Aloha LOVE Tribe,
I am trying a new experiment. Check it out.
I LOVE tech and AI and anything that can synthesize data points and help me become a better version of myself more efficiently and effectively.
This experiment does not remove or replace the absolute need for proof of work via testing assumptions through experiential learning.
I am going through some very intense (like gutwrenching buckle up buttercup WTF intense) challenges as a Mom, woman, friend, lover, and human and had a deep conversation over Pad Thai with a very special person in my life yesterday about parental forgiveness, shame, and LOVE.
This person has known me for decades and probably knows me, my history and my family more than almost anyone yet still has limited compassionate understanding of my internal operating system and what is like to live in my skin.
NO ONE can ever understand how others operate.
No matter how many books, podcasts, courses, degrees, hours of therapy, doses of psychedelics, expert status blah blah - no human can fully understand another and to claim so is BS and dangerous to human connection and peace.
So - I am doing a blended post with this experiment with writing and video because I seem to flow better when just talking and I hope it helps you along your journey of self-love, self-forgiveness, self-discovery, and compassion and empathy.
BELOW = PERPLEXITY
The Journey to Forgiving Our Parents: A Path to Personal Healing
The complex journey of forgiving our parents stands as one of life's most profound challenges and opportunities for growth. As adults, we come to realize that our parents were simply humans trying to raise other humans, carrying their own wounds and limitations.
Understanding Parental Forgiveness
Forgiveness of our parents isn't about excusing harmful behavior or pretending everything was perfect. Rather, it's about releasing ourselves from the burden of resentment and creating space for healing[1]. This internal process allows us to move forward while acknowledging both the pain and the humanity in our shared story.
The Psychology of Parent-Child Wounds
The Impact of Early Experiences
Our childhood experiences with our parents form the foundation of how we relate to others throughout our lives. Research shows that parental acceptance in childhood significantly influences our ability to forgive as adults[4]. When we experience rejection or hurt from our parents, these wounds can continue to affect us well into adulthood, influencing our relationships and emotional well-being.
Breaking Generational Patterns
"Forgiveness is the key to resolving the pain of the past and breaking generational patterns. Without it, nothing is ever laid to rest. The past still operates in the present"[1]. This profound truth highlights how unresolved parental issues can perpetuate through generations unless we actively work to heal them.
The Benefits of Forgiving Parents
Personal Growth and Healing
Research indicates that forgiveness has numerous positive effects on individual traits, family relationships, and overall family environment[3]. When we forgive our parents, we:
- Experience improved mental and physical health
- Develop better relationship skills
- Break free from destructive patterns
- Create healthier boundaries
- Foster emotional maturity
Steps Toward Forgiveness
1. Understanding Their Story
Take time to learn about your parents' own life experiences and challenges. Understanding the context of their behavior can foster compassion without excusing harmful actions[6]. Consider their own upbringing, struggles, and the societal pressures they faced.
2. Acknowledging Reality
Have realistic expectations about your parents' capacity for change. Accept that they did the best they could with their available resources, beliefs, and abilities[1]. This doesn't minimize your pain but provides a framework for understanding.
3. Finding Balance
Focus on both the challenging and positive aspects of your parents. Create a balanced perspective by:
- Identifying their positive characteristics and actions
- Acknowledging their human limitations
- Recognizing their own unhealed wounds
- Understanding the context of their choices[1]
The Process of Healing
Internal Work
The journey of forgiveness requires changes in thinking, feeling, and acting. It's a process that demands patience and perseverance[7]. Consider these aspects:
Emotional Processing
When we learn to hold space for our true feelings without judgment, we make significant progress toward healing[6]. This includes:
- Acknowledging hurt and anger
- Processing grief
- Releasing resentment
- Developing compassion
Setting Boundaries
Forgiveness doesn't mean returning to harmful patterns. Establish healthy boundaries that protect your well-being while allowing for potential healing in the relationship[7].
Moving Forward
Creating New Patterns
As we work through forgiving our parents, we often discover parts of them in ourselves, our relationships, and our parenting styles[6]. This awareness allows us to:
- Choose different responses
- Break negative cycles
- Create healthier relationships
- Parent more consciously
Acceptance and Growth
True forgiveness involves radical acceptance of what was and what is[6]. This means:
- Accepting the past cannot be changed
- Acknowledging your parents' humanity
- Recognizing your own growth and healing
- Finding peace with imperfection
The Impact on Future Generations
When we forgive our parents, we don't just heal ourselves; we create positive change for future generations[5]. This transformation:
- Breaks cycles of hurt
- Models healthy relationship patterns
- Teaches emotional intelligence
- Demonstrates the power of forgiveness
Conclusion
Forgiving our parents is a profound act of self-love and healing. It's not about forgetting or excusing, but about freeing ourselves from the weight of past hurts and creating space for growth. As we embrace this journey, we not only heal our own wounds but contribute to breaking generational patterns of pain, creating a legacy of emotional health and wisdom for future generations[1].
Remember that forgiveness is a personal journey that unfolds at its own pace. There's no timeline for healing, and the process looks different for everyone. What matters is taking those first steps toward understanding, acceptance, and ultimately, freedom from the past.
Citations:
[1] https://www.solutionsforresilience.com/forgive-your-parents/
[2] https://www.leslieleylandfields.com/blog/slieleylandfields.com/p/forgiving-our-fathers-and-mothers.html
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18211179/
[4] https://today.uconn.edu/2024/05/relationship-study-says-parental-acceptance-in-childhood-predicts-ability-to-forgive-as-adults/
[5] https://everthinehome.com/how-to-forgive-your-parents/
[6] https://www.consciousmommy.com/post/how-to-forgive-your-parents-to-heal-yourself
[7] https://extension.umn.edu/divorce-and-other-family-transitions/importance-forgiveness
[8] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/28375300.2024.2310432
[9] https://www.crosswalk.com/family/singles/how-to-forgive-your-parents-for-childhood-pain.html
🔥 LISTEN TO EPISODE HERE
https://serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/djvalerieblove/190
(00:33) Introduction and Personal Update
(01:31) The Power of Communication
(02:19) Family Dynamics and Spiritual Growth
(05:25) The Importance of Practice and Being in the Ring
(08:25) Opportunities for Growth During Family Gatherings
(10:58) The Journey of Forgiveness
(13:46) Understanding Parents and Personal Healing
(18:58) Trusting Your Intuition
(23:35) Therapy and Self-Discovery
(29:30) Crisis and Transformation
(35:31) Lessons and Blessings in Life
(42:35) Self-Reflection and Forgiveness Exercise
(46:30) Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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[00:00:33]
Unknown:
Hey. Aloha, love tribe. So I just recorded a whole thing, and all of a sudden, everything collapsed. So you get the new version of what I just did. How the heck are you? It's been a minute. I have been in a solo recovery phase after some massive, massive rug pulls in my life. And one was a romantic rug pull. 1 was a family rug pull, and they have given me a lot of opportunity to go inward and, you know, be strong and look at all the things that, you know, I'm doing and not doing, and where can I, you know, shine a light on my blind spots of how I'm operating, and trauma work and whatnot? So a few things.
I'm doing this little experiment right now because I'm writing this blog post. Obviously, you guys are reading it as you're, checking this out. And I wanted to do a video around it as well because I thought, you know, I talk a lot better, I think, sometimes than I write. And I'm a really good writer, but I'm also like and I'm not a perfectionist, but I like to here's the punctuation, dah, dah, dah. So flow doesn't happen as easily as it does when I'm talking. And so, you know, it's kind of like how we engage with each other as humans. Right? Like, sometimes it's good to send a text or write the letter, and sometimes it's very good to be person to person with energy and love. And, you know, you get to see the person's eyes and their reaction and blah, blah, blah. So so that's why I was trying to combo plan this. But, anyways, so I know Thanksgiving is coming up. And, my favorite teacher, my my homie, my first spiritual teacher who is Ram Dass, one of his favorite quotes is about, you know, if you think you're, you know, spiritually evolved, spend a weekend with your family.
And, you know, a lot of us get out in the world and we're like, doo doo doo. I'm so awesome. I'm kicking ass. Look at me. You know, I've made some money. I have some status. I got the thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then the minute you go home for Thanksgiving, like, all of a sudden you revert back into this old version of yourself that's this childhood, you know, traumatized being who is, you know, insecure, who's who's hurt, who feels like they have prove themselves or whatever is going on for you and your own, you know, unique family. And so it's always such a, it it's a gift, you know, because we sit and think like, you know, we build these structures around our identity and who we are and how we operate because we're out of the true zone of the fire, and the fire is the family.
And, you know, we're out here doing the thing, but the reality is we've got these layers of how we operate in in the world that have been formed because of our family and how we were brought up. And so sometimes we can suppress them. Sometimes we, you know, integrate them. Sometimes we just are like, forget it. And so we're doing okay over here, but the minute we get back into, like, family land, we sometimes can collapse. Sometimes we explode. Sometimes we run away, you know, whatever it might be. And and so the true test of our spiritual growth is being in the ring. It's being in the dojo. It's being in the engagement. It's not disassociating.
