Forgiveness was a life changer for me, and there are no truer words.
Hello everyone, I’m back. Hopefully you saw the last video that I recorded, which was the one that I did with Gile the Great. And as I said earlier on Facebook and Instagram, it was really a pleasure to meet her, because she is an amazing person, and also she’s someone that’s really out there doing the work, helping people to find healing in their lives. She works with both men and women and does some really amazing, amazing things. So, like most of us, if you are looking for healing, which would be the reason that you are even watching this video, you can look out, particularly if you live in the Atlanta area, you can check out Gile the Great.
So today, what I want to talk about more specifically is forgiveness. And it’s not an easy subject, because we all have different ideas. It’s sort of like an old timey concept that, forgive, it’s in the Bible and all those kinds of things. And so we think about it as something very like an old timey religion kind of thing, but it’s really not.
I was very churchified
And in many cases that old timey religion is really what we need. And so I grew up in — if you read the book, and hopefully you’ll get it if you haven’t already, but in the book I refer to myself being very churchified. So I was a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I went to a Catholic school. I went to a Protestant Bible-based school. I had a broad range of experiences when it came to religion.
And despite that fact, it was never clear to me what the role of forgiveness was in my life. Unfortunately, for most of us, we don’t really get to the place where we look into certain things until we have excessive, let’s say, baggage, excessive damage, excessive trauma. So eventually I came to a place in my life where I really wanted answers. I wanted to know what was going on.
And if you read the book, and if you haven’t yet, please get it. It’s available on Amazon, will be available back on Amazon shortly. It’s currently out of stock, but it’s For the Love of My Father, and it should be back by next week.
But I got to the place where I knew there were a lot of things that were not right. A lot of challenges, repeated challenges. And I wanted to find out what the issues were. And then once you find out — because you can go to therapy and they can tell you what your issues are, but then the next step is, how do you address it? And so I went through all of those paces, and all those stories are in the book, all the different processes to find out what the issues were. And then ultimately I was fortunate enough to have a few books and a few spiritual teachers that really focused in on the subject of forgiveness.
And as I said in one of the posts that I’ve made this week on Facebook and Instagram — you can find me on Facebook as author Olivia S. Benson — there are quotes from the book that I post every week, and it’s the same on Instagram. And one of them was a very simple quote, and it said, forgiveness was a life changer for me. And there are no truer words, because eventually I came to know forgiveness as not just some old timey thing that people talk about, you know, how many times should you forgive, seventy times seven, and things that are written in the Bible, but actually something that can be applicable in our lives today.
The only person that can really heal you is really you
And it’s not just like, I forgive you, and that’s it. What we have come to know eventually is that there are many times, and in our particular case and in my particular case, I’m talking about forgiveness related to issues related to my relationship with my dad. And so I’m talking about forgiveness in that context, but it really applies across the board. It’s no different for any other issue. But if we’re just focusing in on daddy issues, which is what the book is about and what this discussion is about, you get to a particular point where you realize that there have been issues and there have been damages that occur as a result of a fractured relationship with your father, or no relationship with your father.
And then the real question is, how are we going to fix this? How am I going to fix it? Because there’s one thing that I am clear about. And many times when I talk about these things, people say, well, he’s got to make it up to me, or he’s got to do this, or whatever the story might be, that we’re asking that this person make it right, this absent daddy, or this not so good daddy, or whatever the case might be, that you want him to make it right. Well, the thing is, what if he can’t make it right? What if he’s not alive, whatever the case might be? How do you handle it to get yourself healed?
And one of the interesting things about that is that even if your father decided that he was going to make it right, and you have suffered trauma, damages, whatever, whatever he might do could help you. But the only person that can really heal you is really you. It’s only you that can do the work to make yourself whole. A father who comes forward and says, you know what, I was wrong, I didn’t do what I was supposed to, how can I make it up, and actually follows through and makes it up, can be great. But if that doesn’t happen, and even if it happens, you still have to do the work. You still have to go inside. He can’t go inside and figure out what needs to be done for you. He can help, he can support, he can aid, but it still comes right back to you.
I was carrying a load below deck
And that’s why forgiveness is such an important thing. Because I describe it in the book as, for example, we all come into the world, we’re pure balls of love and energy. And then we suffer experiences, traumas, and all those experiences are sort of piled on top of this pure being that we are. And because those energies or those experiences are not positive experiences, they sort of become blankets that block the light that’s naturally within us. And so eventually, we get to the point where we’re burdened.
I tell a story in the book, or given experience, where frequently in my life, I felt tired and overburdened, and I would do what I needed to do, and always have. But it was like I was carrying a load. And at the end of each day, as a mom and a working woman, and all the other responsibilities that I had, at the end of each day, I was exhausted beyond belief. Because without my knowing it, I was carrying this load of stuff, what I call below deck, a lot of baggage that I’d been dragging along with me for many, many years without knowing.
So eventually, I was fortunate. I had a spiritual teacher, the Reverend Mary Tompkins. I came to know Edwene Gaines, who is also a spiritual teacher. And I also — I didn’t meet her personally, but I got her book, my favorite of her books, which is You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. And then I came to be able to put a lot of different things together. And I realized that there was a way that I could lift the burden, the trauma, the negative energies that had sort of been deposited over my essential self, during the course of my childhood, during the course of my life. And I began to understand and to practice.
