Choosing to forgive

I recently heard on a podcast that - well I don’t remember the exact wording, but something along the lines of - “Mistakes are the key to success” or the “Failure is the mother of success”.

I took it to mean that failures and mistakes are valuable and shouldn’t be avoided. Fucking up is a way for me to learn from my mistakes and get better. And that the more and the faster I fail, the better I will get.

Now it’s not the first time I’ve heard this. But sometimes you can read books or come across quotes with these meme-type statements and it doesn’t hit you until you’re in it yourself.

I was in it, alright. I was in the trenches.

A lot of things happened over the last few weeks that really got me reflecting on my relationships, specifically my friendships, the role I play in them and my relations to people around me. Many lessons were painful, learnings rooted in trust and responsibility and discernment. All were eye opening. All were well deserved, and difficult as they were, I’m thankful to have learned them. If I make this kinda mistakes again just kill me la wtf.

I won’t go into detail about what exactly happened because it was a bunch of things that happened, not just one. What I want to talk about though is what I noticed this time.

Currently in my era of self healing and therapy lol and I realized… healing has happened!

I wasn’t aware of this until I started to really work it out in therapy and did tons of journaling and reflection (and went for a very special learning and staffing experience). Whenever I made mistakes before, I would be the first person to shit on myself. I was extremely negative. The names I called myself, I wouldn’t even say to my enemy.

useless
no wonder nobody likes/loves you
you deserve it
stupid

I was literally my own worst enemy. Nobody was angrier at me than me.

This time though was different. I felt myself spiraling back into a vortex of self hatred but this time I noticed. In the swirls of my anguish and my urge to run off a cliff, I talked to myself: you are not a bad person. You had good intentions and you made a mistake. You made some stupid choices but it was a mistake. Your mistakes do not define your worth or lovability.

It was like some B grade drama’s episode on self love to be honest hahahaha. I felt stupid just talking like that to myself hahahaha.

But it worked. I stayed calm and as far as it went, pretty centered.

That was an important realization for me. I’m always making fun of myself but it seems like even if you say something to yourself as a joke, your brain can’t tell the difference and takes what you say seriously.

I didn’t drown in a pool of shame and sorrow and self hatred. And because I wasn’t mired in hurt, I could look forward and take actual steps to work on the situation.

Mostly, I was able to forgive myself.

And because I was able to forgive myself, I was able to forgive the people who hurt me.

Maybe for the first time in my life, I understood what it was like to be truly kind. Not because it was the right thing to do, not because I wanted to be loved, not because I worried about people’s feelings, but because I truly could. Because it was so easy to.

Could it be really that simple? That the key in loving and forgiving was loving and forgiving yourself first? I found it hard to believe - I still find it unbelievable - but there it was.

When you extend grace to yourself, you extend grace to others.

When you forgive yourself, you forgive the people who wronged you.

When you believe in yourself, you stop viewing other people as a threat.

When you trust yourself, you learn how to trust others.

When you love yourself, you open yourself up to love.

I’ve still got a long way to go. In fact, we’re not supposed to stop learning and growing, are we? But I think in my grand history of 39 years…. this was a huge learning for me. I’m growing up.

See y’all next time!

Love,
Aud.