Forgiveness Sets You Free!

Grudges. We’ve all had them at one point or another, and for as long as we’d hold onto them we’d feel completely justified in our reasoning for doing so.

“He cheated on me! I’ll never forgive him!”

“She lied to me, so of course I hate her!”

“They went behind my back and betrayed me. I can’t ever look them in the face again.”

The fact of the matter is that we are intuitive beings, and on some level, we’re angry at ourselves for not paying attention to the red flags and road signs that The Uni-verse offered us each and every day. We either chose to notice them or not.

Every single day, The Uni-verse supports us in getting closer and closer to our goals and desires. The Uni-verse is on our side – 100%. Rejection is protection. Instead of being upset because something didn’t turn out the way you thought it would, be thankful that The Uni-verse is setting you up for bigger and better things.

Holding a grudge against someone else takes your power away, because you’re angry for what they did TO you. Be clear that nothing happens TO you. Everything happens FOR you. If you take ownership of everything that you experience, you take your power BACK.

The real healing begins by forgiving ourselves first. If we can’t forgive ourselves there is no way we can have compassion and forgiveness for others; much in the same way we can’t fully love someone else until we love ourselves.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog about a friend of mine who did the unthinkable. I was angry at first, but then I got to see that I had known – all along – on some level that she was capable of something like that.

I chose to ignore my intuitions for a variety of reasons, but none of them were to support her in stepping into her greatness. I allowed her to get away with her BS because I told myself I loved her unconditionally. Deep down, I was afraid of risking our entire friendship, because I “knew” she wouldn’t be open to the feedback.

And when I finally called her out, it was too late and the damage had already been done. At that point, she was most definitely not open to the feedback. I am powerful beyond measure, and if I would’ve taken a stand for her, I would’ve given her the option to either stick around while I supported her in being the best version or herself, or not.

I have forgiven her for her wrongdoings, but that doesn’t mean that she gets to be in my life. I know that she did what she did because she is suffering on some level. It hurts my heart to know that.

People do the unthinkable sometimes, and it weighs on them even if they don’t show, emote, or say that it does. It takes away a part of their being and leads to their further suffering. By forgiving someone for “hurting you”, you aren’t letting them win. You are, in fact, setting yourself free.

Choose to love everyone around you and forgive people for their suffering. If they weren’t suffering, they wouldn’t do the unimaginable. Can you think of someone who you can CHOOSE to forgive? Tell me what it will take from you to LET GO of the anger or hurt. Life is happening NOW. Let’s clear the space!

Love all that is you,

Jenna xox

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Jenna Phillips is a Total Wellness Philosopher, Certified Holistic Lifestyle Coach, AFAA Certified Personal Trainer & the founder of her lifestyle brand I’m On A Mission. Follow her on Twitter and be inspired.

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Beth

I stayed in a relationship with a man who has great suffering, unable to be honest or look at himself at all. I knew of his pain and thought if I stayed, he will eventually do something towards healing himself, but it didnt happen and I suffered terrible pain, going to the bitter ends. Ive had to forgive myself for going against my intuition, my values and principles, and what I knew was right for me. Its taken months to let him go and stick with it, he still contacts me but Im not willing to go somewhere that theres been no healing. I have done a lot of work to heal and I will value that from now on. And I do forgive myself and go from here, no more victimization and no more giving myself a hard time because of the path I chose. Today I choose a new path.
- LizZee30
  
  How did you go about forgiving yourself for going against your intuition, values, principles and what you knew was right for you? I’m having such a hard time forgiving myself for going against the same things. I’m sure it couldn’t have been easy for you either and seeing that it is possible to do does give me hope, but I just feel like I have this huge road block inside of me keeping it from happening.
LizZee30

I truly believe that forgiveness does set you free….but I still have trouble with it. Where I have trouble though is forgiving myself. I can forgive other people. I’m even at a point in my life where I can take ownership for the things that have happened to me and not be angry with the other person involved. I’m always angry at myself. I still beat myself up for a mistake I made 6 years ago even though I’ve been forgiven by the person I hurt. Recently I was in a situation where I misinterpreted what my instincts were telling me and I think now I’m having a hard time accepting that. I feel like I betrayed myself in a way and then I get mad for putting myself in the position I was in and it all starts to snow ball into these thoughts of “why don’t I love myself enough”. I don’t love myself as much as I should and that irritates me and makes me anxious for the next mistake I might make. It makes me anxious to think about how I can hurt myself again and how someone else could possibly get hurt as well. I just don’t know how to forgive myself and love myself completely so I can let go and move on and do better.
Faith

this is powerful, thank you! I may need to read it again and again for it to sink in. Forgiveness, of myself and others, is something I seem to often forget about. It is so true though, holding onto anger and resentment is only giving our power away and punishing ourselves. When someone does something hurtful, seeing the suffering under their choices and having compassion will set us free!
Patti

I’m having such a hard time forgiving someone for a recent incident and I see now that I can’t forgive what happened because I haven’t forgiven myself for doing something very similar in the past. I kind of had a hunch (ha!) that was the reason I haven’t been able to let go, but wasn’t listening to my inner guide. I’ve done so many worksheets on this issue and have only made very minor progress, as my mind is still plagued with what happened every single day. And I can see it’s because I’m still angry at myself for doing what I now can’t forgive someone else for doing!

