How can I forgive myself?
I was sitting on the beach this week, watching orange erupting skyward as the sun set gently behind the mountains when my friend said
“I still don’t really get HOW to forgive myself. I get the concept, but how do you actually do that?"
“If I don’t take responsibility, where does it go?”
His words echoed across the sand.
Where does it go?
It sounded like an entity. A dark energy that is created when we do something “wrong” or “bad.” lurking in the corners of our beings until we do our penance.
It is formless. Illusive.
It is the slime that shadows leave behind.
It is the residue of smeared who-knows-what on your shirt.
It is Shame.
Shame will have us believe that punishment is a synonym of responsibility.
But it’s not.
Shame is just a pattern that rejects parts of you before someone else does.
A pattern that exists so that you don’t have to feel the fullness of the truth.
A pattern that also prevents you from experiencing love.
Self-forgiveness asks us to find a new way to be in the world.
Self-forgiveness asks us to let the love in.
But how?
Where does that love come from?
Love is not something outside of you.
Love is not something earned by being good,
Or something lost by being bad.
If shame & self-punishment separate us from ourselves,
Then Iove is the integration.
Love is coming home.
So maybe the first step of self-forgiveness is not about forgiving at all.
But instead, asking what these parts of yourself need?
And then meeting those parts with compassion and curiosity.
The forgiveness comes naturally.
And the love will too.