Compassion & Heart: Learning the Power of Forgiveness
Born from a desire to cultivate more compassion in my life & respond from the heart place as I learn how to fully love and accept myself, this blog series is intended to be a space to share what I’m learning along the way.
** Please note this content may be triggering to those who have experienced sexual violence and mental health struggles.**
Two weeks ago, I woke up from a dream about the woman who sexually abused me around that time four years ago. For the past three years, in the middle of August, I’ve been triggered by something that reminds me of that event, but this year it was different.
In my dream, when I saw her, I felt the love return and fill my body from my heart up through my face, and I smiled like I used to smile at her. And, she smiled at me like she used to as I approached her in a crowded theater. My imagination had aged her to the 55 she is today, which surprised me when I got closer.
“I forgive you,” she said. I said, “I forgive you, too, for everything—all of the lies, narcissism, pain, betrayal and the two years of sexual abuse.”
“That’s just your story,” she said, and we argued back and forth also like we used to do. I could feel the anger rising in me, and that’s when I woke up. But when I woke, it was the love and forgiveness that stayed with me throughout the day, the weekend, and these last two weeks.
Even though it was a dream, I was finally able to forgive myself, and from the time I woke up, I’ve felt a love for myself that is real and tangible. I said, “I love you, Kelsay,” and the power of those words whispered softly to myself in my bedroom as I made the bed in the afternoon light changed something deep inside of me.
Me on the streets of Walnut Creek, California around 2015
Me currently in my home office in San Anselmo, California, August 2020
Since that moment, I am in touch with my own self-love and self-worth in a way I didn’t think was possible before. I look at the person I was when I was 31 with compassion and love. I am able to look at a picture of her taken by the woman she loved in which she’s wearing a flower that woman had just picked up from the sidewalk and given to her. I can see the beauty there, and that love showing in her smile, even though her eyes are hidden. I can see the darkness too. Now, I see my own darkness, not just because I was dying my hair black at the time, but because of what I didn’t believe I deserved, which was everything I wanted. I also see the ways I didn’t trust myself, my own body leaning backwards, hands and eyes hiding what I knew because I wanted it all to be different than what and how it was.
After the deep work I’ve done this past year in The Academy for Soul-based Coaching and the Tamalpa Institute Life/Art Process, I now know I deserve everything I want, and I’m resting in a different place. All of the work I’ve been doing with my therapists the past five years is here right now inside of me, and I can touch it. I am transformed from the inside out, and the outside in. I am strong and soft. I trust myself, my intuition, and most importantly, my own knowing that I am loved, I have always been loved, and I deserve it all!
I wanted to share this story because the personal transformations I’ve experienced and witnessed through the healing arts can be so life-changing. It’s been a lot of hard work, and there have been so many moments of doubts. And, I know from experience progress is not linear. But, in this moment, I am experiencing a presence of heart I didn’t believe I would ever feel, and I have learned it is possible to forgive and be strong, to find my own sense of worthiness and power by holding the parts of myself I was ashamed of with compassion, and in that holding, I’ve found true love for myself.
