What do you need to forgive yourself for? Write yourself a note or letter to forgive yourself and release all the guilt you feel for every bridge you've burned, every bad decision you think you've made - any and every thing. This is a time to be unconditional with yourself. Forgive. Love. Move forward with more compassion for yourself and others.
"Renée, I forgive you. I forgive you for pushing yourself too hard in high school and college, to the detriment of some of the most important relationships in your life. I forgive you for not being perfect and not being able to do it all. I forgive you for swearing, judging, withholding. I forgive you for gaining a ton of weight in the past several years. I forgive you for not always being the sort of friend/daughter you aim to be. I forgive you for being fallible, human, weak. I forgive you for not working as hard as you used to. I forgive you for thinking too hard and caring too much. May the compassion I feel for you in this moment remain and be extended to others."
This exercise got me thinking about a Dalai Lama book I read years ago, called "How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships." In it, His Holiness outlines an interesting theory: if you allow yourself to entertain the idea of endless reincarnation cycles for a moment, it stands to reason that other people, even those we cannot stand in this lifetime, have been friends or even our mothers in past lifetimes. He then encourages the reader to meditate on a mother's love and sacrifice, both that of our current mother and of past mothers. The next step is to return the goodness these people rendered to us, no matter how we feel about them in our current life/relationship. Powerful and fascinating stuff.
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