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Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. I forgive you. I’ve been practicing these steps now for 12 months, each iteration more humbling than before. From the Hawaiian practice of reconciliation, these four steps - the order in which completed of less importance - are known as “Ho’oponopono” (pronounced ho-oh-pono-pono). I try it anytime an encounter, an experience doesn’t sit well with me. And when I feel calm, I try it on ones from my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood too. Some versions of this practice - what may in fact be the original - replaces the ‘you’ in "I forgive you”, with ‘myself’. I forgive you. I forgive myself. I heard recently we store pain of past experiences, not just in our thoughts, but in our bodies. Often it can show up as unexplained or random discomforts or ailments. With each rep of this practice, I find a nugget of space created in my mind and later in my body where I once held something weighted. It feels like new room is created for something better and truer. Sitting in it, with it, looking at it from both sides, and all four corners, is allowing it to slowly dissipate and be released. Soon after finishing this work, I came across an alternative perspective. That often, especially as women, we are too quick to forgive, when instead we need time to be with our pain, our discomfort, and give it room to flow. To me, this resonates as not using forgiveness as a shortcut to doing our own inner work. Of taking the time we need to notice what’s behind the pain - perhaps the insecurity it’s nudging up against, or the underlying fear that needs some air to escape. It’s in that space I find the act of forgiving myself invaluable. That I’m not too late. That the lessons take the time they take, the epiphanies appear when we’re ready. We are always perfect in time. Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. I forgive you, I forgive myself.
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