It's not detaching, and it's not avoiding and ignoring. And so, you know and I think with anything that we do, we have to practice, and it comes in waves. So, you know, to truly be gentle with ourselves, to give ourselves compassion, to give ourselves grace that god gives us, you know, and understand that, like, you know, Mike Tyson and, what is his name, Jake Paul just had this fight. Was it rigged? I don't know. You know, who the heck am I to say? However, these dudes got in the ring with each other, and they punched and they fought and they, you know, put on a good experience. And so they had to take some punches. You know? And the reality is they can both go do their training outside of the ring as much as possible. They can go have 10000 hours outside of the ring, but the only thing that actually matters is what happens in the ring.
And so if you are not able and willing to get in the ring of your life every day, how are you ever gonna really know that the things that you've been working on, those 10000 hours, that practice is actually working. You know? And so you can read a book. You can go to a seminar. You can get a degree with a PhD and have all the alphabet soup next to your name. You can go counsel other people and therapies them, and you can do all the stuff. It does not mean that you are actually skilled at the actual skill until you have to do the skill. And so, you know, you think of warriors and and the military, you know, and they go do all of their training and they go do all of the stuff.
You got your sergeant yelling at you and you're getting the thing and you're, you know, muddy, and you've got the things flying at you. But the reality is you know you are not in a life or death situation. You're in a training situation, and so it's not real. It's just practice. The only true test of your skills are when you're in the ring and when it is life or death. And so that's what I've been doing lately. And, it fucking sucks. It's hard as balls, you know, because you think like, oh, I meditate every day and I listen to the music and I do this and I chant and I'm writing my journals. And look at me. I've got my cards and la la la. I burned some sage. Until you actually are confronted with another being, entity situation that is like, hey. This is messed up.
You don't get to actually do the work. And so you can practice, but getting in the ring is the only way you truly do it and not with a sparring partner, but truly with somebody who is, you know, on a mission to smash you. And I'm not saying that your family is that, but, you know, you really have to understand, like, how am I gonna be the best, best, best version of myself unless I'm doing the thing? So, la la la, I'm sharing this experience with you because Thanksgiving is coming up, like I said. And I know a lot of you are gonna be, with your families, and, you know, there's tons of opportunities for you to just hide and not talk about important subjects.
There's tons of opportunities for you to drink and eat and just ignore important things, and just kinda gloss over life. If you can do that, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. However, you know, for those of us who are on a journey of self awareness, self discovery, self healing, self forgiveness, you know, when we get the opportunity to be face to face and in person with our families, you know, it's not like you wanna go start some heavy duty discussion over pumpkin pie. However, you know, if you've got some opportunities to have some one on one, little nuggets and getaways, you know, with your folks or with your siblings or with whoever, you know, how can you prepare yourself for success?
How can you prepare yourself for, if there's an issue that, you know, has troubled you, rather than keeping it a thorn in your shoe and you're still trying to walk around and hobble, like, why not address it and be brave and creative? You know? And so, obviously, this comes with our parents. You know? And if we're lucky enough to have a parent or 2 parents that are alive, you know, you can do a lot of work. It doesn't mean they're gonna change because they're not. It's only about you changing and you changing your perspective and, how you look at your relationship with them and how you look at them as individuals.
I was having lunch yesterday with, with somebody who knows me extremely well. He's known me for decades and understands a lot about the the timeline of my life, my history, etcetera. But the reality is he doesn't understand me. And you won't nobody on this planet ever truly will. Only I will. And same for you. Nobody will ever truly understand you. They might know your timeline. They might know all of these things, but they don't know your operating system and how you truly work. Here's why. Because they're not you. Pretty simple. And so, you know, this person asked me, he was like, how can you be so loving towards your parents after all the shit that you've been through? And I'm like, well, they've been through a lot of shit too. You know? And I don't know what it was like to be them before they had me. I don't know what they had to go through as individuals. You know? I can look at their timeline, and I can be like, oh, that sucked. You know? But the reality is, like, I don't know what it was like to live inside of their skin.
And so, but I do know. What I do know is that they're loving people and that they're good inside. And no matter what they did to me, it wasn't because they hated me, and they were purposefully trying to hurt me. They were literally trying to, like, have their little tiny little part of their nostril above the fucking tsunami of life that was handed to them. And so the fact that, like, they didn't kill me, thanks. So, it doesn't excuse behavior that was negative or or hurtful. You know? And so I think that's, you know when I went to rehab about 8 ish years ago, there were a lot of things that were going on in my life that they were like, oh, you didn't learn how to forgive. And then I was like, fuck you. I'm not forgiving anybody.
There's this thing that happened, and I'm never forgiving. So no. And because I had this idea, if I forgave somebody, then it meant that I was giving them a hall pass for being a fucktard to me and hurting me. And that was obviously a misconception. And as I did tons and tons of healing, I calculated it this this last week, it's been about 5000 hours of of healing that I've done, self healing and, work with other people and over 6 figures in the last 8 years. So every day, I have about a 90 minute practice that I do. And, in addition to that, I have spent a ton of time and a ton of money with a ton of therapists who are good and not good and amazing, not amazing, and rehabs, no rehabs, and, you know, psychedelic therapy, whatever. But, like, a good 5000 hours minimum in the last, you know, 8 years.
But, anyways so what I realized along my journey about forgiveness was, you know, they they say, like, oh, if you don't forgive somebody, you're the one swallowing the toxic poison. It's true. And so once I recognize that just from a selfish point of view that I didn't wanna keep having that resentment, that anger, hurt me. What I kept realizing was, like, the more that I can let that go and have more compassion and empathy towards others, the more, I got to be free. My energy got to lift and I didn't have to be down in this, you know, doctor David Hawkins has a scale of your vibrational feelings. You know, shame is the lowest and peace is the highest. Enlightenment is peace. And, so when you're in that state of resentment, you know, it's a few steps above, shame.
But you're you're holding on to this, like, lower vibrational place. You know? And so how can you go be this effective human? How can you go be a loving human? And when your goal and your intention is to be peaceful and to create a peaceful world and create a loving world, if you're down here in this zone, it's impossible. It's impossible to be up here. And so how can I free myself, you know, from a selfish perspective so that I can be up here to go do my mission? So that was something that I thought was really interesting. And, again, it is never letting anybody off the hook for behavior that was hurtful. It's just you don't have to live in that zone of of, like, you did me wrong, so I'm never gonna let you back in and never gonna talk to you. No.
It doesn't mean that you have to keep allowing somebody to abuse you or hurt you if their intention is not to change and grow and love you. But if they're in the ring with you, if they are doing work, and if they are loving you and recognizing their their, their blind spots, their deficits, and trying to correct them, stay in the ring with that person. That person wants to be with you. That person loves you. And so, so anyway so the forgiveness part was really interesting after, you know, the rehab because it gave me internal freedom of of the the constant, like, oh, you're a bad guy. You know? You're a bad woman. You're a bad mom. You're bad and all of it.
So so I am very I I can forgive people who are making actions that are toward love. And, you know, there was an old phrase, an old bumper sticker, you know, and it was like, what would Jesus do? You know? And so I have a whole thing. What would love do? And love would love. Love would love. Love would look at another human being and that their intentions are like, wow. I'm a hurt wounded person just like you. And so love would wanna hug that person. Love would wanna hug that inner child of that person. Love would want to, you know, namaste.
The light within me sees the light within you. And so I had a therapist recently who doesn't understand me and doesn't understand my operating system. She wants to, but she's not me. You know? And she was like, oh, you're you're spiritually bypassing things because you're, you know, turning it over to God and you're, you know, you know, you're letting God help you surrender to something that you can't control. And I'm like, Yeah. That's what the fuck I'm doing. Because if I'm over here in my ego trying to control things and trying to do the things that I want in the way that I want and they're not working out the way that I want, I'm gonna go fucking crazy. You know? And so my spiritual practice has been the only thing that has saved my life for the last 8 years. And so this person, although well intentioned, doesn't know me, you know, and doesn't know, you know, they this is a problem with therapy. Okay? And I'm gonna tell you guys this, and and I'm not suggesting not to get therapy.
Therapy is super helpful. I've been doing hypnotherapy. I had some really, really powerful sessions. It helped me, you know, get into some old doorways of my past and, rearrange, reframe, clean them out a little bit so that my psyche can move forward and not only my psyche, but the energy that my psyche, you know, has. And so so it's really, really been profound, and I love this work. However, you know, a therapist can only do so much because they've only read so many books. They've only done all these things. They don't know you. And so when you have an intuitive experience and feeling that says, trust that shit because that's the only thing that is your truth. It's your internal compass. It's your internal, you know, receiver as it were, like a radio receiver.
