Soulshine

“The mirror wasn’t judging me, I was judging me. In front of the mirror, I came face to face with my judgments about myself… Who is the ‘I’ that judges that ‘I am not good enough,’ that fears that ‘I am unlovable’ and that whispers ‘I hate myself? It’s not your unconditional self.” Robert Holden , Loveability How comfortable are you standing in front of a mirror and looking intently at yourself? If you’re like me, you don’t look anymore intently than you have to. I look at myself just long enough to make sure my hair is in place and that my clothes aren’t “making me look fat.” I put “making me look fat” in quotations because those aren’t my words. They belong to someone else. They belong to someone who years and years ago told me I was fat and that I needed to make sure that my clothes didn’t enhance the fact. In other words, when I look in the mirror every day, I don’t see me. I see the judgments that have been placed on me by other people. And, unfortunately, thes...

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. Healing means that the damage no longer controls our lives.” Anonymous Healing and forgiveness go hand in hand. We never have complete healing of the damage that’s been done to us until we reach a point of acceptance, of letting go and of forgiveness. Acceptance means we admit we can’t change what happened   and that we don’t have to be the lifetime victim of what happened. Letting go of the damage frees us from our victim mentality and provides us with internal-peace.   Letting go allows us to take our power back from the damage and the person who inflicted it. Once we let go, we’ll find we no longer feel resentful toward that person. Instead, we feel empowered to stand up to that person and to take our power back from him/her in positive ways. So, I’m not talking about revenge here. I’m talking about coming to the realization that the person who hurt us is in some unhealed-way hurting too. His/her unhealed bro...