Forgiving is powerful. When done honestly, forgiveness liberates you and sets you free to live your own life, allowing you to move beyond hurtful situations.
Lack of forgiveness keeps you stuck and bonded to a person or situation for a long time. It’s like dragging a ball and chain around, and in every new life experience, you bring the past hurt and anger with you. As you mature, internalized childhood hurt creates resentment, bitterness, stubbornness and frustration in adult life situations. It’s an underlining feeling that things are not right. You might feel uncomfortable expressing yourself or dismiss people who tell you what to do.
Hurt Feelings
As a child, stories get created as coping mechanisms, and most stories are not valid, and it’s a way for the child or adolescent to understand emotional pain. We might say, for example, “No one loves me,” and then we go out and prove how we feel. All emotional reactions are done unconsciously.
What stories do you tell yourself from hurt? What stories have you told yourself about your mother?
Children internalize hurt over 30-40 years (lifetime), and internalized hurt creates external anxiety and depression, emotional games, addictions, sabotaged events, narcissism, anger and more. Internalized hurt also damages the physical body with autoimmune, joint pain, digestive issues, and heart problems.
To Heal
To heal from mother wounds or anything, we can’t protect our parents with statements like “they did the best they could.” Most parents do the best they can. To truly let go and shift lifelong patterns of grief and hurt, you’ll need to get real with your feelings to snap out of the old habits. Changing lifelong beliefs starts by acknowledging you have issues and being completely honest yourself, and without criticizing how you feel, tap into your feelings. Be present with how you feel and think. For example, if you feel rejected, feel the feeling of being rejected and don’t criticize it. Or if you feel mad and frustrated, feel angry. Don’t add any other story or criticism. As you let go of the past story of why you feel rejected, hurt or angry, you give yourself permission to forgive and let go of the past and heal.
To heal, as you release any wounded stories, replace them with positive outcomes. What would you have liked to happen instead? Healing the mother wounding helps to restore a deep sense of self-love and self-acceptance, and it stops generational hurt from being passed on any further than you.
Forgive Mother Workshop is an opportunity to connect with your inner child and heal past hurt and anger. You’ll learn a powerful forgiveness practice to use with anyone in your life. I hope you will join us on October 23rd, Sunday, 12-4:00 pm MST via Zoom.