Divorce Anniversary: A Journey of Forgiveness
The greatest struggle with healing from my divorce has been the holding of trauma in the physical layers of my body. Why did the weight feel so heavy still? Memories from painful moments in my marriage would be triggered by the most unexpected things. At the peak of these moments, it felt so unfair because I was working so hard to heal. These memories would surface my emotions and tears as if the conflicts occurred just recently. For some reason, the memories were not metabolizing and they were disrupting my ability to stay connected and present in the moment - to see how far I've come. I didn't know what to do but I knew I needed to release what remained tucked away in my body.
Not coincidentally, through the loving conditions of the Universe, the very thing I needed revealed itself only once I was ready for it. My gifted spiritual sibling, inabel, who has spent decades of their own life healing, offered a unique somatic forgiveness program. As many know, forgiveness doesn't happen overnight. But letting the process just meander over decades didn't seem so appealing. I knew deeper work through my body was necessary to really forgive and let the past just be.
When I started this seven week journey, I assumed the process would focus solely on how to forgive my last partner. We started the journey with identifying one single memory, and from there, worked through a variety of tools, somatic exercises, and reflections to metabolize this memory and overtime, return it to where it belonged --- a point of time in the past, re-shelved to the archives, no longer a real or present threat to the nervous system. As difficult as it was, walking through this particular memory using this profound template for processing forgiveness revealed the most invaluable lesson:
Forgiving him would require me to forgive myself.
For months after my separation, I felt so much disgust towards my younger self. How did she let this happen? How did she forget herself? How did she give so much of herself away? How did she stay so small? How was she so dependent? The self-judgement went on and on, fueled by the quiet embarrassment and shame of being divorced so young.
I did my best to separate my present self from my past self believing the distance would inspire me somehow to never return to that version of me. I remember reading this post on Instagram. I thought to myself, ugh, I can't stand the girl I used to be, why would I thank her? I scrolled past the post immediately, unable to sit with the discomfort it surfaced.
Fast forward to the end of this somatic forgiveness program… I remembered the post and when I found it again to read, something had shifted. I could sense a real softening in my body. I had no clue that this moment would be a pivotal turning point in my relationship with self. At a deeper level, I was uniting my younger self with my present self, eventually closing the distance I had tried so hard to create between us.
As I softened with my younger self, as I acknowledged how hard she tried with what she had, as I learned how to forgive her and see that I could not have made it without her…
I began to feel an unexpected tenderness for him, for his younger self, and for the best he did with what he had. After months of holding such hardness, which was a feeling so foreign to me, I finally felt a meaningful somatic release… and the memory I worked with initially started to feel just like that, a memory, without the same emotional charge.
Forgiving oneself and others is a continuous spiritual practice. This process I learned with inabel is one I am trying to return to repeatedly as other old memories and wounds from both my marriage and family get triggered as I grow and live my life. I'm grateful for the new skills and tools and for the opportunity to heal in community with other brave humans on their own paths of forgiveness and self-love.
If you see the girl I used to be, please let her know, I am more free today because of her. Tell her I love her unconditionally. Tell her I would not be here without her.
