Standing in my 19-year-old daughter Grace’s freshly painted room the other day, I could still see the ghost of the mother rabbit sitting under a dogwood tree, reading to her two baby bunnies, that I stenciled on the corner wall when I was pregnant. My mind outlined the vibrant purple smock the mother wore, and the bubble gum pink flowers on the tree’s cascading branches. This isn’t the first time we repainted that room. When Grace was a tween, we realized the bunnies had to go. She was a spring baby and I got the grand idea to go with a bunny theme since the stores were loaded with after Easter sales of bunny type paraphernalia. Both of my girls are born in May. One day apart. They missed the same birthday by 20 minutes.  Always a funny coincidence that has tied them together in so many ways.

Now Grace’s walls are a mature almond color since my husband painted over the lilac purple she loved in high school. I see so many ghosts in that room. The toddler who would crawl to her crib and grunt to be placed inside; the little girl who created elaborate play scenarios; the teenager who practiced her soprano singing with an intensity that would make me cry. I watch the ghosts come and go and then hear the silence. It’s quiet.

And so, I fill the space with questions. Was I a good mother? I know I tried, but I also know there are things I would have done differently with the knowledge of what I know now, and didn’t know then. Did I give everything I could have? Did I have the patience I should have? Did I make mistakes? These questions are debatable, but I’m sure I made mistakes. Who hasn’t as a parent? You know when people say, “Oh you’re having a baby!” You actually have a human, with all the multi-layered complexities of any human. And then you mix that with your own layers, and your partner’s layers, and it gets complicated.

Kim and I have been exploring self-forgiveness lately and I find I’m using those concepts now as these agonizing questions rattle around my brain. I don’t know the answers, but I know I approached my role as her mom with enthusiasm and love. But I also know I’m flawed, and imperfect, and that someone else would have played my role differently. Someone else would have have said yes when I said no, and no when I said yes. Someone else could have been right. Maybe I could have been wrong.

As humans, we have a tendency to reexamine, reevaluate, and then beat ourselves up with a metaphoric stick, demanding that we should have done better, and known better, when faced with situations completely unknown to us. That really doesn’t make any sense. An inability to forgive ourselves leads to all kinds of physical and emotional issues. And the reality is that what’s done is done. We simply can’t go back and do it over again, so continuing to perseverate on it gets us nowhere.

I’m going to go back in that room and look with fondness on the memories that fill those four walls of a precious little girl who fit perfectly in my arms, when she would wrap hers around my neck. I’m going to breathe in forgiveness and love, and breathe out regret and trepidation. I’m going to remind myself that there is no perfect. I’m going to be with the ghosts, let them come and go. Grace was what’s called an en caul birth, meaning she was born in an intact amniotic sac, a very rare occurrence. The nurses in the delivery room cheered, and told us it is a sign of good luck. I’ve always loved telling her about that. The nurses also said her hands were in a praying position. I tell her what a gift she was, how much we wanted her, how complete she made our family. I’m remembering that there’s so much to focus on that’s good. And like that fresh coat of paint, I can start anew as well, with self-forgiveness and grace.

We talk a lot at The Wisdom Coalition about how our internal environment greatly impacts our external environment. This means how we feel about ourselves impacts how we treat ourselves both physically and emotionally; and it also impacts how we treat others. This is why self-forgiveness is so vital.

Many of our internal struggles arise from dealing with our own regrets and disappointments for actions we have taken (or not taken) in our lives. We tend to be our own worst enemy with our internal critic that analyzes our every thought and action. This internal battle often leads to feelings of guilt and shame, which negatively impact our sense of self worth.

Dr. Brene Brown differentiates between guilt and shame in this way, she says guilt focuses on behaviors and says “I did something bad” while shame focuses on the individual and says “I am bad.” According to Dr. Brown, guilt leads to personal growth through amended behaviors, while shame leads to self-hatred and self-destructive behaviors.

Carrying around shame created by harboring our mistakes is detrimental to our physical health and our emotional wellbeing. Studies have shown that our inability to forgive ourselves is associated not only with emotional ill health, but also with heart disease and even premature death.

Forgiveness reduces stress and positively affects the immune system at the cellular and the neuro-endocrine level. It also improves the central nervous system processes. In the same way, the positive emotions related to forgiveness such as empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love help to reduce the negative physical and emotional impact of unforgiveness.

So how do we forgive ourselves? The first step is to recognize that we are not alone; everyone makes mistakes. We can make amends and/or reframe our mistakes and learn from them. This will help us to let go of the negative feelings we have towards ourselves, move on, and forgive ourselves. This is easier said than done. It involves a process of self-discovery where we conduct a full study of our lives, looking for what we might be holding on to that is not serving us, and asking ourselves why.

Dr. Brown suggests the following exercise to help cultivate self-forgiveness:

• Imagining your life as a long time-line, a piece of beautiful string, beginning at your birth to the present moment.
• Begin at your first memory and then move forward from that earliest memory.
• Seek out events that bring deep shame and guilt. These may include incidents that you have avoided or buried for years.
• Look deeply at them one at a time, don’t avoid or skip past them.
• Sit with the emotions, and don’t suppress anything.
• Look at the incidents from different perspectives. Were you seeing everything accurately, were you able to respond differently, were you too small, too afraid to do anything other than what you did?
• As each comes up, forgive yourself for your frailties, give each ‘incident’ a heading, scribble it down on a piece of paper and only when you’ve truly forgiven yourself, write ‘forgiven’ next to that heading.
• Move on to the next incident, then the next, then the next until there is nothing left. Forgive yourself, forgive yourself, forgive yourself!
• Once you’ve completed the timeline and forgiven yourself for every incident, you can either burn the piece of paper or tear it into tiny pieces and throw it away.
• Let it go, release it all, and like the ripples in a pond, it will be gone.

I love this exercise! It provides a visual context to forgiveness and ends with physically letting go! I’d love to hear your experience with the exercise.