This post is for every time I’ve hinted at the theoretical possibility of eventually being able to forgive ourselves for something. There is always deep — and completely legitimate — pain that appears in the comments in response to this.
And often a request that I talk about the how.
I’ve wanted to do some teaching about this, but really, there’s one response to that kind of deep pain, and that’s a loving hand-on-heart full body sigh of acknowledgment.
Possibly a hug, but only if the person wants one.
So I want to say this:
If you’re in the place where you’re not yet willing/able to consider ways to ease into this practice, that is absolutely understandable.
I hear the pain. I see the pain. This pain is legitimate.
Just acknowledging how painful it is to think about this is enough of a practice.
And you might want to just do that for a while. To interact with the idea that this is watering the fractal flowers and doing what it needs to do.
If or when you decide you’re ready to continue… I have some more reminders. 🙂
This is hard stuff. Maybe the hardest stuff there is.
Even thinking about this subject is challenging. And courageous.
- Take it slowly.
- Safety first! Make safe space for yourself to process this.
- Use what you can. Discard what doesn’t speak to you.
- Maybe this is just going to plant some seeds for later on. That’s more than enough.
- There is nothing you have to do or get right.
- You are loved. By me. For interacting with the concept, even if you need to stop here.
Also important to add: There is no should.
This work is not a requirement.
It’s a practice — an advanced practice — that happens in a loving, patient, exploratory, completely guilt-free environment.
If I can’t forgive myself for something, that’s where I’m at. That’s okay.
Same goes for you.
Ad infinitum. If I can’t be okay with being okay with not being able to forgive myself, that’s where I’m at. If I can’t be okay with THAT, baby that’s how it is. And so on.
And also: a quick word about monsters.
Nothing brings up monster voices faster than this type of practice. They’re full of useful information and they want to protect you, but caution is recommended.
You might need to make safe rooms — one for you and one for them to hide out in and listen in for the duration.
You might want to deposit some of them into the monster-watching daycare collective.
Or invite negotiators.
Or use a proxy so they can focus their attention on a less painful subject (the stand-in for the thing you’re working on).
Definitely do NOT start this practice with the things you regret the most. Start small. Small is good.
We dance at the edges of the edges of the pain. We make things as safe as we possibly can. We do not interact directly with the hurt if there’s any chance we could fall back in.
And whatever you do, give them clear parameters. Example: They can comment in the margins, but they can’t yell. They have to hear you out first. They have to let the scientists take notes. Etc.
If you don’t have experience talking down the parts of you who say you aren’t allowed to take care of yourself in this way, I highly recommend the monster manual & coloring book. And possibly also Emergency Calming The Hell Down.
Alright. We’re ready. It’s quick. Here’s what you do.
- You tell the story. Like you’ve never told it before. Not attached to a narration. Like it’s a completely new story. And!
- You use the third person. You-from-then becomes “she” or “he” or whatever your preferred pronoun is.
- You call on the version of you who can tell this story. Bring him or her to the front of the V, and make safe spaces for the sad, hurt and angry parts of you to grieve. I would probably call on Yoga Teacher Me for this. Or Writer Me.
- You imagine this is a story about a past experience of your best, best friend. The person you love most in the entire world. This happened to them.
- You imagine you’re telling this story to someone you love and trust completely. A curious, compassionate listener. Who’s not there to judge. Just to witness. Receptive, understanding and kind.
- You explain the extenuating circumstances behind the experience. This is where your monsters will probably say, “It’s STILL NOT OKAY!”, and you’ll explain that you’re not justifying the choices or actions of the person whose story it is. You’re just giving background.
- You don’t have to tell the whole story. You don’t have to tell the hard parts. You’re really just setting the scene. That is enough.
- You breathe. You wait until something moves. You thank the storyteller, the subject, and the listener.
Here is an example.
“This is the story of a time our sweet Havi made a very hard decision and it put her in an incredibly painful situation, and she wished she had decided differently.
“The thing to understand about Havi-then is that she was functioning on pretty much no sleep. She was working two different bartending jobs. Sometimes she’d close out one bar at seven in the morning and open at the other one at noon or three.
“It had been years since she’d had a safe place to live, regular healthy meals, anything even resembling consecutive hours of sleep with any regularity. She lived in constant fear about basic things. She was recovering from a painful relationship during which she had lost any remaining sense of sovereignty. Her decision-making capabilities were extremely impaired, and she didn’t even know it.”
{INTERRUPTION by well-meaning fuzzy-bellied monsters: “No excuses! No excuses!” We explain: Not excusing. Just giving relevant background.}
We continue.
“Havi-then did not have any of the tools that we have today. She didn’t know about interacting with the hard. She didn’t have access to slightly-future-her. She did not know how to help herself.
“She wasn’t even aware that she could receive help. And she wouldn’t have liked it anyway.
