This is for the ones who have experienced deep betrayal and loss and feel ready to reclaim the beauty of their story.
I'll admit it. Mother's Day was hard this year.
It isn't always… normally the day passes by without a thought for my past or the mother I haven't spoken to in six years.
This year was different… because I'd just realized (again) how much the experience of being controlled and manipulated by my living example of the feminine impacted my life. Seeing new ways I am still controlling my own patterns and behaviors… because control feels safe.
It's an incredibly humbling thing to have to negotiate slowly with yourself…
To coax your own wounded child out of the cage you put her in. To sit in the stillness so she knows it's safe and listen.
To make micro-changes so she doesn't get spooked. I'm a Leo Sun with a Sag Moon - which in astrology speak equates to lots of fire, passion and energy – I LOVE to move fast and make shit happen.
But that isn't what is required here, and it's teaching me deeply. One step at a time, dear.
My Experience of Motherhood
You see, my mother was the farthest thing from a safe space for me as a child, and yet, she somehow convinced me she was my hero. My savior. The only one in this world who would be there for me.
The narcissistic conditioning began when I was an infant as she used me like a weapon to take revenge on my father. They divorced when I was less than a year old…
I was five when she made me tell him he wasn’t my father and he was “from the devil.”
I was nine when she calmly informed me that if I didn’t push him away for good on the upcoming visit, I wasn’t allowed to come home. It worked. I did what I was told, and he left. But the threats and abuse continued. I lived on the edge of being thrown out for the rest of my childhood. And these are the gentlest parts of my story with my mother. Some things I’m not quite ready to blast out there, but I hope you can feel the essence of the wound.
Those early imprints taught me something about myself…
"I exist to be used. For someone else's purpose."
Even her hugs and snuggles felt like they were for her. Not to nourish my heart and soul, but her own. It's hard to describe except to say it was energetic.
I remember the first time a therapist told me I'd experienced chronic neglect.
I was dumbfounded.
My mother was the living example of a helicopter parent… Keeping me in a gilded cage as her show piece, but the neglect was pernicious. Because it was all about her, I was starving slowly and didn't know it. Love and affection were dangled as prizes and withdrawn on a whim… creating a starvation in my Soul for emotional connection that made me as dependent on her as a heroin addict is on their dealer.
Years later, when my sister took her life, I would inflict this starvation on myself in a misguided attempt to take back the reins of my own life. It backfired and two decades later, I'm still learning how to allow Love to live in my heart from a place of safety. With the knowing that it doesn't have to be used against me as a weapon the way it once was…
So, yeah, all of this was coming up on Mother's Day. I found myself feeling uneasy. Not angry at my mother… just unsettled. Emotions swirling with no face or name. Reflecting on the journey I've taken so far and seeing the road I still need to travel. I even posted a note for the others who may be feeling what I was this day… just "off."
“Here's a note for the ones who never had a mother…
Or had one but still raised themselves…
Or felt the sting of a mother's love turned dangerous…
I see you. 🩵”
Some of the responses I received brought up forgiveness… which caused me to pause and reflect. Had I forgiven her? Really. The answer was yes. I know what it's like to feel a ripple of disgust and anger at the mere thought of someone or their actions. I'm not there anymore.
Still, I created a ceremony for myself that night with my mother's Higher Self. I called her in and talked to her. I forgave her again. I told her I loved her. I softened my heart towards her another layer. I felt the comfort she would like to have given me if she wasn't so broken. It was profound.
In the few days since then, I've found myself “mysteriously” having conversations with children who have been deeply wounded by their mothers on the topic of forgiveness. Life is funny that way.
The concern I find most who have been deeply betrayed struggle with when forgiveness is raised is the feeling of danger.
“If I let it go this time, it’s basically telling the Universe to hit me again with the same bat.”
Something along those lines… The instinct is to hold onto the pain, the torment, because some part of you is terrified that if you ever let go of the memory, you’ll fall into the same trap. You’ll be sliced with the same sword that originally wounded you.
But here’s the thing…
Forgiveness is the mystical force that FREES you from the energy of the original wound. It severs the tie and lets you experience life in technicolor once again… or maybe for the first time.
Forgiveness is often confused with reconciliation… or a wiping out of the healthy boundaries you've established in a relationship that was otherwise toxic. The Christian perspective of "turn the other cheek" is stamped in our consciousness, but I'd like to propose that forgiveness isn't an action.
It's energetic more than behavioral. A deep settling in your bones, in your soul. Knowing your life has been perfect – even the trauma, the abuse and the things you think you would change. But… would you?
Redefining Forgiveness
I remember the first truly impactful moment of forgiveness I had with my mother.
