Soulshine

    " If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions, I ask their forgiveness. If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions, I forgive them. And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive, I forgive myself for that. For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions, I forgive myself." Anonymous I realize more and more that often when I am upset with another person, it’s not really about them or their behavior. It’s about the fact that something they said or did unintentionally hit on a wounded area inside of me. Those wounded, unhealed areas within my heart and soul are like landmines. I’m often not aware that they still exist until something happens or someone says something that sets off an explosion inside me. That explosion is all about me, however, and the areas within me that I n...

“Happiness is a byproduct of the way we live our own lives, not the way others live theirs.” Karen Casey , Codependence and the Power of Detachment Detachment is a major buzzword in codependent recovery circles. So what is detachment? It’s the process of realizing that we are enmeshed in the lives of others, admitting that we are powerless over them and then making the conscious choice to separate or detach ourselves from the people whose lives we’ve been trying to live. Part of losing ourselves in those people involves the need to control them. We mistakenly believe that if we can control them and make them be and do exactly what we want, we will finally be happy. This type of codependent thinking, believing that our happiness is the byproduct of how other people live their lives, is modeled perfectly by Hannah, the character from the movie Pilgrimage that I wrote about yesterday. She was so enmeshed in her son Jim, so caught up in the belief that her happiness was ...

“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...

“If you’ll forgive you, I’ll forgive me.” Joan Blondell, We’re In the Money Actress Joan Blondell was a tough, sassy, gutsy blonde back in her film heyday of the 1930s. In the 1935 romantic comedy “We’re in the Money,” Blondell  is making amends with leading man Ross Alexander when she says “If you’ll forgive you, I’ll forgive me.” It was an interesting twist. Two people are apologizing to each other and one of them is farsighted enough to realize that true forgiveness is more than just “I’ll forgive you, if you’ll forgive me.” After all, we sometimes find it much easier to forgive someone else than we do to forgive ourselves. And it’s pretty difficult for us to really have closure with a sore spot in a relationship until we have forgiven ourselves, too. For example, Ginger (Joan Blondell) and Carter (Ross Alexander) have done some pretty dumb, manipulative and selfish things during their on-screen relationship in the film. Our hope, as we’re watching, is that they wil...

“Yes, he had the power to abuse me, but he doesn’t have the power to make me a victim.” Craig Nakken, Finding Your Moral Compass Everyone has been abused someway, somehow. But there’s a difference between being abused and being a victim. If someone had the power to abuse us, we were certainly victimized. But we didn’t become victims unless we chose to do so. People who become victims choose to lay down before others and become their doormats. In other words, when I choose to give away my personal power, I choose to become a victim of others, of life or of the world. Anytime we have been abused, we find healing in grieving and we find freedom in forgiveness. By grieving our loss and by choosing to forgive the person who has abused us, we regain our self-respect, our dignity and our lives. We are then able to move forward as people better prepared to face the harsh realities of life. Throughout this process, our ability to heal, forgive and move forward have been made pos...

What is Easter without the Resurrection? What is breath without air? What is life without love? And what is love without forgiveness? One has no purpose without the other. Yet, we often fail at being resurrected spiritually because we fail to take breaths that are true, we fail to live on life’s oasis of love and we fail to love ourselves well enough to forgive and to accept forgiveness. This Lenten season I traveled around Arizona giving a series of talks I call “Have I Loved Well?” Loving well begins with loving one’s self well (unconditionally). And loving one’s self well leads to forgiving one’s self. Yet, almost everywhere I spoke, people told me of their inability to forgive themselves. It was obvious to me that the past still haunts many people because they don’t love themselves well enough to forgive themselves for the mistakes of their yesterdays. There’s no good reason for failing to forgive yourself. God has already forgiven you for the past. All you have to do to receiv...