A Lesson In Self-Forgiveness

On Friday, I went to Mindful Mornings Asheville for the first time at Upcountry Brewing (I love going to breweries during off-hours…you can just feel stuff is happening behind-the-scenes and being somewhere that’s used for an unintended purposes always feels so insider-y to me). We were greeted by live, heartfelt music for a few minutes and then we heard a talk on forgiveness that rocked me. I shed a few tears and outlined a book with the working title of “Forgiving Myself” (real title ideas include “It’s Okay to Be Outrageous",” “I Am Lovable,” or “Mistakes Are Past-Tense”). The talk was casual, powerful, interesting, and most importantly to me, heart-opening (and certainly mind-opening, too).

I currently do not harbor any unforgiving feelings toward anyone, which I’ll admit is a pretty wonderful place to be. EXCEPT for myself. I do not forgive myself fully yet for so many things—not being where I want to be at 38 years old, my tendency to lose things, my impatience, my overdrinking, the way I’ve handled my romantic relationships—and I realized I need to focus on forgiving myself the rest of this month (and for however many months it takes). I’m actually going to publish personal essays at https://www.shawndrarussell.com/blog that will end up being stories in the book to help me work through my goal of forgiving myself, because I have been a very harsh critic on myself lately, and I need to start practicing way more self-love and self-forgiveness (I have the self-care thing down pretty well actually).

I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy on things I shouldn’t have. I feel like I am a disappointment in this moment to my past and future selves. I feel like I might not deserve love and am destined to end up alone. I feel like I have failed at least 100 times, and have probably almost died about that many times through reckless behavior and decisions.

Yet, I’m still here. Which means the universe (or whatever your higher power might be) has been looking out for me because I am on this planet for a purpose, and I am meant to infuse my work with purpose (as we all are, of course). I have to forgive myself for so many things because if I don’t, then I am living in the past, and that does no one any good. The only place we should be living in is the present, and that’s where I want to live and create and be. So, I am going to cathartically write about all the things I need to forgive myself for along with lessons I’ve learned from other women who are going through journeys of self-forgiveness (even if they might not realize it and even if they haven’t even begun to forgive themselves even though they often were not the one at fault or the perpetrator when it comes to the hardships in their lives).

Basically, it boils down to self-love. And self-dating. And self-care. And self-forgiveness. Because we are too hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up unnecessarily and need to focus on treating ourself how we would want a best friend or lover to treat us. We deserve to be our own best friends and best cheerleader because when we can get to that place, we can unlock the highest, truest, purest, best, and yes, most intellectual and successful and capable version of ourselves.

So, I’ll be here here practicing and writing about self-forgiveness the rest of this month (and this focus might spill into August and/or September, we shall see). I hope you’ll follow along and work on some self-forgiveness alongside me :)