Talk is cheap
And that’s another important thing. We could talk about all of this from now to the end of time. Talk is cheap. The thing is that you have to really desire to be healed, and you have to be willing to do the work to be healed. It’s literal work. And I think I showed you in the last video one of my cups that says — it’s available on the website — I’m willing to do the work to be whole.
Today, I’m showing you a different cup. This one says, your greatest test will be how you handle the people who mishandled you, which I don’t know if you can see it well, but it’s on the website. Your greatest test will be how you handle the people who mishandled you, which of course goes back to forgiveness.
Your greatest test will be how you handle the people who mishandled you
Because there are a lot of people for all of us. And most importantly, for those of us who’ve had major issues with our dads, I cannot tell you how many women I know that are angry and resentful towards their father because of what he did not do in their life, because of his absence, because he was a bad father. There’s a lot of anger and resentment, and that leads to a lot of complications in our lives if it’s not addressed.
And this statement, which is in the book as well, your greatest test will be how you handle the people who mishandled you, comes right back. Because there will come a point, or there may come a point, where you have an opportunity to interact with your father. And if you do your forgiveness work, you will be able to handle him in a much different way than he probably handled you.
Forgiveness writing
But eventually, the long and the short of it is that I realized that I had to do some specific work in order to be able to relieve the burdens and the pressures of the trauma from the different experiences I had. And there was, from Edwene Gaines, she talked about forgiveness writing. I learned that many, many, many years ago. And I do discuss it in the book, and it was something that made a difference in my life. Literally, the writing of certain things — and I go into it in more detail in the book — the writing and the repeated writing is believed to cause an imprint on the subconscious mind. And you can relieve the subconscious programming that you have by making statements of forgiveness.
You can find out more about it in the book, and you can do your own research. Many of the things that I talk about are things that work for me, and I’m sharing them with you because I want you to know what worked for me. But everything doesn’t work for everyone. You have to do your research. You could read what worked for me and then find out, well, that doesn’t exactly work for me. But I want this healing so bad that I’m willing to go do some other research. I’m willing to look into other things. Because one thing there is for sure, that there’s a way for you to be relieved, that there’s a way for you to be healed, that there’s a way to forgiveness.
And I mention often in the book that eventually I learned that sometimes I think, oh, I already forgave this person, and then it would come back up again, and something else would come back. And eventually, I learned that the most important thing was that I needed to be willing to forgive. If I was willing, sooner or later, and continued in the willingness to learn how and what to do, that sooner or later, the information would come to me, and then I’d be able to know what to do next.
Another thing that was very helpful, which I speak about in the book, is tapping, which is basically a way of releasing energy from the body. And in many cases, many of us have negative energies that have been stored as a result of our experiences, and tapping is one of those methods, mechanisms, that helps to release them.
I can’t tell you how, as a result of all the different processes at different times — writing, tapping, studying, researching to find mechanisms, spiritual practice. I believe that you have to find your spiritual path. All of this works in conjunction with you finding your spiritual path, because once you understand that, as I call it in the book, God, energy, force, spirit did not create us for perpetual, eternal, unresolvable suffering. If you came in, and you had this experience, and you were a fatherless girl, or you had an absent father, or you had a father who wasn’t — maybe he was present, but he wasn’t really present — whatever the story is, you don’t have to suffer these experiences and sit in it for the rest of your life.
The universe always has a solution. In fact, the solution to every problem is buried within the situation itself. It’s right in there. It’s born out of the very same situation.
I felt unburdened, I felt lighter
Eventually, what happened was, I could feel relief. This is not all enstimatic. I’ve never suggested anywhere that any of this is easy. It takes time. It takes devotion. It takes willingness to sit down and say, I really want to be whole. I really want to do my healing work. I know that I can be healed. I can be relieved of the things that are burdening me with regards to my relationship with my father, and for that matter, any other issue that might be weighing you down.
You’re willing to sit, and you’re willing to spend the time doing the forgiveness work. You’re willing to get to know yourself as a spiritual being, and you’re willing to do all the things that go along — meditation, prayer, everything that goes along with this. You’re willing to do it because you’re really seeking your wholeness.
On that path, eventually, I began to feel relief. I tapped often for resentment, because even though I didn’t feel consciously that I was resentful, because of my personality, I knew that there must have been, and some of the stories that I tell about things that happen show that there was some level of resentment, even though I didn’t recognize it.
But eventually, as I did the work, I felt unburdened. I felt lighter. My energy changed. I wasn’t exhausted at the end of every day, and I had boundless energy, the same energy that allows me to do everything that I do every day. And this is why I do this, because I want people to know that you can come into the world, you can have these kinds of experience — absent father, no father, no mother, whatever the story might have been. You can have this experience. You can be born into this experience, and there is a way for you to be healed, and for you to be whole, and for you to reach your absolute full potential.
I would like you to consider getting the book. It is on Amazon. They have one copy now, not the paperback, the hardcover right now, but the paperbacks will be back shortly. And then please visit my website. I have a variety of cups, and wine mugs, and t-shirts, and everything. And this one I really love, but like you guys know, I always love them all. And this one is, Your Greatest Test Will Be How You Handle People Who Mishandled You. And God knows that many of us have people who’ve mishandled us.