on trauma, healing, and forgiveness

I stumbled on an old letter I wrote when I was in college today.

One thing that I love about a university environment is the curiosity that is often encouraged in a classroom setting. A space to ask questions. Let your mind wander and develop new ways of thinking about things.

In my letter, I ask a lot of questions.

I’m pondering the themes of memory, trauma, healing, and forgiveness.

It’s so wild to see me explore these things, more than 7 years ago. I still reflect on these things, but now in different ways. Less intellectual ways, for sure.

Some questions I was asking back then: 



Under what conditions for each person is forgiveness possible?

Are there ways that you can orient to traumatic memories that cause less pain?

What is healing? To remember? To forget? Something in between?

I now know that it is possible to orient to traumatic memories in a way that causes less pain.

I have experienced this firsthand in trauma therapy and energy healing, and I know now because of my psychic training how to neutralize a memory.

When you neutralize a memory, it takes the charge out of it and allows your body to store the memory of that experience in a way that will work for your body. This is something I regularly support my clients with.

Your body remembers everything that has ever happened. But when that memory gets stored with some charge or someone else’s energy in it, it gets stuck in your system, and your body cannot process it correctly.

When I was writing this letter so many years ago… I feel like forgiveness was this lofty thing out in the sky, that I really had no idea what it was.

It’s because I was approaching forgiveness from an intellectual place. Seeking to understand it with my analytical brain, instead of experiencing it as a soul intuitively.

I know now that forgiveness is an energy. A vibration. It is a vibration of s p a c e.

Forgiveness is giving myself space to feel how I feel. It is giving others space to be as they are, without seeking to change them.

Forgiveness is light blue, for me. It flows like rivers through my body. I can always be connected to it if I desire.

Forgiveness is incredibly gentle. It helps you let go of resentment and bitterness and pain. It breathes new life into your being again. Reminding you that with death, there is always new life. A tender beginning.

The conditions under which forgiveness is possible can be unique to each individual.

But forgiveness is essentially a vibrational event. A frequency you inhabit. All that is needed is your willingness to be open. To forgive. To give yourself some more space.

When I am talking about space, I think it confuses people. Because I am not talking physically. Although that can be a part of it.

I am first and foremost talking energetically. S p a c e. The way you feel inside after walking in the woods for a good long while. Cleared and cleaned out, within. Spacious, inside of yourself. Like all aspects of you have permission.

This is the kind of space I am talking about.

I have found, personally, that it works best to give yourself space first when forgiving.

So many of us are so hard on ourselves. When bad things happen, it’s incredibly common to blame ourselves. That somehow we are at fault.

Can you give yourself space to be who you were in that moment? Can you offer yourself some compassion and kindness and understanding? 

This is the essence of forgiveness.

When you forgive yourself, you will naturally be able to offer forgiveness to someone else.

Forgiving someone else does not look like speaking to them if that is not safe.

Forgiving someone else does not look like excusing behavior you are not okay with.

Forgiving someone else is giving them space, energetically, to be as they are. Even if as they are is hurtful, painful, abusive, not something you want in your life.

Forgiving someone else is saying spiritually, “I see you. You do not need to change for me.”

Forgiving someone else is setting yourself free to focus on yourself, instead of focusing on them. They are as they are. Nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can control is yourself.

When you forgive someone else, you get your energy back from them. You reclaim yourself energetically, and you come home to yourself.

If you are not ready to forgive, that is entirely okay.

I do not hold a belief that the perfect and most spiritual way to exist is to forgive. No.

You cannot rush forgiveness.

If you want it, you will have it, and it will exist on your own unique healing timeline. If you don’t want it, that is your choice and entirely okay in my view.

Again- forgiveness is s p a c e. Space to forgive and space to not forgive! ;)

One of the biggest things I’ve learned from asking myself these questions about trauma, healing, and forgiveness for many, many years is that healing is possible.

It most likely will be slower than you want it to be. But if you are open, and you desire it, and you keep taking your next step and then your next step…

You can heal and forgive yourself even in absolutely horrendous situations.

You can remember from a place of neutrality.

You can create more space inside for you.