And, you know, so when something feels off to you, listen to that internal voice. It's it's typically correct. And so, so, anyways, so my my my experience of getting second, 3rd, 4th, 10th opinions about something is because when I'm presented with something from an external person who has, you know, some letters next to their name or years of experience in a field that maybe I don't, but if something feels like off to me, like, there's that dissonance, that cognitive dissonance. And so if you don't learn how to understand that you have cognitive dissonance, and not only cognitive dissonance, you have energetic in dissonance, if you just ignore that, you're gonna continue to put your external decision making, mechanism on others, and that's not how to do life. However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't, look for those data points.
But, and so that's what's in this blog, you know. So I was playing with perplexity. I was playing I love perplexity. I think it's a really cool tool. It's an AI tool for those of you who don't know. You can, you know, ask it questions. It'll do real time searches, but you can have all these different, algorithms, you know, whether it's Claude, whether it's ChatGPT, etcetera, whether it's a perplexity one. And it will, you know, have its own way of trying to answer your queries, your questions, and stuff. And it I mean, it's insane. It spits out this whole thing within, you know, seconds.
And, so I think it's really fascinating. And so to look at that as a tool for understanding myself and to try to get, you know, validation of what I'm feeling verse as well as, like, nope. You're totally on the wrong path, Val. Like, you're, you know, you're operating out of trauma or you're operating out of, you know, an old pattern, an old wound, and, you know, you've got this blind spot. And so so I think it's really neat to kinda, you know, again, extrapolate from different voices, whether it's a perplexity, whether it's a human, whether it's a book, whether it's podcast, whatever, and and see, like, how does this fit into, you know, my worldview, my operating system, and how I wanna choose to go forward with solutions. So so the parenting and the forgiveness, like, people have and and we all do. We've all grown up with this, hero, persona of our parents.
You know? We think that just because, you know, a man put some semen in a woman and just because a woman had the egg and it got fertilized and it, you know, grew a baby for 9 months and it came out, us children think that those two people somehow should all of a sudden be perfect and understand, like, I'm this great parent now. You're just still a retarded human like everyone else. Like, all of a sudden, just because those two biological things happen, doesn't all of a sudden make you, like, a parent and not or even a good parent for that matter. And so, that's an animalistic thing. And but our our our our human child minds and child brains, because we need our parents to be these protectors, we we put them on a pedestal.
We think that they're supposed to be, you know, close to perfect, aka God. And when they make all these mistakes, it's like, what do you mean? How come you yelled at me? How come you didn't pay attention to me? How come you didn't meet my needs here, there, and there, da da da da? And and so, you know, through the teenage years and certainly through the years of the twenties thirties until you have your own children, you start to realize, like, mom's just just an average person like me, especially once you have your children. Same thing. You know? And you start to have a lot more compassion and empathy, especially men who go out in the workforce, and they realize, wow. Dad's just fucking slogging it along, trying to make it so that, you know, we've got some food on the table here. And he's not this, you know, kingpin or whatever that, you know, you think your dad is. He's a dude out there struggling.
And when moms and dads struggle, we're still just normal people. So sometimes we turn to porn. Sometimes we turn to food. Sometimes we turn to social media. Sometimes we turn to gambling. Sometimes we turn to alcohol. Sometimes we turn to, you know, sex outside of, the family. Sometime or, you know, the marriage. Sometimes, we turn to alcohol. Sometimes we turn to whatever. And those are called soul holes. I call them the 5 d's, diamonds, drugs, digital, donuts, and dicks. And, we're trying to fill up the soul hole that is like, oh my god. I'm overwhelmed. There's all these responsibilities. There's all this adulting, and nobody ever gave me the manual of how to be an adult. Nobody ever gave me the manual of how to be a parent. And so you're gonna stumble a lot, and you're gonna stumble based on your old programming from your childhood.
You know? I remember when I first did some therapy, it was about 9 years ago. It was before the divorce. It was before the total breakdown. And they're just like, we didn't hang a man or encounter him in your past. And I was like, fuck you. I'm not talking about that. That's way long, long gone. I'm gonna talk about the future. I wanna talk about how we can build a new life and blah, blah, blah. And they're just like, honey, no. Like, you've gotta look at your old patterns. You've gotta look at all this old stuff. And I was super resistant back then because I just really thought like, well, all that's laid to rest. My dad's dead. You know, I've I've got a mom who's alive, and we're decent. So it's just kinda like, whatever. I'm here. Let's talk about here. Let's talk about the future. I don't wanna look at the past. And so I was really, really ignorant and resistant. And, and it wasn't until I got into rehab that, I was doing some EMDR, and it's a it's a trauma therapy.
And, you move your eyes back and forth and you draw this shit so that your left and right hemisphere of your brain can talk to each other and you can access old memories, dah, dah, dah. Well, all of a sudden, I realized like, oh gosh. I was 46 years old, 46 years old. And, a whole trauma came up from a very young age of being molested by a family member. And I was like, I would have remembered that, you know, like, duh. And she's just like, no, you wouldn't have. You were too young and you have an ability to compartmentalize things when you're young, when you have very, very traumatic experiences. And and I was just I couldn't believe that that was part of my life, you know, and my story because I was like, why would I remembered?
Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. And so what came to me was just like, wow. What else don't I know about myself? What else is in there? And, so it was very, very humbling, you know, for somebody who thought she knew what the fuck was up and I was badass and all this. And, so that I got my ass handed to me there and realized I have I guess I have to kinda look at the past to, you know, remove some weeds, to lessen some of the trauma experiences in my life so that my operating system could be a little bit more chill and that my nervous system could be more chill. So so, you know, going through different types of therapy, DBT, CBT, doing group stuff, doing, psychedelic therapy and whatnot, you know, obviously, doing tons and tons of yoga and breath work and, you know, meditation, There's a a a a a panacea of things that you can use. And so they don't all work for you, and they aren't all relevant at the the time. You know? So stuff that was, like, really working for me at a certain point of my life might not be so relevant now because I'm kinda like, yeah. I got that.
Or it just doesn't apply to what I'm doing. So there's no right or wrong way to do therapy and recovery and coaching moving forward, but the way is to get in the ring, you know, and start doing it. But, you know, and it takes time. I remember when my ex and I were going through, couples counseling prior to the divorce and after the divorce and all this stuff. I mean, we must have seen 10 therapists. And quite honestly, they all sucked. And they didn't suck because, you know, we we got a divorce. But what sucked was you know, think about this. Right?
You have a, a vehicle, a car. Right? It gets in a giant crash, and your vehicle is your relationship. And, you know, would you take that vehicle into the body shop once a week for 10 weeks and then not drive it in between the time being in the body shop? That's what fucking couples counseling is. It's stupid. And so no offense, but it's it's not how you do things. And same thing with crisis work. What and that's why rehab was helpful, you know, because it was like, you're in the fucking body shop for 30 days. It doesn't mean you're gonna be perfect going out, but it's like you're in there doing intensive work. And so I've I'm grateful for therapists and coaches and and healers and people out there who are doing great work. But there's a difference between being in maintenance mode, and there's a difference between being in precrisis, crisis, and post crisis mode. And so, you know, when you're precrisis, like, I look at it like a bell curve. Right? Crisis is the peak. Like, oh my god. You're in the fucking, you know, you're in divorce court. You're in the hospital. You're in jail. God knows whatever. But, like, you're in the fucking shit when everything just exploded.
When you're right before that pre crisis mode and you can kind of identify, you know, as a professional, like, these people need a lot of help or things are gonna explode. As much as you want to, like, give them that, like, go to the weekend retreat and go take a week off, most people, me included, have egos that say, I can handle this, and we're never gonna get to that crisis, and I got this. And so it's very, very challenging to get people to go into that that ultra deep work, prior to a crisis. It's just almost impossible. Same thing. You you know, you're smoking, you're drinking, you're gonna have a heart attack, and you're like, I'm fine. I'm I'm resilient. I have good stock in my blood. And then all of a sudden, you're in the fucking hospital and you have a heart attack. You're like, oh, oops.
And only until you get out of that hospital is when you can really start doing the true work. And so that applies to to spiritual, emotional, mental health type stuff, obviously, financial stuff. So post crisis is where you have the best opportunity for transformation, in my opinion, and my experience, not just opinion. When people are coming straight out of a post crisis, they are humble. They're vulnerable. They recognize, like, woah. And sometimes you have to have a couple crises, unfortunately, because, again, the ego is just like, well, that was just a one time thing. Well, maybe not. And so once you're in this post crisis mode, you've the the doors of possibility are more open for transformation and and, change in your behavior, change in the way you think, and change in the way, obviously, that your whole operating system can get oriented around your future. So right now, I am in a unexpected post crisis mode, and I am a lot more aligned to, What where have I had blind spots? You know? And because I don't want that to happen again because that really hurt. And so people make changes after things hurt. You know, when you get enough pain, you might be like, well, right, you know, do something different. So so this experience, you know, with the parents and the parental forgiveness is something that I just want you who are listening, whoever listens to understand, like, your parents. Again, they're just they're just like people like you. They are not heroes.