I’m so happy I read this blog today. Thank you.
Z.

I am struggling with forgiving my sister. Our relationship has never been consistently close and for the past 4 years it has been pretty much completely broken. We still make nice but I still feel so much anger towards her. I had a daughter 5 1/2 years ago who was born with a really complicated set of Heart Defects. My sister was living 5+ hours awayi at the time. Following her birth, my daughter had to have her first open-heart surgery. My sister didn’t come to support but did stay in contact and after we came home 4 weeks after the birth she came to help out and spend time with me. Fast forward 1 year…my daughter had to have corrective surgery. It was a long procedure, 14+ hours. It was touch and go for a while but she pulled through. My parents were at the hospital with us the entire time. My dad had recently been through 2 surgeries of his own and was experiencing some severe complications (lost use of his right arm…) on top of the fact that the company he had given 20+ years to shut it’s doors and he was suddenly unemployed. He came apart at the seems…it was horrifying to see him fall apart. The stress of his health, his life and his granddaughter’s health was just too much. I called my sister and begged her to come home. I told her that it wasn’t really for me…but that I needed her to come home and support my mom and dad…that I didn’t want my mom to have to deal with it all on her own while I worried about my daughter in the PICU. My sister wouldn’t come. Told me that I had to be exaggerating. She had to get back to her bowling game. She abandoned her family because it was “too hard” to travel and get the time off of work. It’s been 4+ years and I still can’t forgive her for it. I just don’t know where to start. I am disappointed and confused and so very, very hurt. Still, after all this time. I know that hanging on to this isn’t good…but I don’t even know where to start in letting go.
zoey

I’ve lost an extremely close friendship recently. I want to forgive this person and myself but i just get so angry when i think about the situation. The fact that the friendship seems beyond saving hurts me deeply. I couldn’t agree more with everything above, but its so hard for me to actually put into practice. Where do i start? My head wants to forgive but my feelings tell me the opposite.
- Julesmariedolls
  
  Even if your heart is not into forgiving, think it anyway until your heart and mind are aligned. I have taken the advice of looking beyond the wrong action and feeling for a suffering human being. Baby steps. It’s not going to happen over night. But it will help
  - zoey
    
    Thank you. I always try to remember that every situation in life is an opportunity to learn and evolve into our higher selfs. It can just be difficult sometimes when you are experiencing the pain in the moment. Although i try to remember that everything is as it should be, the loss still hurts.
mary

I have forgiven, I am not angry ,I can see his pain… It’s been years… However I continue to struggle with my hurt. How do I move past this so that I can trust and love again?
Lesley

I am getting out of a serious engagement. One in which I’m still taking time to heal from because he lives in the same house with me (till Feb 1st). With time I have been looking back and I’m able to say we rushed things, we both made mistakes, but in the end we were not meant to be. I deserved more and he was not mature enough to give that to me. I’ve been holding onto a lot of pain from the breakup. First of all – during the split he started talking to another girl, which hurt. He swore they were just friends. Then after pushing for us, we made one more attempt to reconcile. It was great – I went in with all my love, heart etc and truly wanted to start over. My one request was pure honesty – no lies, hurtful or not we needed to tell each other the truth. He said he would, said he’d give this girl up. Yet, within 48 hours I found out he lied. He didn’t tell me the truth because he didn’t want to hurt me. Said he gave this girl the jewelry (that I found and called him out on a month prior) because he was mad – meant nothing. Still he said she meant nothing and he’d give her up for me.

At this point I realized I couldn’t do this any more. I was hurt, angry, and in a bad place. But this made me see the truth. Now as things have been passing I heard him tell this girl (who’s 23 and he’s 34) he loves her. I can’t say I don’t hurt knowing this. But I also see how he is around me and he’s hurting and if can say I love you this soon after saying it to me, it’s not real love…cause he doesn’t know real love.

I also realized I feel sorry for this girl because he’s either not being honest with her, which we all knows what that means, or she’s too naive to see the truth.

After all of this, I came to a point of realizing that I don’t regret my time with him. I learned, I grew and I came out of this the bigger person. I’m moving on to something better – NOT someone better (yet) but moving on to be myself – my happy loving self. I even came to a realization that I forgive him, because he’s so tormented and immature he doesn’t know better. He loved me, but doesn’t know how to truly love and I can’t blame myself for that.

I truly believe loving yourself, being able to say “I am a great person and I deserve the best,” and forgiving yourself for your mistakes and others can set you free. Thanks for the great article.