Forgiving The Past

Walking in a rain drenched park on Saturday...loving  the amber and green wet eucalyptus bark.

Just a little blog tonight. I'm laid low with a sore throat and headache....and some similar flu like symptoms....but very mild compared to what some of my friends and family have experienced this winter.

It's very rare for me to be ill...I  think I have a robust immune system. It's more familiar to me to be laid low by emotional symptoms. But then the body and mind are inextricably symbiotic.

Day 15 of Raising  our Self Esteem with Louise Hay

Today's exercises are about forgiving yourself and other people who you perceive have hurt you.

 I have never had to suffer any physical, emotional or mental abuse for which I feel extremely lucky and blessed. Several times in my lifeI have been threatened and intimidated sexually by men I didn't know, but never physically harmed.

When I was a teenager I was very angry with my father for leaving us in England and going back to Zambia to work. I blamed him for many things and used him as an excuse for my own bad behaviour.

Many years later, after doing the EST training,  I learned about being responsible for my own feelings 

and actions. And gradually over the years I was able to forgive myself for treating him so shabbily.

Doing the mirror work exercises and affirmations this morning I realised that it isn't all the people who I think have hurt me that I need to forgive but myself. And how much I'm hurting myself by hanging on to the past .....like torturing myself for leaving Robin in the care home in the last  month of his life. 

Letting all of it go is such a relief. And it is like the layers of an onion ....the more layers I peel back the more I find to forgive myself for. And the easier then it is forgive anyone else.

This is most helpful affirmation that I've been saying to myself today. 

I forgive everyone in my past, including myself, for all perceived wrongs. I release them with love including myself.

I release you and I set you free.

You are free. I am free.