I have a simple and profound message to share today that originates with Intuitive Samantha Fe, someone I recently friended and who I deeply honor and respect. She posted this on her business facebook page the other day about how she released herself from a funk:
By grounding and sending love to the areas of my life that have me a little troubled from time to time. Self-forgiveness is key. Love yourself and forgive. Big or small, wide or tall. Repeat to yourself, “I love you, I forgive you.” Even if you don’t know what for yet, even if you do. Repeat until you believe it and see how your day changes. This is one of my most powerful secrets. I encourage you to share it with everybody!!! ~ Samantha Fe
All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. Each time we feel betrayed, we in fact betrayed ourselves in some way. And we can Love all that away!
This is a fast-track to finding our way and to releasing the hurt. I encourage us all to think these simple words, directed towards ourselves or others, anytime those hurtful thought cycles creep into our awareness: “I love you. I forgive you.”
And see what happens.
Share below in “comments” if you feel inspired.
You can learn more about Samantha Fe on her business facebook page or on her website.
Thank you!!! I’m so happy to hear that my message had resonance with you. There’s also an ancient Hawaiin word that works perfectly as well.
Honoponopono
Thank you
I love you
I forgive you
Please forgive me.
I send it as a heart based prayer to heal relationships with those relationships in my life that could use some delicate healing and love.
Thank you for your love and support! It means the world to me. XOXOX
Sending sunshine and roses,
Samantha
I love Honoponopono, and your simplified version makes it super accessible to me. What beautiful tools we have found along the way… using them, sharing them, loving them, appreciating them… I feel blessed to have experienced your light, love and wisdom.
Dear Denise, and Samantha:
Sometimes something comes up that makes me think about something I thought I had all worked out once again, and I find out that I don’t really have it all worked out. Sometimes I find out, to my amazement, that I have more figured out than I ever knew. I am thinking that forgiveness has to be if not THE hardest lesson, one of the hardest. When someone asks our forgiveness, the first thing we may be inclined to wonder is if that person deserved it. We are almost conditioned to stop and say, “Wait. What? You want me to forgive you?”
We see the dramatic part of the movie where the wronged party screams, “I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!!” and slings after that phrase all of the reasons why that person doesn’t deserve forgiveness, like it is a gift that we give someone else, and by withholding it, we pay them back for hurting us. That movie character might be on his or her death bed begging, “Will you please forgive me?” with labored breath, and when told, “Yes. I forgive you!” they pass peacefully on to the next world, forgiven at last. If we don’t practice forgiveness for the ones who have wronged us, then who is it for? As you so wonderfully put it, “All forgiveness is self forgiveness.”
I spent 20 years of my life with my first husband, all of my hopes and dreams and love and dedication were (for the most part undeservedly) poured into this one man as if it were my one and only shot at love and happiness for all eternity. Over that 20 years he broke my heart in ways that I didn’t know it could be broken. I forgave him for things that I never thought I would be able to forgive anyone for. At the end of the day however, we were still together, year after year, against the odds until one day… we weren’t. That was when he left me for a friend of mine. I had not only been betrayed by him, but by her too. Was I such a bad wife? Had I been such a horrible friend? All of the other times he cheated on me, all of the things he said, all of the rotten times that I had withstood were now meaningless to me. Somehow I had failed. It was over for good, and there were no more tomorrows to wait for; no right words to be said. Now the hurts would not be healed. The depths of my grief and anger seemed to know no bounds. All I could think of was, “How could he!? He PROMISED, and it’s not FAIR!” He quickly pointed out, and proceeded to prove, that promises and fairness have little to do with reality. He pulled no punches, as if I had driven him to wait for the ultimate time, the ultimate insult before he pulled the divorce trigger. He told me that I DESERVED this. Had I not been a good wife to a fault? Did I not deserve better? Most assuredly. Did that mean anything? No. In the end, all that I had said and done and tried and tried again meant nothing. He was gone and not looking back. He didn’t care that I couldn’t support myself. He didn’t care that he left me broken. I felt like I was dying and if anything, it gave him more satisfaction, as if to prove that he had been carrying me all along. In reality, none of it mattered. It was over.
