We spend a great amount of time discussing forgiving others. We analyze their mistakes, ruminate over our wounds, and work through the hard labor of releasing anger. But there is a far greater, and overlooked, forgiveness that comes before it: the forgiveness we owe to ourselves.
If you were to re-read your life, or rather chapters that ended in heartache or confusion, you would feel a pang of something bitter. Not just hurt from what was done to you it’s a subtle, incessant shame for having stuck around. For having been through it.
Let that go.
Forgive Yourself for Being Where You Were Treated Incorrectly.
Your world does not have to be cruel in order to be wrong for you. It may have been a job that smothered your flame, a social circle that belittled you, or a family life where you were an afterthought. You knew, somewhere, that you were not being respected, noticed, or valued. And still, you stayed. Maybe out of loyalty, maybe out of fear, or maybe because you had vowed that you did not deserve anything better.
Forgive yourself. You weren’t weak to stay; you were hopeful. You wished for better. You wished you were wrong. You wished that your patience would be rewarded one day. Forgive yourself for wishing. It’s a testament to your capacity to commit, not to your foolishness. You picked up the lesson that not every space deserves your energy and now you can move on from that chapter with compassion for the individual who was just trying their best to survive it.
Forgive Yourself for Watering Dead Friendships.
Remember that friend you kept shouting out to, the one you excused, the one you gave your energy to receiving barely a drip in return. You watered that friendship faithfully, long after the roots were dead.
Forgive yourself for that devotion. You were keeping up with a memory of what was, and that is a gentle, loving thing to do. You weren’t stupid; you were committed to upholding the value of what friendship actually is. Forgive yourself for not catching on earlier that certain friendships are a season. Their loss doesn’t diminish their beauty, and your struggle to keep them only indicates your profound capacity to care. Now you realize your water is precious. Preserve it for flowers that will bloom again on your behalf.
Forgive Yourself for Losing Yourself in the Process of Loving Someone Else.
It’s likely the most common, and most painful, regret. You bent, you conformed, you compromised, you sacrificed your own interests, opinions, and sometimes even your goals to fit into someone else’s. You thought that was love. And then you looked into the mirror and barely recognized the person staring back at you.
Forgive yourself. Love is a sweeping force, and the urge to merge and accommodate is a human instinct. You didn’t lose yourself; you were trying to build a bridge. Forgive yourself for what you left behind, and see it not as loss, but as a task of rediscovery. That self is still present, waiting for you to turn that same loving intention inward. You now have the precious knowledge of what you will never again give up.
A Gentle Shield: Tempt Your Expectations of Others.
The one thread that runs through all this pain? Expectation. We expect others to treat us the way we treat them. We expect reciprocity, honesty, and plain respect. It’s a bare minimum, but the hard fact is, you can’t control anyone’s behavior but your own.
It isn’t cynicism or building walls. It’s building a soft shield. It’s entering into situations with hope, but without a hard prescription of how it’s going to come back to you.
Don’t limit your expectations, limit your love. You can give big, you can be kind and open-hearted and not put something specific on how it has to come back. This isn’t for them, this is for you. It is the most powerful act of self-preservation. When you release the weight of expectation, you protect your feelings from hurt by outcomes outside your control. You get to appreciate the good for itself, and not be disheartened when it doesn’t meet fantasy.
Your past self was doing the best they could with the tools and knowledge they had at the time. They weren’t a fool; they were a student. Forgive them. Thank them for the lessons. And then, armed with that hard-won wisdom, promise to treat your present and future self with the fierce kindness they always deserved.
Be gentle with yourself. You’re learning. You’re healing. You’re coming home to you.
Thee Juju Aura 