I was sitting in a dark cairn on Knocknashee mountain in County Sligo, Ireland. I'd arrived in Ireland four days earlier and almost immediately began receiving messages that I was there to release forgiveness up my mother's bloodline. I wasn't sure how to do that and asked one of the mystical women I'd met on my journey for advice. Ironically, she has the same name as my mother.
She knew I was going to Knocknashee, a sacred mountain in County Sligo, so she told me to go inside Cairn C and perform a ceremony with my mother's Higher Self (this is where I learned how to do what I did the other night.) When I asked how, she just smiled and said, "You'll know what to do." Somehow, I believed her.
I climbed Knocknashee like a pilgrim on a journey… slow, intentional, with reverence. When I arrived at Cairn C, I paused… I was about to climb into a dark tomb. My heart pounded, but I knew it was the next right thing. So, I got on my knees and tunneled my way in.
The cairn is split into three sections, and I sat in the center. Immediately, I felt the presence of other worldly beings with me, supporting me. I called in my mother's Higher Self and waited until I felt the shift in the energy around me. I could sense her more than I could see her. And I just let my heart pour out. Let the words flow…
This is where the magic happened.
Rather than hitting her with a laundry list of complaints or ways she'd wronged me, I found myself simply saying:
"I forgive you. I see you."
As the words spilled from my lips, I started crying. But not for myself or my own pain. No, for the first time since leaving my mother seven years earlier, I was crying tears for her pain. I could feel it. It was so deep… torrential and all-consuming.
The words flowed as though coming from an unknown source…
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry life was so hard for you. And I do forgive you. But I can't carry your pain anymore. It's yours and I'm giving it back to you. Not because I'm angry, but because only you can heal it. I love you."
Slowly, the force of emotion subsided, and I came back to myself – for what just happened truly felt beyond me. The crying stopped and I held myself as I felt my mother's spirit leave.
I took a small stone from the cairn and laid it as an offering on the land as I left…
That day was the beginning of a softening in my heart, in my experience of life, in my relationship with my mother. Even though I still don't talk to her (she just isn't safe), I now see her…
It would take two more years, though, to fully work through the process of forgiveness.
Two years of deeply submerging myself in a multitude of healing techniques and experiences – most of which were simply creating the safe space for me to feel emotions I'd never let myself feel. That's probably a separate article, but I'll touch on it…
You can't bypass feeling your emotions and skip to forgiveness.
Your body, soul and spirit don't work that way.
Yes, a lot of healing from trauma has to do with mindset shifts, but you can't ignore the emotional component. Your body has stored all that E-motion (energy in motion) and it must be released to make space for the new life you are creating. This is why it's dangerous to dole out platitudes like "you just need to forgive." It encourages spiritual by-passing and pushes the person to be somewhere they aren't. In my experience, you can't rush grief and you can't dry up the well of anger, sadness, torment and unease that goes with trauma and abuse. They must be played out and allowed to flow… because the very thing that is "poisoning the well" is the pent-up emotion that wasn't expressed when the event first occurred.
In truth, this is a huge part of forgiveness.
Taking full responsibility for your emotions, your experience, the symptoms of trauma and everything else in your life. It's a big, bold, power move. Forgiveness isn't wimpy or even gentle. It's a tidal wave that wipes out your karmic past and future at the same time.
This is when things began to shift for me. When instead of fighting my past or trying to "make it right" in my head, I simply let the reality of my situation be what it is.
🪽 Yes, I have C-PTSD symptoms and navigate the world differently than many.
🪽 Yes, I experienced some things no one ever "should" and haven't experienced many rites of passage others take for granted.
🪽 Yes, I'm still working through the effects of trauma and I'm not sure when that will end.
And yet.
There came a moment in my life when I stopped wrestling with all these things, and I simply allowed them to BE. I embraced who I am and the story that brought me here.
I allowed the feeling of being a victim to drain from my insides as I sobbed the tears of what felt like hundreds of years of women who had their power taken away.
I held myself in the moments no one would ever see.
I let myself FEEL everything without a story or blaming anyone – even my mother.
Especially my mother.
In truth, she is simply one of the long line of women in my ancestry who had her power taken and passed down the wound.
But it stops with me.
Because I'm willing to OWN it.
To take full responsibility for the wound, let it ripple through me and be healed as it's held. I won't push it away like my mother and my mother's mother. It's mine. No one inflicted it on me. As mind-boggling as that may sound, it's only from that place that I can fully release the feeling of being a victim to life and allow it to take on a more hopeful hue. It's from that place I can imagine a brighter future because I know I can intentionally build one. I don't resent my life anymore… and I did for 42 years.
