“Ah-ha!” moments on forgiving yourself.

“Please remember me, my misery, and how it lost me all I wanted.”

~ Iron and Wine

When we bury ourselves in our sadness, our hopes and dreams seem downright impossible.

Your misery has the power to heal you.

I believe that after a life altering event, or just after a general hardship, there definitely needs to be a grace period in which weare allowed to get down deep into the pits of our despair.

Be wary about staying down here too long. Sometimes we get so caught up in the misery, that we lose out on opportunities.

If you’re stuck holding onto any guilt or resentment of yourself, how are you ever supposed to truly heal?

“Rolling in the muck is not the best way to get clean.”

~ Aldous Huxley

Huxley has provided me with many ah-ha moments, but this has got to be my favorite.

It’s in our nature to beat ourselves up over our mistakes.

As strong, functional members of society, wehold ourselves up to such a high standard that even the smallest mishap can provoke mounds of guilt. But after the initial, “Hey, that was a bad idea. I probably shouldn’t do it again,” what else is there to say?

Rolling in the muck of bad decisions will not cleanse you.

It’ll just make it harder to peel the filth off once you do decide to get back up.

 “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering up its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

~ Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

This quote has probably given me the biggest ah-ha moment thus far.

While it downplays the importance of epiphanies, it sure did lead me to one.

When you are struggling with forgiving yourself, it’s easy to make yourself all kinds of promises and resolutions. But that’s also a very easy set up for failure.

We become so overwhelmed with all the things we must do to redeem ourselves, that we end up not really changing anything.

What if we didn’t leap head first into the face of forgiveness, but rather slinked down there in the middle of the night?

What if we took all of our mistakes and cut them up into tiny pieces, making them easier to swallow?

Epiphanies help us and shed loud amounts of light on us all the time.

Sometimes it’s nice to take quiet strides and then look back to see how far you’ve come.

Julie Garcia is a lover of the written word, bursts of passion, and sincerity. Julie says, “I want to magnify all the absurdity of the world; hold it up over my head and shine a little light on it.” She believes in finding your own formula for wellness, and hopes to one day publish a book inspiring young women to be the most authentic and enlightened version of themselves.

 

~

Editor: Elysha Anderson

 

Like elephant spirituality on Facebook