And just because they had a biological function, you know, doesn't mean that they're all of a sudden turned into these, like, amazing communicators and these amazing caretakers. And so when you can start to understand the the humanity of your mother and father, you can start to forgive yourself. And when you can start to forgive yourself, you can get out of a shame spiral of, you know, Angel says hi, of making mistakes. And you can be less afraid maybe to do steps forward that involve, risk and fear of messing up. Because you're gonna, like, if you're a human, you're gonna mess up, and you will mess up and make mistakes until the day you die.
So, anyway, so I wanna show the screen here. Let's go. Okay. So, you know, obviously, you guys can see the, beginning because you're already in the the beginning of that blog. But this is excuse me. You know, the journey to forgive our parents, personal healing, blah blah blah. Then again, it's never about excusing harmful behavior, but it's about, you know, not having resentment and clearing the space forward. All of this is written again by perplexity. And, I just gosh. I think it's so interesting that we have there you go. We have that. But you think about the psychology of parent and child wounds. You have early childhood experiences.
You know? And so when we have rejection or hurt from our parents, when they judge us, when they yell at us, when they belittle us, You know, it's very difficult for us to have that same, ability to forgive and the compassion for others if our parents are, like, shaming us all the time and saying, you know, that you're worthless, your friends are worthless, what you do is worthless, etcetera. And so, you know, to me, it's ultra important to just let that shit go. You know? And so, obviously, we have lots of benefits. We can have healthier boundaries, more emotional maturity, better relationship skills. You know, at some point, you're just gonna keep carrying this forward generation after generation after generation if you do not put a line in the sand and say, it stops here. It stops with me.
Again, like, you're not excusing behavior that was hurtful, but what you are is acknowledging that, yep, you were wounded too. That's probably why you did it, and I love you and forgive you. And for me, it's just like, how do we get inside of the hearts of our parents? You know? And so this is it. It's like taking time, learn about your parents' own experiences and their challenges, understanding the context of their behavior. And, again, you can have compassion without excusing the actions. This is, again, this is where a lot of people come in, you know, whether whether it's domestic violence, whether it's parental, you know, issues or people didn't, you know, pay enough attention to you, they yelled at you, etcetera.
You know, it's really, really getting to the heart of things, which is the heart, which is love. It's like, is that person truly an evil person? Did they wanna hurt you? If the answer is no and, you know, you have a reason for being in relationship with them, lean in. You know? How can you learn to be a more loving, higher consciousness person? You know, Christ consciousness talks about forgiveness. And, you know, that's what Jesus was about. It's about forgiving and, you know, leave the judgment to God. You're not God. So don't judge other people. Just understand that you're all the same, walking each other home on this crazy human journey. And it's like, it's a it's a university for your soul, and you're here to learn love. That's it. You're here to learn love, self love, love of other, love of planet.
But so again, this is just, you know, focusing on the positive and challenging aspects of my parents. What were their good things? You know? What were their limitations? Did they have financial limitations? Did they have a physical limitation? Did they have, you know, literally, something wrong with them chemically? You know? And then, really, like, what are their positive things? What was good about them? It's easy to sit and look at the peaks of the negativity and identify those people that way. But the truth is that's not who they are. Those are some actions. And so, were they good people? Were you know, 90% of the time, were they out there trying to make the best of life and do what they could, you know, in in life? So I think that's really, really important.
I'm working on here, but, you know, the journey of forgiveness requires changes in thinking, feeling, and acting. And so it does take time, you know, and you have to process grief and let go of the resentment and develop compassion. That's it. You know, and acknowledge that it hurt you. It doesn't mean like you're not allowed to feel angry or hurt. Like you can acknowledge like, there's I'm I'm doing a thing with, Good Inside. It's an app with, doctor Becky Kennedy. And, 2 or more things can be true at the same time. And so a lot of people forget, and they think like, oh, it's black or white. Like, he's bad or he's good or she's bad or she's good. It's like, no. She's good, and she had some behavior that wasn't good.
That's interesting. So for those of us, you know, who are more mature than teenagers and young people who get stuck in black and white thinking, all of those things can be true. You know? And so that's kind of like a self forgiveness and a self awareness and a self acceptance thing to to recognize. And you can be a good person, and you can do some shitty things. And it doesn't take away from the goodness that lives within you. It just means you've got some work to do and some skill building, and you gotta get back in the ring and keep doing it and and practicing. So, anyways, you know, DBT, there's other, you know, therapies that you can work with that, you know, work with mindfulness, skill building, emotional regulation, etcetera, how to have relational skills. And so these are things that we should all learn. You know? Marshall Rosenberg with nonviolent communication.
It's very important to start getting not just a giant box of tools that are sitting out in your garage, but, like, things that you bring with you into the the dojo, into the practice zone, but then into the ring when you're with people, whether they're business people, whether they're lovers, whether they're family, friends, etcetera. So you're only gonna get good at it if you actually do it. You're not gonna get good at watching other people do it or reading a book about it or looking at an app. And so that's where the scary part is, you know. And so when you, you know, can have some intentionality with the people that you love and work on things, you're gonna make mistakes.
You might feel like you're on eggshells, and I know I do. And and I'm sometimes scared to do things because I'm like, oh my god. I don't wanna mess it up because we we we got here to this good part. So if I do something, it's gonna break it. It's like, is it really that solid if your one mistake is gonna break it? No. So that tells you that you need more work. Easier said than done, of course. So looking at what perplexity gave us and this, again, this is, I think, with Claude, Claude 3.5. You know, we're obviously working on creating new patterns. We wanna break the old cycles. We have accepted, and that's the other part. Oh, fuck. Acceptance is so hard.
So hard. It's so hard because we want to control things and we want to change things, you know, and other than you know, acceptance is an act of faith. It's an act of of trusting God that this is the way it's supposed to be for now and finding peace within that, you know, and and it's a tough one, but it's, I think, the most important thing we can do as humans. You know? God grant me to the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And so acceptance is a really, really big deal. So, anyways, this is really cool, and I thought it was great. Obviously, we've got some references so you guys can see this. But we'll go back here.
Turn you off. I know this is kind of a big, long Sunday morning sermon, and, I hope it serves you. And whether you're a parent or not, whether you're a parent that you are in training to become a parent and have children or you've got young children, forgiveness is a big, big, big deal. You know? And learning how to be a masterful forgiver is one of, I think, life's greatest gifts. You know? And, you know, this 11 x love lab that I'm working on, you know, the lab stands for lessons and blessings. And there's a lesson in everything, and there's a blessing in everything. Right? And if we can accept that that is true.
You know, every little thing that has occurred in our lives has a lesson and a blessing in it. And if we choose to dive deep and sit with those things and get curious, we're gonna find it. You know? And it helps us become more empowered and not in a victim mind set and not in a why this happened to me, you know, dialogue that goes on sometimes for those of us who get hurt. And and, again, we are not bypassing feeling the feeling. It hurts to get hurt. Sucks. Sucks to get rejected. It sucks not to get chosen. You know? It sucks when things aren't working out to your vision.
And the reality is the more that we can get strong with knowing that that's just the way it goes, I don't care who you are. You could have a $1,000,000,000. You can be beautiful. You can have, you know, you can be 6 foot tall guy. You can be strong. You can live in the right country. Like, no matter who you are and where you are, things are not gonna go your way at some point. That's the way it is. We can't blame our parents. We can't blame anything. You know? It's like up to us to change now and to be here now and to be a fucking badass love hacker, love warrior, love goddess, love God, and just love her like a super lover. So my wish for you, if you've gotten this far, congratulations for listening to my voice for 42 minutes and 15 seconds.
My wish for you is to be gentle with yourself and strong with your actions. And don't give up. Never give up. And if you need to make a list of all the the things that your parents did that were bad, you know, think about I would encourage you to do this. Okay? And this is something that's helped me a lot with not just my parents, but with people. You know, again, we're not excusing bad behavior, but make a list of all the bad things that they did. They didn't, you know, give me a lollipop at the grocery store. They yelled at me. They locked me in my room. They, you know, didn't pick me up at practice on time, blah blah blah.
You know, they kicked me out, any of it. How many minutes of your life was that experience? Truly, like any of these experiences. You know? Oh, it was 20 minutes. It was an hour. It was 5 days. It was a week. It was a year. It was 30 seconds. You know? Do that. And then on the other column, on the right side, make a list of all the things they did for you. Probably kind of boring. They kept a roof over your head. You got a car. You got, you know, the electricity stayed on. They put food in the lunch box for you. They didn't leave every single thing that they did. Oh, they gave you, you know, string cheese in your lunch. They showed up at parent teacher conferences.