“She was using the tools she had: guilt, repression, denial, alcohol, cigarettes, ignoring the signs. She was sticking with what she knew: the things that gave her the perception of experiences of ease, power, stability and release.
“She perceived a choice between losing everything, including her entire support network, and letting something happen that was harmful to her and to one other person, but wouldn’t cost her everything she had.
“She wouldn’t make that choice now. She wouldn’t even be in that kind of situation now, but that’s where she was.”
{INTERRUPTION by well-meaning fuzzy-bellied monsters: “But-but-but! It’s still not okay! It’s still horrible!” We explain: Yes. It was a horrible situation that shouldn’t ever happen to anyone. We wish for a different choice, but we also recognize that making a different choice would require being more cognizant, as well as knowing what she knew after the fact. We know you want to protect us from that kind of pain happening again. Protection without blame is what she needs right now.}
And here we are.
Havi-then is how I got to become Havi-now.
I wish she’d had access to less painful ways of acquiring knowledge, but I will take the learnings.
Every loving choice I make now (for more sleep, for paying attention, for appreciation) is thanks to the hard things I’ve learned about what doesn’t work.
It has taken me years to get to this point, but I feel a lot of love for her. She was in survival mode. She fought for me-now.
I’m going to do things differently than she did, but I have that ability because of what she taught me.
She was doing what she could with the extremely limited tools at her disposal, in circumstances that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and now she deserves to be cared for. She deserves to retire gracefully, with flowers. And with a deep hand-on-heart full-body sigh of acknowledgment.
Safe rooms for her. Safe rooms for me. Safe rooms for all of us. And love.
Reassurances.
If this stuff seems way beyond anything you could ever do, give it time.
If this seems like another or the next step in the lifelong process of working on your stuff, getting to know how you function and rewriting patterns, that’s marvelous.
Let’s keep doing the work.
(And if you want to actively practice and become the person who destuckifies automatically, I’d like to work with you at Crossing the Line. Password: haulaway. Nearly full. If you need a scholarship, we have 2 different kinds. If you need a place to stay, we have those too.)
Comment zen for today.
This is hard. We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process.
We meet each other and our own pain with hand-on-heart sighs, with acknowledgment and permission. And amnesty.
We make this the safest space on the internet by not telling each other what to do or how to feel. We take responsibility for our stuff. We let other people have their stuff.
Let’s throw things into the pot, and deposit love for each other.
Tomorrow night is Yom Kipur, so this seemed like good timing. Be as kind to yourself as you can stand (but not more than that, because that would be mean), and know that you are loved and appreciated for being part of my world.
The very last thing.
Additional loving thoughts for Steve Jobs. Every word I have ever posted online was written on an Apple computer. This site was conceived of, designed and built on one. Same for all of my products. Same for the birth of the Playground. Appreciation. Today I am practicing breathing in some of the qualities of his vision: grace, ease, beauty, lightness, passion and love.
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Thanks. I am printing out this post and saving it. Peace to you, all the commenters, and all the lurker mice.
“You imagine this is a story about a past experience of your best, best friend. The person you love most in the entire world. This happened to them.”
This is where I curled up and sobbed for a while.
I can think about what happened to me as if it wasn’t much. I can talk about it without letting my emotions get involved.
But to imagine it happening to my beautiful Artemis, someone clever and wonderful and so, so important – oh Havi. That hurts.
Even if I didn’t already love you for everything else, I would love you for this.
I started journaling with this and ended up writing a whole fairy tale that helped me deconstruct some of the circumstances that led to a particular recent trip down a rough path. I didn’t go quite where I thought I would with it, but I think I went where I /needed/ to go, which was really good. Thanks, I needed this today. 🙂
“Be as kind to yourself as you can stand.” Wonderful advice.
Just reading this post makes my heart race and my head spin. Possibility. Pain. Love. Healing.
Saving this one.
This is big stuff Havi. Thank you.
I particularly like the part about imagining it happening to a friend. I definitely get over/through things by making friends with past me who made mistakes, and sending her messages of kindness.
Another thought – it’s never too late.
mmmmmm…. sigh…..
the timing of this was perfect for me. there is a story that i keep replaying, and in the end i’m beating myself up, or being dismissive or corrective about how i should have known better and chosen differently. but i couldn’t then, and i couldn’t predict the future….
hearing your approach to this is really wonderful. i think it will be sticking around in me…
grateful. grateful. grateful. i love the space of tenderness that you created for this.
Beautiful, Havi. You have such a unique voice and style, which means there are people who can hear what you are saying even when they’ve never been able to hear anyone else before. Thank you for sharing your hard-won tools and wisdom.
Well, this was my first teary-eyed post (that I remember anyway). Love the way you explained the story of then-Havi & made this real for me & all of us.
Thanks & love.
Jess
Beeeautiful, dear Havi.
