As this column is being prepared, Anne Marie is preparing for our 10th Annual KaleidoSoul SoulCollage® 4-Day Retreat in Westfield, Massachusetts. We trust that you will take Michaela Daystar’s essay to heart (see below).

Here is a quote that I find helpful when preparing my heart to forgive:

Anne Marie Bennett is a SoulCollage® Facilitator / Trainer, published author, website goddess, and two-time cancer survivor who was mentored directly by Seena Frost. Anne Marie is a recent transplant to southern coastal Maine where she lives, laughs, and creates with her silver-haired husband and one adolescent feline. She loves exploring all the wildlands including forest and ocean near her new home. Her books about SoulCollage® are available here.

Honoring Clouds in Our Decks

60-minute SoulCollage® Zoom Workshop

with SoulCollage® Facilitator 

Chigoke Adoma from Georgia

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Time: 1pm Eastern

FR*EE for our

KaleidoSoul Kindred Spirit members.

Only $10 for non-members.

Easily Accessible from Anywhere in the World! 

Recording available if you can’t attend "live."

Visit this page for more info now.

Forgiveness is Freedom

I would like to share with you two simple truths:  

There is nothing that cannot be forgiven. 

 And there is no one undeserving of forgiveness. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu

There’s a fallacy about forgiveness that must be dispelled: that to forgive someone who’s harmed us is a gift for their benefit, which therefore stands in the way of justice. This can create the impression that to forgive is an act of weakness, capitulation in the face of harm.

In the opening chapters of The Book of Forgiveness, by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, these masters of the art assert that forgiveness is not weakness, nor a subversion of justice, not the same as forgetting, doesn’t require involvement from the other person, is not a luxury, and is certainly not easy.  

So, then, what IS forgiveness?  

Freedom.

Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound with chains of bitterness…When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberators. (p. 16)

This is exactly what I experienced through forgiveness that came in a most unexpected form: spontaneous catharsis within a dream.

My dad remarried when I was five years old, and the swiftness with which my (now former) stepmother became emotionally abusive took me and my dad by surprise. She wanted nothing to do with me, and resented my presence in the new life she was building with my dad and their two baby boys. My core wounds—forming the foundation of my greatest pains and transformations—were inflicted by this stepmother, and my dad’s capitulation to her. My whole childhood I joked that I had a Disney-level “evil stepmother,” but the lightheartedness of such jokes only served to shield me from deep and persistent abandonment wounds.

I have many SoulCollage® cards dedicated to these wounds, and my on-going healing from them. SoulCollage has been an asset in the journey of healing, as I know it is for many of you. But until I was invited to write this article on Forgiveness, I’d never made a card representing the experience of forgiveness itself.  

My experiences with forgiveness include intense effort over time and instant, spontaneous release. Forgiveness for my dad’s complacency required time and effort. Beginning when I was twelve and, in the midst of a camping trip a couple years after he and Susan divorced, all the pent-up pain and resentment exploded out of me in an epic pre-teen tantrum. That sparked years of on-going processing with my dad that continues to this day; we had another powerful conversation just this summer, which opened up some new territory. I deeply appreciate his willingness to be vulnerable and honest with me in these moments, allowing our relationship to heal and grow closer, and for both of us to grow as people.

It was appropriate to invest such effort into forgiveness with my dad because that relationship matters to me, and we have both benefited greatly from it. But Susan? For years I believed that she wasn’t worth the effort, that I would never elect to tell her about the harm she caused, nor would she ever apologize. I was trapped believing that forgiving her would be a gift to her, and that it would require her willing participation.  

So, a part of my heart remained closed and heavy, chained—as the Tutu’s stated—in bitterness and resentment.

The most miraculous form of grace I’ve ever experienced is the fact that sometimes our subconscious works through bitterness and resentment quite on its own, without the need for conscious effort. And so it was that inside the cocoon of a dream, about eight years ago, Susan came to me without a word, and opened her arms to me. Without a moment’s hesitation, my dream-self embraced her, and whispered “I forgive you” into her dream-self’s ear.  

And just like that, a lifetime of pain and resentment melted away. I woke with tears on the pillow and a lightness I had never experienced. I knew that her abuse was finally over, the last remnants of it swept from the dusty corners of my subconscious. I lay in bed laughing for a very long time.

The card that I made for my former stepmother says I am one who encircled your childhood in a toxic environment. I am one whose influence in your life is rendered clean through the bioremediation of Forgiveness.

Is there something or someone in your life that feels unforgivable? I invite you to go to your SoulCollage® deck and look for remnants of it in your cards. And when you’re ready, begin to explore your relationship with, beliefs about, and desire for forgiveness through the transformation that SoulCollage® offers.

Michaela Daystar trained as a SoulCollage® Facilitator in 2013 with Mariabruna Sirabella and Seena Frost, and has brought SoulCollage® into myriad spaces, from college classrooms to government agencies. She is trained in the Japanese origins of the system of Reiki through the International House of Reiki, and teaches all levels of Reiki at her wellness studio in Davis, California, as well as on-line. Visit Michaela at her website, HeartScapes.