How many minutes did that happen? I don't care who you are unless you truly lived in the most, violent situation where somebody was constantly beating you up. Like, this right column is always gonna be larger. It is. You know? And the same thing. Like, so when you look at your family, your mother, your father, a lover or somebody, it's almost always going to be larger over here on the good side. And so what I also want you to do second is do that for yourself. And for those of you who struggle with self forgiveness, I, you know, have struggled with it and that's where shame comes in and guilt. Do that list.
Truly do the list and use math as your friend and just be like, Here's all the things that I did that I'm not proud of. You know, I yelled at my kid. I drank alcohol. I did this. I, you know, didn't, you know, meet my expectations of being, you know, this person I wanna be. Do that. How many minutes of your life have you done that? And then how many minutes of your life have you stayed above ground? How many minutes of your life have you stayed, you know, out of jail, out of out of the morgue, got out of the hospital? You know, like, it's hard being a human. So how many minutes compared to these things are there? Like, you're also gonna see this giant list. And so give yourself some grace. Give yourself some credit and give your parents the same grace and credit. Like, for the most part, everybody's pretty damn good inside.
And for the most part, we're all just chugging along, doing the best we can with what we've got. And so, that's it. And this is one of the many steps of self love and self acceptance and acceptance of others and acceptance of the world around us. So I hope this helped. I know it was long, and it's been a tough one. And I don't know if you guys have been on a tough path lately, but if you have, you're not alone. And if you have, reach out, you know, subscribe to, you know where the hell is it? Subscribe. I don't know. Yeah. Here you go.
Get in the love hacker newsletter. Subscribe. I'll send you guys stuff once in a while. I'm gonna be opening up the 11x love lab soon. I'm gonna be doing the 11x love method course. I'm not gonna give you the link yet because I don't want you all to sign up to something. It's gonna be a waiting list, and, I'm gonna be doing a Bitcoin for Families virtual summit, on December 7th, and I'm also gonna be in Austin, I think, the following weekend. Yeah. We're gonna be doing a whole thing, but, just go to go to the website djval djvalerie love dot com forward slash subscribe, and, you'll get all the info there. But other than that, just like, you know, the subheading of this episode was like how to forgive with integrity.
And, you know, integrity to me means being true to yourself. It means not letting somebody off the hook, not letting the behavior off the hook and, you know, wanting that person to recognize that they, you know, had a behavior that hurt you, but realizing, like, they're just a person like you and they're just a human. And so even if they repeat the behavior several times, if they're trying, they're truly trying, you know, give some grace because you're gonna repeat lots of behaviors. I promise you. You're gonna be hitting the porn. You're gonna be eating the donuts at 2 in the morning. You're gonna be maybe smoking some weed or drinking or doing whatever you do. Like, you're gonna keep falling back into being a human. So just remember to have some grace for other people, and definitely your parents.
You know? They're just people. So I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving here if you're in the states. And, Yeah. That's it. I really like being in my pajamas doing these episodes. They're fun. Alright, everybody. Until next time. I've been up super early, so I might could take a nap. And, until next time, I'm wishing you peace, love, and warm aloha. Always. God bless you. Thank you, God. Thank you for this moment. All right. Aloha.
Hey. Aloha, love tribe. So I just recorded a whole thing, and all of a sudden, everything collapsed. So you get the new version of what I just did. How the heck are you? It's been a minute. I have been in a solo recovery phase after some massive, massive rug pulls in my life. And one was a romantic rug pull. 1 was a family rug pull, and they have given me a lot of opportunity to go inward and, you know, be strong and look at all the things that, you know, I'm doing and not doing, and where can I, you know, shine a light on my blind spots of how I'm operating, and trauma work and whatnot? So a few things.
I'm doing this little experiment right now because I'm writing this blog post. Obviously, you guys are reading it as you're, checking this out. And I wanted to do a video around it as well because I thought, you know, I talk a lot better, I think, sometimes than I write. And I'm a really good writer, but I'm also like and I'm not a perfectionist, but I like to here's the punctuation, dah, dah, dah. So flow doesn't happen as easily as it does when I'm talking. And so, you know, it's kind of like how we engage with each other as humans. Right? Like, sometimes it's good to send a text or write the letter, and sometimes it's very good to be person to person with energy and love. And, you know, you get to see the person's eyes and their reaction and blah, blah, blah. So so that's why I was trying to combo plan this. But, anyways, so I know Thanksgiving is coming up. And, my favorite teacher, my my homie, my first spiritual teacher who is Ram Dass, one of his favorite quotes is about, you know, if you think you're, you know, spiritually evolved, spend a weekend with your family.
And, you know, a lot of us get out in the world and we're like, doo doo doo. I'm so awesome. I'm kicking ass. Look at me. You know, I've made some money. I have some status. I got the thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then the minute you go home for Thanksgiving, like, all of a sudden you revert back into this old version of yourself that's this childhood, you know, traumatized being who is, you know, insecure, who's who's hurt, who feels like they have prove themselves or whatever is going on for you and your own, you know, unique family. And so it's always such a, it it's a gift, you know, because we sit and think like, you know, we build these structures around our identity and who we are and how we operate because we're out of the true zone of the fire, and the fire is the family.
And, you know, we're out here doing the thing, but the reality is we've got these layers of how we operate in in the world that have been formed because of our family and how we were brought up. And so sometimes we can suppress them. Sometimes we, you know, integrate them. Sometimes we just are like, forget it. And so we're doing okay over here, but the minute we get back into, like, family land, we sometimes can collapse. Sometimes we explode. Sometimes we run away, you know, whatever it might be. And and so the true test of our spiritual growth is being in the ring. It's being in the dojo. It's being in the engagement. It's not disassociating.
It's not detaching, and it's not avoiding and ignoring. And so, you know and I think with anything that we do, we have to practice, and it comes in waves. So, you know, to truly be gentle with ourselves, to give ourselves compassion, to give ourselves grace that god gives us, you know, and understand that, like, you know, Mike Tyson and, what is his name, Jake Paul just had this fight. Was it rigged? I don't know. You know, who the heck am I to say? However, these dudes got in the ring with each other, and they punched and they fought and they, you know, put on a good experience. And so they had to take some punches. You know? And the reality is they can both go do their training outside of the ring as much as possible. They can go have 10000 hours outside of the ring, but the only thing that actually matters is what happens in the ring.
And so if you are not able and willing to get in the ring of your life every day, how are you ever gonna really know that the things that you've been working on, those 10000 hours, that practice is actually working. You know? And so you can read a book. You can go to a seminar. You can get a degree with a PhD and have all the alphabet soup next to your name. You can go counsel other people and therapies them, and you can do all the stuff. It does not mean that you are actually skilled at the actual skill until you have to do the skill. And so, you know, you think of warriors and and the military, you know, and they go do all of their training and they go do all of the stuff.
You got your sergeant yelling at you and you're getting the thing and you're, you know, muddy, and you've got the things flying at you. But the reality is you know you are not in a life or death situation. You're in a training situation, and so it's not real. It's just practice. The only true test of your skills are when you're in the ring and when it is life or death. And so that's what I've been doing lately. And, it fucking sucks. It's hard as balls, you know, because you think like, oh, I meditate every day and I listen to the music and I do this and I chant and I'm writing my journals. And look at me. I've got my cards and la la la. I burned some sage. Until you actually are confronted with another being, entity situation that is like, hey. This is messed up.
You don't get to actually do the work. And so you can practice, but getting in the ring is the only way you truly do it and not with a sparring partner, but truly with somebody who is, you know, on a mission to smash you. And I'm not saying that your family is that, but, you know, you really have to understand, like, how am I gonna be the best, best, best version of myself unless I'm doing the thing? So, la la la, I'm sharing this experience with you because Thanksgiving is coming up, like I said. And I know a lot of you are gonna be, with your families, and, you know, there's tons of opportunities for you to just hide and not talk about important subjects.
There's tons of opportunities for you to drink and eat and just ignore important things, and just kinda gloss over life. If you can do that, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. However, you know, for those of us who are on a journey of self awareness, self discovery, self healing, self forgiveness, you know, when we get the opportunity to be face to face and in person with our families, you know, it's not like you wanna go start some heavy duty discussion over pumpkin pie. However, you know, if you've got some opportunities to have some one on one, little nuggets and getaways, you know, with your folks or with your siblings or with whoever, you know, how can you prepare yourself for success?
How can you prepare yourself for, if there's an issue that, you know, has troubled you, rather than keeping it a thorn in your shoe and you're still trying to walk around and hobble, like, why not address it and be brave and creative? You know? And so, obviously, this comes with our parents. You know? And if we're lucky enough to have a parent or 2 parents that are alive, you know, you can do a lot of work. It doesn't mean they're gonna change because they're not. It's only about you changing and you changing your perspective and, how you look at your relationship with them and how you look at them as individuals.
