I love my sessions with Client B, a soul-searching, spiritual enlightened woman who is constantly discovering who she wants to be when she grows up! And, as someone who has already gone through a coaching-like program, she teaches me something every session. Today she said, “Forgiveness & release is a day-to-day process” and it gave me chills. As a former grudge-holder who is yet unable to say to certain people, “Yes, I forgive you, let’s move on & forget about it” this really spoke to me. I think that most people were instilled with the value of “forgive & forget”, but how easy is this really? It might be easy when the thing that you’re forgiving/forgetting is fairly unconsequential, but what if it’s not? What if the actions of your best friend ripped your heart out, but you want to “forgive & forget”, even if it’s years later? As you might be able to tell, this is something I’m personally going through now and am having big problems with. It might be easy to forgive, but it’s forgetting that’s the hard part. If you view this, though, as a day-to-day process, it’s easier to take that guilt that’s hanging over you out of the equation. Instead of beating yourself up with questions of why you still resent your best friend, you can acknowledge those feelings & not give yourself a guilt trip over feeling that way.

We actually spoke a lot about acknowledging our “bad” feelings today, which I feel is a common obstacle for most women today. In 2008, we’re expected to be strong, independent, responsible, nurturing, & always smiling/chipper/positive. We end up making sure that everyone around us is taken care of, usually at the expense of our own self-care. When we have a “bad” feeling come up (anger, fear, frustration, et al) we try to make it go away as fast as we can. Quick! Get rid of it before anyone sees!

But the outcome of pushing those feelings down - or of not even acknowledging them to begin with - is a permanent state of unease and falsity with a 0% chance of turning around the situation that has made you feel angry/frustrated/upset in the first place. At least if you acknowledge (I know I should find a synonym for “acknowledge”, but I just like that word so much!) that you’re in a “bad” feeling, and give it a name (”Am I angry? Frustrated? Not in control?”), and discover why you’re feeling this feeling (”My boss didn’t acknowledge my hard work”, “I hate this stupid job”, “I’ve had spinach stuck in my teeth all day”) you can then (a) allow yourself to take some time and really feel this feeling until the end of the ride or (b) allow yourself to focus on your breathing for 30 seconds so you can get past it & reflect on it. Either way, it’s going to allow you to discover what prompts these feelings so you can figure out how to circumvent it while also allowing you to be true to yourself & not bottle things up inside.

As you can tell, Client B and I really had nothing of importance to say to each other today

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Today I’m grateful for unstructured Saturdays.