A Step-By-Step Process For Forgiveness
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Summary: In her blog post, the author recounts her journey using Iyanla Vanzant’s book “Forgiveness: 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything”. Initially skeptical, she found the structured daily forgiveness process challenging yet transformative. Despite some religious undertones and the need for additional tapping scripts, the experience ultimately led her to profound personal healing and a new perspective on forgiveness as a path to inner peace and healing.
Iyanla Vanzant’s Book: Forgiveness: 21 Days To Forgive Everyone For Everything
Iyanla Vanzant’s book is based on a structure to follow each day for 21 days. You start by forgiving yourself on day one and then the book extends out to forgiving your body, your life, your parents, women in general, men in general, other family members and so on. It is definitely an all-encompassing, covers everything kind of book!
The process for each day consists of meditation, prayer, some beautiful passages to read, then scripting the tapping exercises (instructions are provided). Then you perform the tapping exercises until you have forgiven all of your resentments. Then, you end the practice with another meditation.
My Lived Experience Of The Book
My experience of the book was definitely mixed. Each day, you are asked to forgive yourself for what you have believed about others, rather than directly forgiving those who have hurt you. I found this really tough in the first few days. I was resentful and angry that I had to forgive myself for what I believed about my mother/father/brother/sister etc. when I felt it was those, not me, that needed forgiving. A part of me felt like I was being blamed for having somehow misunderstood my own reality.
My Review Of The Book
In total, the whole process took me forty days (including all my days of procrastination and outright avoidance!!). I found the book held me well through the process and I liked that meditation and readings were also included each day. It gave me more depth to the forgiveness process and more understanding of what was to be gained by continuing.
I am glad that I have done this work. I feel so much better from the experience. I feel lighter and less burdened. I am more at peace, more joyful and more present to myself. I feel I have gained a lot from the experience. It gave me more understanding of the responsibility I hold for my own happiness and that forgiveness is possible for me.
I have also learnt that forgiveness is a process. This book has really helped me attain forgiveness for so many old hurts and wounds. I feel lighter and more at peace, whilst still being aware that some things still haven’t shifted. In that regard, I suspect that I will need to return to this book periodically to ‘top up’ my forgiveness. I think it will be a tool I continue to use going forward in my life.
A Couple Of Caveats
My first caveat is that there are only a handful of tapping scripts provided in the book to use with the different groups of people to forgive. I found those that were provided to be extremely helpful and made the day’s forgiveness practice much easier and quicker. I would have appreciated having more of these scripts throughout the weeks.
My Learning Through This Process
I really feel transformed from having committed to Iyanla Vanzant’s ’21 Days to Forgiveness’. It has taught me how the process of forgiveness is more important for me than for the other person involved. Forgiveness is about your relationship with yourself, not about the other. But, by forgiving the other, it will always change the relationship between you both. If you change yourself, others can’t help but then change in response to you. The conditions for the very relationship have changed. But I do not think that that should be the reason for undertaking forgiveness work. I think the pain has to be sat with and your own perspective has to be heard and validated first.
I am now sitting in a new place, where I can appreciate the traumas I went through in a new light. In their own way, they have opened me up to more of life. My spirituality has definitely had a part to play in this too, though. It has enabled me to reach for the understanding that everything that has happened to me has happened with a purpose behind it. That belief then leads me to acceptance of the fact that I am enough, just as I am. I am not flawed or imperfect. I am whole and complete. The wounds I carry are part of my beauty – they open me up to more joy and beauty in the world. Having reached that place, forgiveness comes easily because I am worthy of forgiveness. Once I saw that I was worthy of forgiveness, even with my flaws and wounds, then others are also worthy of that same forgiveness too. Forgiveness is the antidote to anger, which leads to healing. Healing is where I am and where I’m heading.
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Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.
