Unlocking Healing Through Forgiveness

Are you ready to embark on a transformative journey and unlock the healing power of forgiveness? This episode of Melanin Unicorn Podcast, inspired by Iyanla Vanzant's insightful book "Forgiveness 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything," is a beacon of light for those eager to liberate themselves from the shackles of anger, bitterness, resentment, and fear. We transverse the complex labyrinth of emotions and thoughts, unraveling the intricate connections between our thoughts, feelings, and reality. 

Moving onto the second segment, we pull the curtain back on the underrated yet vital concept of forgiveness and how its mastery can lead to personal freedom. Through embracing practices like meditation, prayer, and therapy, we can train our minds to become havens of self-love, acceptance, and positive energy. We urge you to tune in and arm yourself with the knowledge and tools you need to cultivate emotional liberation and personal growth. Be prepared to rewrite your narrative and step into a more fulfilled life.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Forgiveness
• 14:12 Moving Towards Forgiveness

Transcript

Kerry: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Melanin Unicorn Podcast, a weekly podcast that is dedicated to the upliftment of black women. I'm your host, Kerry, and thank you for tuning in for episode number three. But before we start, I would like to take this time to thank Directly Nia de Costa for bringing us a brilliant movie called the Marvels. It was refreshing to see an all-woman cast doing the damn thing. Nia DaCosta, we see you, we honor you and we salute you, queen, and keep doing your thing. And now let's start the show. Thank you for tuning into today's show. Before we start, please remember to rate, review, and follow from whichever streaming platform you're listening to this show from.

Kerry: 0:55

In episode three, I will be doing a reading from Iyanla Vanzant's book called Forgiveness 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything. Forgiveness by Iyanla Vanzant says only forgiveness can liberate minds and hearts once held captive by anger, bitterness, resentment, and fear. Forgiveness is a true path to freedom that can renew faith, build trust, and nourish the soul. So forgiveness doesn't mean agreeing with, condoning, or even liking what has happened. Forgiveness means letting go and knowing that, regardless of how challenging, frightening, or difficult an experience may seem, everything is just as it needs to be in order for you to grow and learn. When you focus on how things should be, you deny the presence and power of love, except the events of the past, while being willing to change your perspective on them. So we're going to start reading a few pages, and it is coming from part one, the practice, and it is called Why Forgive?

Kerry: 2:13

You might be asking yourself why would I want to practice forgiveness? The answer is simple practice develops skill. Skill leads to mastery. When you master the practice of forgiveness, it becomes as natural as breathing, and when you know how to forgive, you eliminate excess mental and emotional weight that keeps you stuck in repetitive situations, circumstances and experiences that are not healthy or productive. The only true way to create a more loving, productive and fulfilling life is by forgiving the past. Releasing the past restores us to the full energy of the present moment. Everything we do and experience in life is born from the energy we carry. People and experiences show up in response to the conscious and unconscious energetic invitations we issue. Many of us believe that what happens to us gives rise to the feelings we experience. The truth is it's the other way around.

Kerry: 3:20

Forgiveness addresses how we think and feel about others and ourselves, and how those thoughts manifest within our lives as energy. Every feeling has its origin and a thought, because each thought that we have creates energy. If you can remove the thought, the underlying feeling will bubble to the surface. That's why we are forgiving our thoughts throughout this process. As Michael Grant, author of the Twelve Laws of Life, reminds us, your mind controls your mood. In fact, it is safe to say that you always have some thought, mind before you feel something emotionally moved. The thought might be so fast and seemingly automatic that you don't even see it or think you are thinking it, but you are.

Kerry: 4:11

The truth is that what you think determines what you feel. It's a basic law of life. If you can tap into and identify the feeling, you will discover that there's a thought linked to it. Once you remove the feeling, the thought will also dissipate. Whether you explore the source thought or the feeling doesn't matter. What matters is if a situation, circumstance or relationship doesn't feel good, that's a sign there's someone or something you have to forgive.

Kerry: 4:46

It's all about energy. The true and pure energy of life, good and God is positive energy. In this practice, we deal with the thought because the mind is a powerful creative energy. Everything we think, do and feel begins in the mind. For this reason, we have to address the thoughts, beliefs, judgments, learnings and perceptions that we hold in our minds. When we can identify the stuff, feelings, underneath our constant thoughts and neutralize them, we will be good. Forgiveness helps to transform and eliminate the energy blockages that we hold in our minds about who we are and who others are, and the subsequent issues or upsets that grow From the thoughts, beliefs and judgments we hold. Creating a loving, healthy and fulfilling life, plus loving, healthy and fulfilling relationships, begins in the mind.

