Please forgive me

I recently had someone comment to me about how forgiving I was.  I thought about it and thought “yeah I guess I am.”  Like so many people in this world I would be stuck if I didn’t forgive people and as other awesome forgiving people out there know it’s about me and my mental health to forgive.  Of course forgiveness is not forgetting.  But this is not about forgiving someone else.  This is about forgiving MYself.  That is a concept that is as foreign to me as proving a theorem in Geometry, blah!  This a journey I never thought I would actually have to make.

I am that person who strives to be a friend who can give her friends that soft and caring loving ear.   Who doesn’t judge because deep down she knows she doesn’t have a right and that’s not what friends do.   All our journeys are different and a good friend tries to say those words that a friend needs to hear most, “you are okay, you did your best, don’t be so hard on yourself.”  After you have a good talk with a good friend you feel better but there is still something nagging, well for me anyways.  I just hear, “you should have known better, what’s wrong with you?”  This self-talk becomes so destructive that we become so mean to ourselves.  Why?? I still don’t understand that but I finally decided to think of what I would say to my own children if they made a mistake, “what are you stupid??” Ha no I’m kidding I would probably use my nicest sweetest voice to tell them it’s okay and people make mistakes.  They are already so mad at themselves they don’t need anymore negative emotions.  As one of my smart teachers said, “why do we fall down, to learn how to get up” (and by teacher I mean Bruce Wayne’s dad in the movie Batman Begins).  I think those are words to live by but hard to remember when we are laying on the floor with a broken piece inside or outside for that matter but this is all ‘hypothetical’ so I’m going to say inside.

I recently read this book, The Way of the Happy Woman by Sara Avant Stover and I believe it changed my life.  I have been telling all my girlfriends to pick it up.  This is when I realized how unbelievable mean I was being to myself.  I finally started to realize that all the crap I had been carrying around with me over the years was weighing me down and taking its toll on my body.  I had a wake up call and if I didn’t forgive myself for all the grudges I had been holding against myself I was going down fast.  So I began to tune it all out and just be with myself and tell myself who is in charge and it’s myself (did you follow that).  I forgave myself for everything, for yelling at my kids that morning, for feeding my children caged chicken eggs (please don’t tell Oprah but they were on sale and I was short that week) or for having a bad hair day (I’m allowed to you know).  My point is I started to be nice to myself.  I started to talk to me like I talk to my friends and it felt good to be let into such an elite club.  I mean just ask you who is reading this right now, you should know!  I learned to be MY friend.  Don’t get me wrong it’s easy to fall back into old habits but I bounce back pretty quickly now since it feels good being so nice to yourself.  You should totally try it, it will make you awesome just like me!!