSTTT..(Don’t stress, the universe has our back!)
Love,
Hali
City Sneakers 