Now, I see the perfection of life… exactly as it has been and will be. I trust my Soul and my Higher Self and know that I chose the circumstances that would shape me into the human I came to BE.
Honestly… I love my story now.
I love the fact that it built strength and resilience in me. The courage it produced. The lessons I've been able to intentionally learn about love, compassion and forgiveness… things that some take for granted are the dearest treasures to me because I've experienced the total opposite.
My story has cultivated deep gratitude in my daily experience for the big and little things… how could I ever wish it was different?
Forgiveness Paves the Road to Freedom
One of the greatest side effects of forgiveness for me has been the freedom to change. To shift. To rewire my experience of life.
As long as I'm holding onto the past and some misbegotten right to resent my experience, I'm tethered to the energy that created the very events that hurt me so deeply. Which means I keep repeating them. Either all by myself or by calling in other people to help me reproduce them… which is what I experienced for the longest time.
I found myself trapped in the same dynamic with women. Being used as an emotional crutch. Manipulated and taken from in big and small ways. Not all of them super narcissistic and nothing nearly as dangerous as my mother, but it was clear there was still a hook in my soul. Over and over, it repeated until, finally, last year, I found myself in yet another one of these relationships…
This time, instead of walking away and hoping they didn't follow me, I turned around, faced them and spoke my truth. I said, “No.” In love. With compassion. And complete clarity.
All while being incredibly grateful she was bringing this experience into my life once again so I could rewire my experience and stop the cycle. She taught me to create boundaries with Love. It's not an easy balance to strike, but when you go through the same thing enough times you're willing to do anything to cut yourself loose.
And I did.
I feel it in my bones.
I won't repeat the cycle because I took my power back without running away. I was able to hold her without anger or frustration and simply choose myself.
Now I'm free for life to unfold in a different way.
As I said at the beginning, I'm still working on some areas of my life – like the nourishment factor – but even that is softening with gentle attention. I can feel the shift in the simple things… allowing myself to be present and daring to believe I don't have to be on high alert all the time.
Simply recognizing when I am withholding from myself or controlling and allowing the softening.
This, too, is forgiveness.
No more bitching and moaning about "having" to go through this process with myself but seeing it as the greatest honor. I get to show up for myself in this way and that feels like a gift not everyone gets to experience.
I must love myself unconditionally just to be able to live in my own skin. And I wouldn't change a thing.
This is forgiveness.
It releases me from the haunting scars of my past AND it releases my mother from the effects of her actions. It ripples back to her and all the women in my lineage while also rushing forward to the generations that will follow me…
Forgiveness stands tall at the crossroads of life and says, "It doesn't matter who started it or who did what to whom, it stops here. It is finished."
Perhaps this is what Jesus truly accomplished on the cross with his final statement. A sweeping act of forgiveness that would show us all how it's done. Because in that one utterance, he refused to carry on the cycle of domination, control and war. He liberated himself and all involved.
Simply put, forgiveness gives us the freedom to write a new story. To pave a different path. To behold the world in a different lens and allow anything to be possible. And when we see life from this place, everything is possible.
On a broader scale, this is how we navigate the turbulent events we find ourselves in globally. As we learn to navigate forgiveness in our personal lives, our hard edges soften, and we begin to trust life again.
Because we've seen the perfection of all things in our own experience, we can begin to fathom that even that which appears to be full of nothing but despair could on some higher plane serve a purpose.
In the Gene Keys, Richard Rudd says this about forgiveness:
"It is like a kind of cosmic warmth that melts the borders and boundaries within the world of form. Forgiveness allows the Truth in all forms to be seen." — Richard Rudd
And when we see the Truth in all forms – in all people, no matter how they present themselves, the way I saw and felt my mother's true Self the other night, we will release Forgiveness in our world. It will rush back in time and change the future. Change everything we think we know.
So, I'd like to end today with an invitation…
Allow the waves of Forgiveness to swell in your heart. Welcome them. Whether it means forgiving someone who harmed you or forgiving yourself for "letting" it happen. Or forgiving someone across the world you don't even know for an act of atrocity. Begin to embrace life for exactly what is right now.
Trust me, Forgiveness is strong enough to make it right. To set the broken bones. Heal the raw edges and open wounds. Bring peace and softening to spaces that were once hard and hypervigilant.
It will take time, patience, and it's a process. But it's completely worth the effort. This is how we change the world… one heart at a time.
From my heart to yours,
Kyra 🌺
P.S. This one was vulnerable for me, so I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What impacted you the most? I'm also so open to hear other opinions and thoughts about forgiveness. What does it mean to you?
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