I was having lunch yesterday with, with somebody who knows me extremely well. He's known me for decades and understands a lot about the the timeline of my life, my history, etcetera. But the reality is he doesn't understand me. And you won't nobody on this planet ever truly will. Only I will. And same for you. Nobody will ever truly understand you. They might know your timeline. They might know all of these things, but they don't know your operating system and how you truly work. Here's why. Because they're not you. Pretty simple. And so, you know, this person asked me, he was like, how can you be so loving towards your parents after all the shit that you've been through? And I'm like, well, they've been through a lot of shit too. You know? And I don't know what it was like to be them before they had me. I don't know what they had to go through as individuals. You know? I can look at their timeline, and I can be like, oh, that sucked. You know? But the reality is, like, I don't know what it was like to live inside of their skin.
And so, but I do know. What I do know is that they're loving people and that they're good inside. And no matter what they did to me, it wasn't because they hated me, and they were purposefully trying to hurt me. They were literally trying to, like, have their little tiny little part of their nostril above the fucking tsunami of life that was handed to them. And so the fact that, like, they didn't kill me, thanks. So, it doesn't excuse behavior that was negative or or hurtful. You know? And so I think that's, you know when I went to rehab about 8 ish years ago, there were a lot of things that were going on in my life that they were like, oh, you didn't learn how to forgive. And then I was like, fuck you. I'm not forgiving anybody.
There's this thing that happened, and I'm never forgiving. So no. And because I had this idea, if I forgave somebody, then it meant that I was giving them a hall pass for being a fucktard to me and hurting me. And that was obviously a misconception. And as I did tons and tons of healing, I calculated it this this last week, it's been about 5000 hours of of healing that I've done, self healing and, work with other people and over 6 figures in the last 8 years. So every day, I have about a 90 minute practice that I do. And, in addition to that, I have spent a ton of time and a ton of money with a ton of therapists who are good and not good and amazing, not amazing, and rehabs, no rehabs, and, you know, psychedelic therapy, whatever. But, like, a good 5000 hours minimum in the last, you know, 8 years.
But, anyways so what I realized along my journey about forgiveness was, you know, they they say, like, oh, if you don't forgive somebody, you're the one swallowing the toxic poison. It's true. And so once I recognize that just from a selfish point of view that I didn't wanna keep having that resentment, that anger, hurt me. What I kept realizing was, like, the more that I can let that go and have more compassion and empathy towards others, the more, I got to be free. My energy got to lift and I didn't have to be down in this, you know, doctor David Hawkins has a scale of your vibrational feelings. You know, shame is the lowest and peace is the highest. Enlightenment is peace. And, so when you're in that state of resentment, you know, it's a few steps above, shame.
But you're you're holding on to this, like, lower vibrational place. You know? And so how can you go be this effective human? How can you go be a loving human? And when your goal and your intention is to be peaceful and to create a peaceful world and create a loving world, if you're down here in this zone, it's impossible. It's impossible to be up here. And so how can I free myself, you know, from a selfish perspective so that I can be up here to go do my mission? So that was something that I thought was really interesting. And, again, it is never letting anybody off the hook for behavior that was hurtful. It's just you don't have to live in that zone of of, like, you did me wrong, so I'm never gonna let you back in and never gonna talk to you. No.
It doesn't mean that you have to keep allowing somebody to abuse you or hurt you if their intention is not to change and grow and love you. But if they're in the ring with you, if they are doing work, and if they are loving you and recognizing their their, their blind spots, their deficits, and trying to correct them, stay in the ring with that person. That person wants to be with you. That person loves you. And so, so anyway so the forgiveness part was really interesting after, you know, the rehab because it gave me internal freedom of of the the constant, like, oh, you're a bad guy. You know? You're a bad woman. You're a bad mom. You're bad and all of it.
So so I am very I I can forgive people who are making actions that are toward love. And, you know, there was an old phrase, an old bumper sticker, you know, and it was like, what would Jesus do? You know? And so I have a whole thing. What would love do? And love would love. Love would love. Love would look at another human being and that their intentions are like, wow. I'm a hurt wounded person just like you. And so love would wanna hug that person. Love would wanna hug that inner child of that person. Love would want to, you know, namaste.
The light within me sees the light within you. And so I had a therapist recently who doesn't understand me and doesn't understand my operating system. She wants to, but she's not me. You know? And she was like, oh, you're you're spiritually bypassing things because you're, you know, turning it over to God and you're, you know, you know, you're letting God help you surrender to something that you can't control. And I'm like, Yeah. That's what the fuck I'm doing. Because if I'm over here in my ego trying to control things and trying to do the things that I want in the way that I want and they're not working out the way that I want, I'm gonna go fucking crazy. You know? And so my spiritual practice has been the only thing that has saved my life for the last 8 years. And so this person, although well intentioned, doesn't know me, you know, and doesn't know, you know, they this is a problem with therapy. Okay? And I'm gonna tell you guys this, and and I'm not suggesting not to get therapy.
Therapy is super helpful. I've been doing hypnotherapy. I had some really, really powerful sessions. It helped me, you know, get into some old doorways of my past and, rearrange, reframe, clean them out a little bit so that my psyche can move forward and not only my psyche, but the energy that my psyche, you know, has. And so so it's really, really been profound, and I love this work. However, you know, a therapist can only do so much because they've only read so many books. They've only done all these things. They don't know you. And so when you have an intuitive experience and feeling that says, trust that shit because that's the only thing that is your truth. It's your internal compass. It's your internal, you know, receiver as it were, like a radio receiver.
And, you know, so when something feels off to you, listen to that internal voice. It's it's typically correct. And so, so, anyways, so my my my experience of getting second, 3rd, 4th, 10th opinions about something is because when I'm presented with something from an external person who has, you know, some letters next to their name or years of experience in a field that maybe I don't, but if something feels like off to me, like, there's that dissonance, that cognitive dissonance. And so if you don't learn how to understand that you have cognitive dissonance, and not only cognitive dissonance, you have energetic in dissonance, if you just ignore that, you're gonna continue to put your external decision making, mechanism on others, and that's not how to do life. However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't, look for those data points.
But, and so that's what's in this blog, you know. So I was playing with perplexity. I was playing I love perplexity. I think it's a really cool tool. It's an AI tool for those of you who don't know. You can, you know, ask it questions. It'll do real time searches, but you can have all these different, algorithms, you know, whether it's Claude, whether it's ChatGPT, etcetera, whether it's a perplexity one. And it will, you know, have its own way of trying to answer your queries, your questions, and stuff. And it I mean, it's insane. It spits out this whole thing within, you know, seconds.
And, so I think it's really fascinating. And so to look at that as a tool for understanding myself and to try to get, you know, validation of what I'm feeling verse as well as, like, nope. You're totally on the wrong path, Val. Like, you're, you know, you're operating out of trauma or you're operating out of, you know, an old pattern, an old wound, and, you know, you've got this blind spot. And so so I think it's really neat to kinda, you know, again, extrapolate from different voices, whether it's a perplexity, whether it's a human, whether it's a book, whether it's podcast, whatever, and and see, like, how does this fit into, you know, my worldview, my operating system, and how I wanna choose to go forward with solutions. So so the parenting and the forgiveness, like, people have and and we all do. We've all grown up with this, hero, persona of our parents.
You know? We think that just because, you know, a man put some semen in a woman and just because a woman had the egg and it got fertilized and it, you know, grew a baby for 9 months and it came out, us children think that those two people somehow should all of a sudden be perfect and understand, like, I'm this great parent now. You're just still a retarded human like everyone else. Like, all of a sudden, just because those two biological things happen, doesn't all of a sudden make you, like, a parent and not or even a good parent for that matter. And so, that's an animalistic thing. And but our our our our human child minds and child brains, because we need our parents to be these protectors, we we put them on a pedestal.
We think that they're supposed to be, you know, close to perfect, aka God. And when they make all these mistakes, it's like, what do you mean? How come you yelled at me? How come you didn't pay attention to me? How come you didn't meet my needs here, there, and there, da da da da? And and so, you know, through the teenage years and certainly through the years of the twenties thirties until you have your own children, you start to realize, like, mom's just just an average person like me, especially once you have your children. Same thing. You know? And you start to have a lot more compassion and empathy, especially men who go out in the workforce, and they realize, wow. Dad's just fucking slogging it along, trying to make it so that, you know, we've got some food on the table here. And he's not this, you know, kingpin or whatever that, you know, you think your dad is. He's a dude out there struggling.
And when moms and dads struggle, we're still just normal people. So sometimes we turn to porn. Sometimes we turn to food. Sometimes we turn to social media. Sometimes we turn to gambling. Sometimes we turn to alcohol. Sometimes we turn to, you know, sex outside of, the family. Sometime or, you know, the marriage. Sometimes, we turn to alcohol. Sometimes we turn to whatever. And those are called soul holes. I call them the 5 d's, diamonds, drugs, digital, donuts, and dicks. And, we're trying to fill up the soul hole that is like, oh my god. I'm overwhelmed. There's all these responsibilities. There's all this adulting, and nobody ever gave me the manual of how to be an adult. Nobody ever gave me the manual of how to be a parent. And so you're gonna stumble a lot, and you're gonna stumble based on your old programming from your childhood.
