How to Forgive (Without Compromising Your Boundaries)

My cousin passed away a few months ago (in June 2017) when I was in South Africa and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness and boundaries.

A few weeks ago I did the #MoneyMagic meditation on memories about money and had a past life memory.

It’s a memory I’ve had many times before in my past life regression sessions. 

In the memory I saw my mother kill me.

She was a soldier in that life, I was the wife of a man who was plotting treason, when the soldiers came looking for the man they found me and killed me. 

My sister was my son in that lifetime and I hid him (my son) in the shed so he could be safe.

In the meditation I flashed to this memory and saw myself make a vow to avenge my murder.

This was a light bulb moment for me because I finally understood why I've been obsessed with vengeance since the age of 4.

The first time I ever flashed to this memory, a few years ago, I kept going back and forth between that past life memory and this life time.

I started to understand that my mom gave birth to my sister and I as a debt - she took my life so she had to give a life.

She left my sister without a mom in that lifetime so she had to be a mother to her in this lifetime.

I then did the akashic records meditations in the Creating #MoneyMagic course to clear this vow to avenge my soul and suddenly my inner child feels more forgiving and at peace.

It feels like I'm done obsessing about my relationship with my mom, which is actually going great now (I spent a whole month in her presence and we didn’t fight once).

Now all I want is to focus more on my financial vision and make that a reality.

Forgiveness is a solo task and we can choose what happens afterwards

My mom recently told my family that having me argue with her rattled her because I'm usually the most chilled out person in her space and I never fight with her.

So I shared some of this work and insights with her and based on her behaviour on this recent visit, I can see she’s trying and I appreciate that very much.

I’ve also been on a journey of forgiveness with my mom’s family and my cousin, the one I blogged about a few weeks ago. The same one my mom had to get a restraining order against. He's the one that passed on.

In the last few weeks as I've been visiting him in hospital and seeing him in my dreams I learned that we can forgive someone, set boundaries and choose how much of our lives we want to share with them.

It took me a long time to forgive my mom's family because I thought forgiving meant allowing people back into my life.

I believed forgiving, moving on and healing my pain meant that people could deny the crazy they’d brought into my life.

I needed this part of my history validated and acknowledged.

If I was emotionally healthy then no one would believe that I’d been hurt before. I needed to remember that hurt so I could keep my boundaries in place.

I didn't know I could have forgive and have boundaries because I needed to be a victim.

In my mind, choosing not to forgive was a way to protect myself, but the truth is: not forgiving can cause more harm than good.

We're not victims; we have personal power, which means we have the ability to say who we want in our lives.

We really do forgive for ourselves - to set ourselves free to stop dwelling in the past, focus on the present moment and the future.

And part of forgiveness is about understanding your boundaries.

How is your refusal to forgive protecting you?

What is this refusal to forgive holding you back in your life?

Let me know what you think in the comments section below!