This also reminds me of where I need to sit in my practice of running.
Not directly forcing the long, arduous runs where I feel pathetic, but doing five minute runs that still push the edges of pain.
I agree with @VickiB… can feel the panic attack coming on… as if self-forgiveness and moving on are not allowed… but I’m going to try this method very soon… I just have to get up the courage.
Thank you, Havi.
I am also saving it and using the idea to write about it later.
I have been SO MAD at me-five-years-ago.
It is even making it hard for me to trust “Future Me” – who says I am not making more mistakes now-or-later?
And so I am discussing with Wise Me for a while.
While I sort the stuck about five years ago out.
There is forgiveness and increasing understanding for me-five-years-ago.
But it feels as if there is not always a strong structure for Me-Now.
It feels hard to let go of the old options/possibilities/thoughts without clear new ones.
And so I am also working on new paths/ideas/ways of being in this world simultaneously.
So many thoughts!
Thanks thanks many thanks for the brave post.
Off to the writing cave, Robin!
What @kathleen said. Big love and thanks. xo
Havi,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this wonderful, wise, compelling post.
I first read it this morning, and I wept tears for all the Past Me’s that struggled so hard to learn the tools that Current Me has at my disposal.
I am going to bookmark this post so I can return to this forgiveness practice as needed.
Havi,
Thank you so much for this loving, deep, and very helpful post. I am saving it for sure. Wise and inspirational writing from your heart to mine. Self forgiveness and self compassion are the core of healing.
Mourning Steve Jobs, also. From his 2005 Stanford speech:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I want to take all of this wisdom inside myself and live into it, until it becomes my own.
Much Love XOXO
Thank you. I have found in my life that forgiveness becomes radically easier when I actively pursue an understanding of the context in which it occurred. The WHOLE story. Like – her mother was born in rural 1950s Arkansas….. Well, really it starts before that…. Her father arrived in New York at the age of thirteen from Ireland during the Depression… Well, really it starts before that….
Compassion: co- with; passion- feeling. Feeling WITH someone. Extending your imagination muscles and your courageous heart to try and feel what THEY were feeling, knowing what they knew, living with their fears and their hopes and their beliefs based on their experiences… Which may be radically different to your own. Which may have created a reality that is fundamentally separate to the one that you experience.
Compassion is an act of imagination. Lack of compassion is a failure of either imagination or information.
Where you cannot comprehend the actions of another, I have found it best to presume a lack of sufficient information. That I do not have the Whole Story.
When I can COMPREHEND, NOT necessarily defend, but at least comprehend the CONTEXT of the choices, then usually all that is left is the Tragedy Of It All.
It will come down to a fucked up way of trying to meet some dumb, normal, human, relatable stupid, legitimate need… sometimes a REALLY fucked up way with awful, awful, awful, HORRIBLE consequences… and there is nothing in the process of finding compassion that reduces, ‘steals from’ or delegitimises the compassion that you will still feel for the victims in the story… but at least if you can find a way to understand (or hold out the possibility that there may be more to the Whole Story) and you can get to a place where you can hold, fountain-like, both the One Who Suffered and the One Who Inflicted in your heart… well, then you can weep, and howl, and breathe, and move on to the job of holding and releasing the sadness, which is a little different to holding and releasing the anger, or bitterness, or rage, or other pain.
Compassion. It is the hardest. It is, in my opinion, what we should strive for above all things.
This, I Believe!!
So beautiful and perfect a gift for Yom Kippur, Havi, thank you.
The one I ‘wronged’ the most is very ill, I found out yesterday. I had spent all day deeply at work writing about another way to find the truth of self-forgiveness–called The Innocence Trip. I felt the strain of trying to know better than myself about guilt-wracking. I so wanted to be over it by now. The kindness and patience in your offering here softened this, and today grief moved through like a thunderstorm, and I am grateful for everything.
Havi, this is brilliant. I’m committing to thinking about maybe possibly doing this. 😉
Thank you, Havi.
I’m so confronted by this topic that I couldn’t even get past the TITLE until this morning.
Now I’ve read this & I may not be ready to tackle much, but I can feel my heart softening towards Kim From Then.
Progress!!
Bedtime really but just wanted to say: nicely said.
Sometimes I feel like I’m not following through with enough implementation of what I read, but I know it’s gradually sinking in. Sometimes even filtering into my decisions without me realizing it. Least I hope that’s true.
Hi Havi,
although I read your posts for already about 2 years and I know that you have helped me a lot being more kind and compassionate towards myself, this post really touched me deeply.
Thank you for sharing.
I am slowly getting to the point of forgiving past-me from 10 years ago and past-me from a year ago. But I am okay with not being there completely.
Michelle
Thank you, Havi. And thank you from yesterday-me, who needed her story told today. I especially appreciate the advice to start small.