Forgiveness (Part 3)

I know I have been putting out a lot of things to think about forgiveness, but I have also given myself the thought process of how I need to change things for myself. Well today I feel like I am going to go into a deeper place that may bring so much more things to the surface that some may not be ready for. 

Forgiveness has you going through all the emotions and making you really see that at times holding to things may not be worth; but at the same time it takes a lot of time to get to a place of honestly wanting to let go. When dealing with life you have to find ways to truly be kind and loving to yourself in the process or journey because then you are opening the gate for you to have to forgive yourself for things. We all face the different hurts and habits, but we seem to make it worse over time because we do not take care of us. 

Understanding that being kind to yourself and loving yourself through the tough parts will help you in the long haul of this uncomfortable process. Most times when we as people will forget about ourselves in this process of forgiveness. Take the time to ask yourself questions and find out if you are upset with yourself about anything. If I am real with myself, I am upset with myself about somethings and it was not until this book and starting to write these blogs that I realized that I am not always kind to myself. 

Being a person that can quickly forgive others, I have always wondered why I am so hard on myself about things that I am not able to honestly change. I have blamed me for all the things that I have been through in life; now granted somethings YES I did cause because of poor decisions but other things I did not. But in my brain it was all my fault and I have been beating myself up plus self-sabotaging relationships and most things good in my path. I never knew I wasn't showing my self GRACE and I was hurting myself before I would allow others to hurt me because that's what I felt I deserved.

I have blamed myself for people cheating, even when they tell me it honestly had nothing to do with me; but why would you believe that when the person did it. I blamed myself for my relationships, especially my marriage I truly blamed myself for that even though I was not the only person in that relationship. After reading the book, I realize that I did not make the choices the people made that hurt me, I did not say hurting me was okay, and I also gave them no reason to do the things they did to me. Even in friendship I feel that I allowed others people's actions towards me to consume how I felt about myself which made me not forgive me for making someone feel like they needed to hurt me in certain manners.

I do not think that people realize that we allow the hurt or actions of others make us feel differently about ourselves. We start to think that we are what others say we are, what they turn us into when they make themselves the victim in their villain stories, and the way we allow people gaslight us into thinking we have always been the problem. When in all actuality we are not the problem those people were and we ALLOWED them to make us the enemy to ourselves instead of protecting ourselves from people that wanted to tear us down. 

I have spent the part of the beginning of 2025 really looking at my life and those around me I realized that a lot of my negative thoughts, emotions, and feelings about myself came from me because I blamed me and had not been kind to myself. I literally had to forgive me for not protecting me from people who mean me no well and I allowed myself to start to HATE myself based on other people's actions. Forgiving me is the one thing that I have had the most difficulty doing and I am trying to learn how to forgive me.

This feels great to finally get out that I have been learning how to LOVE and FORGIVE me from the hurt I have experienced at the hand of others. 

But until next time, I'm still #LivingWhileSurvivingLife.

- Jess Lore'al