You know? I remember when I first did some therapy, it was about 9 years ago. It was before the divorce. It was before the total breakdown. And they're just like, we didn't hang a man or encounter him in your past. And I was like, fuck you. I'm not talking about that. That's way long, long gone. I'm gonna talk about the future. I wanna talk about how we can build a new life and blah, blah, blah. And they're just like, honey, no. Like, you've gotta look at your old patterns. You've gotta look at all this old stuff. And I was super resistant back then because I just really thought like, well, all that's laid to rest. My dad's dead. You know, I've I've got a mom who's alive, and we're decent. So it's just kinda like, whatever. I'm here. Let's talk about here. Let's talk about the future. I don't wanna look at the past. And so I was really, really ignorant and resistant. And, and it wasn't until I got into rehab that, I was doing some EMDR, and it's a it's a trauma therapy.
And, you move your eyes back and forth and you draw this shit so that your left and right hemisphere of your brain can talk to each other and you can access old memories, dah, dah, dah. Well, all of a sudden, I realized like, oh gosh. I was 46 years old, 46 years old. And, a whole trauma came up from a very young age of being molested by a family member. And I was like, I would have remembered that, you know, like, duh. And she's just like, no, you wouldn't have. You were too young and you have an ability to compartmentalize things when you're young, when you have very, very traumatic experiences. And and I was just I couldn't believe that that was part of my life, you know, and my story because I was like, why would I remembered?
Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. And so what came to me was just like, wow. What else don't I know about myself? What else is in there? And, so it was very, very humbling, you know, for somebody who thought she knew what the fuck was up and I was badass and all this. And, so that I got my ass handed to me there and realized I have I guess I have to kinda look at the past to, you know, remove some weeds, to lessen some of the trauma experiences in my life so that my operating system could be a little bit more chill and that my nervous system could be more chill. So so, you know, going through different types of therapy, DBT, CBT, doing group stuff, doing, psychedelic therapy and whatnot, you know, obviously, doing tons and tons of yoga and breath work and, you know, meditation, There's a a a a a panacea of things that you can use. And so they don't all work for you, and they aren't all relevant at the the time. You know? So stuff that was, like, really working for me at a certain point of my life might not be so relevant now because I'm kinda like, yeah. I got that.
Or it just doesn't apply to what I'm doing. So there's no right or wrong way to do therapy and recovery and coaching moving forward, but the way is to get in the ring, you know, and start doing it. But, you know, and it takes time. I remember when my ex and I were going through, couples counseling prior to the divorce and after the divorce and all this stuff. I mean, we must have seen 10 therapists. And quite honestly, they all sucked. And they didn't suck because, you know, we we got a divorce. But what sucked was you know, think about this. Right?
You have a, a vehicle, a car. Right? It gets in a giant crash, and your vehicle is your relationship. And, you know, would you take that vehicle into the body shop once a week for 10 weeks and then not drive it in between the time being in the body shop? That's what fucking couples counseling is. It's stupid. And so no offense, but it's it's not how you do things. And same thing with crisis work. What and that's why rehab was helpful, you know, because it was like, you're in the fucking body shop for 30 days. It doesn't mean you're gonna be perfect going out, but it's like you're in there doing intensive work. And so I've I'm grateful for therapists and coaches and and healers and people out there who are doing great work. But there's a difference between being in maintenance mode, and there's a difference between being in precrisis, crisis, and post crisis mode. And so, you know, when you're precrisis, like, I look at it like a bell curve. Right? Crisis is the peak. Like, oh my god. You're in the fucking, you know, you're in divorce court. You're in the hospital. You're in jail. God knows whatever. But, like, you're in the fucking shit when everything just exploded.
When you're right before that pre crisis mode and you can kind of identify, you know, as a professional, like, these people need a lot of help or things are gonna explode. As much as you want to, like, give them that, like, go to the weekend retreat and go take a week off, most people, me included, have egos that say, I can handle this, and we're never gonna get to that crisis, and I got this. And so it's very, very challenging to get people to go into that that ultra deep work, prior to a crisis. It's just almost impossible. Same thing. You you know, you're smoking, you're drinking, you're gonna have a heart attack, and you're like, I'm fine. I'm I'm resilient. I have good stock in my blood. And then all of a sudden, you're in the fucking hospital and you have a heart attack. You're like, oh, oops.
And only until you get out of that hospital is when you can really start doing the true work. And so that applies to to spiritual, emotional, mental health type stuff, obviously, financial stuff. So post crisis is where you have the best opportunity for transformation, in my opinion, and my experience, not just opinion. When people are coming straight out of a post crisis, they are humble. They're vulnerable. They recognize, like, woah. And sometimes you have to have a couple crises, unfortunately, because, again, the ego is just like, well, that was just a one time thing. Well, maybe not. And so once you're in this post crisis mode, you've the the doors of possibility are more open for transformation and and, change in your behavior, change in the way you think, and change in the way, obviously, that your whole operating system can get oriented around your future. So right now, I am in a unexpected post crisis mode, and I am a lot more aligned to, What where have I had blind spots? You know? And because I don't want that to happen again because that really hurt. And so people make changes after things hurt. You know, when you get enough pain, you might be like, well, right, you know, do something different. So so this experience, you know, with the parents and the parental forgiveness is something that I just want you who are listening, whoever listens to understand, like, your parents. Again, they're just they're just like people like you. They are not heroes.
And just because they had a biological function, you know, doesn't mean that they're all of a sudden turned into these, like, amazing communicators and these amazing caretakers. And so when you can start to understand the the humanity of your mother and father, you can start to forgive yourself. And when you can start to forgive yourself, you can get out of a shame spiral of, you know, Angel says hi, of making mistakes. And you can be less afraid maybe to do steps forward that involve, risk and fear of messing up. Because you're gonna, like, if you're a human, you're gonna mess up, and you will mess up and make mistakes until the day you die.
So, anyway, so I wanna show the screen here. Let's go. Okay. So, you know, obviously, you guys can see the, beginning because you're already in the the beginning of that blog. But this is excuse me. You know, the journey to forgive our parents, personal healing, blah blah blah. Then again, it's never about excusing harmful behavior, but it's about, you know, not having resentment and clearing the space forward. All of this is written again by perplexity. And, I just gosh. I think it's so interesting that we have there you go. We have that. But you think about the psychology of parent and child wounds. You have early childhood experiences.
You know? And so when we have rejection or hurt from our parents, when they judge us, when they yell at us, when they belittle us, You know, it's very difficult for us to have that same, ability to forgive and the compassion for others if our parents are, like, shaming us all the time and saying, you know, that you're worthless, your friends are worthless, what you do is worthless, etcetera. And so, you know, to me, it's ultra important to just let that shit go. You know? And so, obviously, we have lots of benefits. We can have healthier boundaries, more emotional maturity, better relationship skills. You know, at some point, you're just gonna keep carrying this forward generation after generation after generation if you do not put a line in the sand and say, it stops here. It stops with me.
Again, like, you're not excusing behavior that was hurtful, but what you are is acknowledging that, yep, you were wounded too. That's probably why you did it, and I love you and forgive you. And for me, it's just like, how do we get inside of the hearts of our parents? You know? And so this is it. It's like taking time, learn about your parents' own experiences and their challenges, understanding the context of their behavior. And, again, you can have compassion without excusing the actions. This is, again, this is where a lot of people come in, you know, whether whether it's domestic violence, whether it's parental, you know, issues or people didn't, you know, pay enough attention to you, they yelled at you, etcetera.
You know, it's really, really getting to the heart of things, which is the heart, which is love. It's like, is that person truly an evil person? Did they wanna hurt you? If the answer is no and, you know, you have a reason for being in relationship with them, lean in. You know? How can you learn to be a more loving, higher consciousness person? You know, Christ consciousness talks about forgiveness. And, you know, that's what Jesus was about. It's about forgiving and, you know, leave the judgment to God. You're not God. So don't judge other people. Just understand that you're all the same, walking each other home on this crazy human journey. And it's like, it's a it's a university for your soul, and you're here to learn love. That's it. You're here to learn love, self love, love of other, love of planet.
But so again, this is just, you know, focusing on the positive and challenging aspects of my parents. What were their good things? You know? What were their limitations? Did they have financial limitations? Did they have a physical limitation? Did they have, you know, literally, something wrong with them chemically? You know? And then, really, like, what are their positive things? What was good about them? It's easy to sit and look at the peaks of the negativity and identify those people that way. But the truth is that's not who they are. Those are some actions. And so, were they good people? Were you know, 90% of the time, were they out there trying to make the best of life and do what they could, you know, in in life? So I think that's really, really important.