I was so utterly devastated that I likened it to a nearly fatal car crash. I was left picking up my own bones and body parts and trying to put the pieces back together. We had been going to Unity Church together for about 5 years and I had friends there who couldn’t help but see that I was falling apart. I remember one of these friends came up to me one Sunday and said, “Sandy, you must find a way to forgive him.” I was aghast! “What? I need to FORGIVE HIM?? He doesn’t deserve my forgiveness!” “But Sandy,” she said, “the forgiveness isn’t for HIM, it’s for YOU.” Now I was just hurt more. “What did I need to be forgiven for? What did I do wrong? Why did I need to forgive him?” I was thinking at the time that I should like to go to my grave hating him for what he had done to me. He had EARNED that. This friend, who passed away a few years ago, looked deep into my eyes and told me, “Sandy, holding on to resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. You have to forgive or it will kill you. You deserve it. You did the best you could.” As the truth of her words sank in, the tears fell like a waterfall, and then she took a necklace off of her own neck and put it around mine. It was a pink stone in the shape of a heart. She said, “Yours is broken so I will give you mine. You need it more than I do right now.” I still have it. Over the space of days, weeks, months, and now many years, I have thought of her. When someone told me she had died, I was so mad at myself once again, because I had not told her how much it had meant for me to have her tell me those words that were so hard to hear. It wasn’t that I didn’t deserve to forgive myself, it was that I DID. I HAD been a good wife. I HAD been a good friend, and I DID deserve to be happy and forgive myself for not being able to hold my marriage together despite doing everything I possibly could. I DID do my best.
To this day, some 16 years since that time, I still work on forgiving him, and forgiving myself. Sometimes I’m still angry, and I still think it shouldn’t have gone down like it did. If I tell someone some of the things that he did, they might say, “WHAT?? That bastard!” or, “You didn’t deserve that!” and it’s true. He probably was and I probably didn’t. But what does that prove? That I’m still taking poison and expecting him to die. The anger is less, the pain is less, and I have gone on to have a new life. During the time that we were together I didn’t think I was naive, but I have never given every ounce of me to a relationship like I did then. Was it love? Maybe. Either that or I was just too invested to let go. No relationship since then has seemed so IMPORTANT. Why? Why did I give so much of myself to someone that didn’t do nearly as much as I did to hang on to that marriage? The whole time we were together he didn’t love me as much as I loved him. He cheated on me many times before we got married and always looked at others with more lust in his eyes than he ever had for me. After we got married he would tell me he shouldn’t have ever married me, that he didn’t love me enough, like I loved him. I still kept hanging on. What does that say? What does that mean? Did I try hard enough? I’m positive that I tried harder than anyone should have to try to hold a marriage together. Did I do the right things? All I know is that at the time, it always seemed like I did the right things. I remember talking to my mom one time and she said, “We do the best we can at the time with what we’ve got.” Indeed.
Considering the fact that my first husband and I have a child, Brandon, we have seen each other remarkably few times since our marriage dissolved. Until I got married to my current husband however, it seemed like we still weren’t able to lay our weapons down for good. We would always end up in fights, and we had promised to try and be civil to each other ‘for the sake of our son’. Well, it wasn’t for Brandon’s sake, because it tore him apart. I think he ended up hating us both at times for it. I’m certain he hated what we did to each other and him. Finally, my current husband told me I would have to quit speaking to him or he would leave. I was torn (oddly enough), but told myself that I deserved to be happy and to have a new life with someone who wanted me. The next time Brandon’s dad called, I told him that he wasn’t my husband any more, and now that I was married again, I was done talking to him. To my surprise, I never felt so free. To know that all of that struggling and grasping and begging and pleading was finally over was incredible. After 20 years of my life spent feeling inadequate and lonely and unforgivable, I was finally free. A couple of years ago I saw him for the first time in about 8 years when Brandon married Megan, and again when Brandon turned 30 and we both went to his birthday bash. Not only did I not feel angry any more, but there was pretty much NOTHING there! When I look back, I can still see some things in the same way as I did back then, but when I compare them to the person standing in front of me? They don’t even seem related. It’s like seeing scenes from an old movie. Of course, like I have said, I have had moments of doubt, and moments where I have a hard time forgiving myself for what was inevitable. Sometimes I feel like picking up the poison bottle again, but then I try hard to remind myself that I deserve to be happy. What about him? I have no idea, and it is really none of my business. I am looking forward to the day when the poison bottle doesn’t even exist any more, and I won’t even think of looking for it. I have finally forgiven myself enough to not need it. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, after all.
Thank you for the reminder, Denise and Samantha!
Namaste, Darlings
Sandy
Oh my gosh, Dear Sandy… what a beautiful, heart-full share, so full of seeds of wisdom – their blossoming and their ripening. That Angel who shared her heart touched me deeply too. She knew, on some level, the import of her sharing with you. She knows even more now. I’m so glad that Divine Intervention brought your freedom, even if it came through the lens of the worst betrayal imaginable. I am so happy you know love now, self-love being the heart of it. Love you so, Sweet siStar, Sandy <3
Love you too, Dear Denise! With deep humility and honor. My heart and your heart really seem to know each other, don’t they?