Kerry: 5:51

Many of us live in our heads. Because feelings can be frightening, it's easier to stay in our heads thinking, believing and judging, since doing so seems safer than navigating through uncomfortable feelings. I refer to folks who live like this, as neck down, dead because there's no life below the neck. They think about everything and often come across as cold, detached and unfeeling, and in many cases they are just that. The energy of a feeling doesn't die or go away because we ignore or resist it. In fact, it is the energy of the unacknowledged feeling beneath the distorted thoughts that keep us stuck. Our feelings send harmonious or disharmonious energy signals throughout our bodies. Yet if we drop our hands to our sides, sit in the feeling for a moment and just breathe. Instead of numbing out, the feeling will pass. Too often we choose to avoid feelings because they frighten us, but once we learn how to harness the energy behind our thoughts, our emotions will no longer be in control of how we feel and what we do.

Kerry: 7:02

Forgiveness is a practice that helps us to realign our thoughts and feelings under new conscious management. Think of it this way the mind is like a little puppy. A puppy will run around all over the place until we train him to do otherwise. If we don't train the puppy, he'll grow into a full grown dog that will pee on the carpet, shoe on our shoes and hump our guests. When we train our own puppy mind to sit, stay and roll over on command, our thoughts become clearer and our negative feelings become easier to identify, navigate and release. Of course, training the mind can be difficult. That's when meditation and forgiveness come into play. These two practices, meditation and forgiveness, still the puppy mind so that the energy block in our bodies can bubble up to the surface and be released. Until we learn how to meditate, we cannot clear our puppy mind thoughts, and unless we practice forgiveness, we have no way of releasing the hidden feelings attached to those thoughts.

Kerry: 8:12

Quite often, we are stuck in the memories of what we have done or not done, what others have done to us or not done for us. How we think and feel about others and ourselves can keep us stuck in a swamp of toxic emotions. More often than not, we are self-righteous about what we think and feel. We become quick to judge and slow to forgive. We believe what we believe and we stubbornly stick to it. Unfortunately, our toxic thoughts and feelings do not nurture or nourish us, nor do they make or keep us peaceful and loving. Wow, I'm going to stop there.

Kerry: 8:55

This is really an interesting passage that I just read for you, because I remember living in a state of unforgiveness for a very long time, and in my unforgiveness I thought I was right. And the truth of the matter is I was not right. What it was doing was killing me, it was depleting my life force. You know, I thought I had joy, but I really didn't, and so I was just going through life thinking I was okay, thinking, oh it's, I don't have to forgive that person or persons. Look what they did to me, look what they said to me and in my reaction to that. I became just like them, and so it took me quite a while to realize that forgiving someone isn't for them, it's for me. Forgiving someone frees me, lets me go on to live an amazing life, and that's what I always wanted, and I know that that's what you want too for your own life, and I'm here to tell you that it's possible. It is incredibly possible. You can do it. It will take time. It doesn't happen overnight, but I promise you that if you practice little by little of letting go, the forgiveness will begin to grow inside of you.

Kerry: 10:40

And for many and for many of us, therapy has to be included in that, and that is okay, because for too long, within our community, therapy wasn't an option. It was the, the narration of oh, black people don't need therapy, we don't do therapy. That's for other people. And, and because that narrative was so strong at one time, many people have suffered in their lives and, unfortunately, have died in their unforgiveness. But I don't want that for you, and I sure didn't want that for me.

Kerry: 11:24

So I challenge you, I ask you to write down those who have hurt you, the names of those who have hurt you. Write them down and next to the name right, I forgive you. Now, this isn't going to be a quick fix. This isn't going to be. Oh, I just wave make believe magic wand and it'll all go away. No, no, no. This starts the beginning of your healing journey. So, getting out a piece of paper or, if you are a journal, like I am you can begin to write down the names, all those who have hurt you. Sometimes we don't even remember who the person was that had hurt us because it happened so long ago, and that's okay if you don't remember their names, just write I forgive you, and then you take it from there. So, however, you need this journey to look for you. What is therapy? Prayer, meditation, all three, which I recommend. You will see that your life will start to become lighter, and that's what I want. That's what I want for all of us, specifically for black women, because we carry so much stuff and that we shouldn't even be carrying, and so we have to learn how to release that and let it go. So my Again, my challenge to each and every one of us is to learn how to forgive everyone and To let them go.

Kerry: 13:24

As we wind down the show, I would like to leave you with a quote from the great Nikki Giovanni. She is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator, one of the world's most well-known African-American poets. Her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings and non fiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. Miss Giovanni says I really don't think life is about the I could have been. Life is only about the I try to do. I don't mind the failure, but I can't imagine that I forgive myself if I didn't try.

Kerry: 14:12

So, as we close this episode, when Miss Giovanni says that she couldn't imagine not trying, I want you to imagine and I want you to see yourself forgiving. Forgiving, releasing, letting go. However, you need to phrase it in your mind. That's what I need you to start moving towards and, on that note, I would like to thank you for tuning in and I'm so appreciative. Show notes will be available on bus sprout. You can also follow the show on Instagram at the melanin unicorn podcast. I will see everyone again soon and, before we close out, I want you to remember that you are love, you are excellent, you are beautiful, you are well, you are safe and, most importantly, you are you. I will speak with everyone soon. Take care you.