I'm working on here, but, you know, the journey of forgiveness requires changes in thinking, feeling, and acting. And so it does take time, you know, and you have to process grief and let go of the resentment and develop compassion. That's it. You know, and acknowledge that it hurt you. It doesn't mean like you're not allowed to feel angry or hurt. Like you can acknowledge like, there's I'm I'm doing a thing with, Good Inside. It's an app with, doctor Becky Kennedy. And, 2 or more things can be true at the same time. And so a lot of people forget, and they think like, oh, it's black or white. Like, he's bad or he's good or she's bad or she's good. It's like, no. She's good, and she had some behavior that wasn't good.
That's interesting. So for those of us, you know, who are more mature than teenagers and young people who get stuck in black and white thinking, all of those things can be true. You know? And so that's kind of like a self forgiveness and a self awareness and a self acceptance thing to to recognize. And you can be a good person, and you can do some shitty things. And it doesn't take away from the goodness that lives within you. It just means you've got some work to do and some skill building, and you gotta get back in the ring and keep doing it and and practicing. So, anyways, you know, DBT, there's other, you know, therapies that you can work with that, you know, work with mindfulness, skill building, emotional regulation, etcetera, how to have relational skills. And so these are things that we should all learn. You know? Marshall Rosenberg with nonviolent communication.
It's very important to start getting not just a giant box of tools that are sitting out in your garage, but, like, things that you bring with you into the the dojo, into the practice zone, but then into the ring when you're with people, whether they're business people, whether they're lovers, whether they're family, friends, etcetera. So you're only gonna get good at it if you actually do it. You're not gonna get good at watching other people do it or reading a book about it or looking at an app. And so that's where the scary part is, you know. And so when you, you know, can have some intentionality with the people that you love and work on things, you're gonna make mistakes.
You might feel like you're on eggshells, and I know I do. And and I'm sometimes scared to do things because I'm like, oh my god. I don't wanna mess it up because we we we got here to this good part. So if I do something, it's gonna break it. It's like, is it really that solid if your one mistake is gonna break it? No. So that tells you that you need more work. Easier said than done, of course. So looking at what perplexity gave us and this, again, this is, I think, with Claude, Claude 3.5. You know, we're obviously working on creating new patterns. We wanna break the old cycles. We have accepted, and that's the other part. Oh, fuck. Acceptance is so hard.
So hard. It's so hard because we want to control things and we want to change things, you know, and other than you know, acceptance is an act of faith. It's an act of of trusting God that this is the way it's supposed to be for now and finding peace within that, you know, and and it's a tough one, but it's, I think, the most important thing we can do as humans. You know? God grant me to the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And so acceptance is a really, really big deal. So, anyways, this is really cool, and I thought it was great. Obviously, we've got some references so you guys can see this. But we'll go back here.
Turn you off. I know this is kind of a big, long Sunday morning sermon, and, I hope it serves you. And whether you're a parent or not, whether you're a parent that you are in training to become a parent and have children or you've got young children, forgiveness is a big, big, big deal. You know? And learning how to be a masterful forgiver is one of, I think, life's greatest gifts. You know? And, you know, this 11 x love lab that I'm working on, you know, the lab stands for lessons and blessings. And there's a lesson in everything, and there's a blessing in everything. Right? And if we can accept that that is true.
You know, every little thing that has occurred in our lives has a lesson and a blessing in it. And if we choose to dive deep and sit with those things and get curious, we're gonna find it. You know? And it helps us become more empowered and not in a victim mind set and not in a why this happened to me, you know, dialogue that goes on sometimes for those of us who get hurt. And and, again, we are not bypassing feeling the feeling. It hurts to get hurt. Sucks. Sucks to get rejected. It sucks not to get chosen. You know? It sucks when things aren't working out to your vision.
And the reality is the more that we can get strong with knowing that that's just the way it goes, I don't care who you are. You could have a $1,000,000,000. You can be beautiful. You can have, you know, you can be 6 foot tall guy. You can be strong. You can live in the right country. Like, no matter who you are and where you are, things are not gonna go your way at some point. That's the way it is. We can't blame our parents. We can't blame anything. You know? It's like up to us to change now and to be here now and to be a fucking badass love hacker, love warrior, love goddess, love God, and just love her like a super lover. So my wish for you, if you've gotten this far, congratulations for listening to my voice for 42 minutes and 15 seconds.
My wish for you is to be gentle with yourself and strong with your actions. And don't give up. Never give up. And if you need to make a list of all the the things that your parents did that were bad, you know, think about I would encourage you to do this. Okay? And this is something that's helped me a lot with not just my parents, but with people. You know, again, we're not excusing bad behavior, but make a list of all the bad things that they did. They didn't, you know, give me a lollipop at the grocery store. They yelled at me. They locked me in my room. They, you know, didn't pick me up at practice on time, blah blah blah.
You know, they kicked me out, any of it. How many minutes of your life was that experience? Truly, like any of these experiences. You know? Oh, it was 20 minutes. It was an hour. It was 5 days. It was a week. It was a year. It was 30 seconds. You know? Do that. And then on the other column, on the right side, make a list of all the things they did for you. Probably kind of boring. They kept a roof over your head. You got a car. You got, you know, the electricity stayed on. They put food in the lunch box for you. They didn't leave every single thing that they did. Oh, they gave you, you know, string cheese in your lunch. They showed up at parent teacher conferences.
How many minutes did that happen? I don't care who you are unless you truly lived in the most, violent situation where somebody was constantly beating you up. Like, this right column is always gonna be larger. It is. You know? And the same thing. Like, so when you look at your family, your mother, your father, a lover or somebody, it's almost always going to be larger over here on the good side. And so what I also want you to do second is do that for yourself. And for those of you who struggle with self forgiveness, I, you know, have struggled with it and that's where shame comes in and guilt. Do that list.
Truly do the list and use math as your friend and just be like, Here's all the things that I did that I'm not proud of. You know, I yelled at my kid. I drank alcohol. I did this. I, you know, didn't, you know, meet my expectations of being, you know, this person I wanna be. Do that. How many minutes of your life have you done that? And then how many minutes of your life have you stayed above ground? How many minutes of your life have you stayed, you know, out of jail, out of out of the morgue, got out of the hospital? You know, like, it's hard being a human. So how many minutes compared to these things are there? Like, you're also gonna see this giant list. And so give yourself some grace. Give yourself some credit and give your parents the same grace and credit. Like, for the most part, everybody's pretty damn good inside.
And for the most part, we're all just chugging along, doing the best we can with what we've got. And so, that's it. And this is one of the many steps of self love and self acceptance and acceptance of others and acceptance of the world around us. So I hope this helped. I know it was long, and it's been a tough one. And I don't know if you guys have been on a tough path lately, but if you have, you're not alone. And if you have, reach out, you know, subscribe to, you know where the hell is it? Subscribe. I don't know. Yeah. Here you go.
Get in the love hacker newsletter. Subscribe. I'll send you guys stuff once in a while. I'm gonna be opening up the 11x love lab soon. I'm gonna be doing the 11x love method course. I'm not gonna give you the link yet because I don't want you all to sign up to something. It's gonna be a waiting list, and, I'm gonna be doing a Bitcoin for Families virtual summit, on December 7th, and I'm also gonna be in Austin, I think, the following weekend. Yeah. We're gonna be doing a whole thing, but, just go to go to the website djval djvalerie love dot com forward slash subscribe, and, you'll get all the info there. But other than that, just like, you know, the subheading of this episode was like how to forgive with integrity.
And, you know, integrity to me means being true to yourself. It means not letting somebody off the hook, not letting the behavior off the hook and, you know, wanting that person to recognize that they, you know, had a behavior that hurt you, but realizing, like, they're just a person like you and they're just a human. And so even if they repeat the behavior several times, if they're trying, they're truly trying, you know, give some grace because you're gonna repeat lots of behaviors. I promise you. You're gonna be hitting the porn. You're gonna be eating the donuts at 2 in the morning. You're gonna be maybe smoking some weed or drinking or doing whatever you do. Like, you're gonna keep falling back into being a human. So just remember to have some grace for other people, and definitely your parents.
You know? They're just people. So I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving here if you're in the states. And, Yeah. That's it. I really like being in my pajamas doing these episodes. They're fun. Alright, everybody. Until next time. I've been up super early, so I might could take a nap. And, until next time, I'm wishing you peace, love, and warm aloha. Always. God bless you. Thank you, God. Thank you for this moment. All right. Aloha.
Introduction and Personal Update
The Power of Communication
Family Dynamics and Spiritual Growth
The Importance of Practice and Being in the Ring
Opportunities for Growth During Family Gatherings
The Journey of Forgiveness
Understanding Parents and Personal Healing
Trusting Your Intuition
Therapy and Self-Discovery
Crisis and Transformation
Lessons and Blessings in Life
Self-Reflection and Forgiveness Exercise
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
