We do not know what we say or do that will impact another. We cannot control how what we do will create change, or resonate, or simply fall short in another beings life.

What I do know is that everything I do creates a ripple. It moves the energy around me and pushes it out into the world in invisible waves of…

And that’s the thing. It is the energy invested in those waves that creates the more I want to see in the world.

When I am angry and lash out, the energy around me is filled with the anger I’ve released into the world. The longer I hold onto my angry state, the more angry energy I invest into my ripple effect.

The longer I invest in anger, the deeper my ripple effect becomes entrenched in anger.

It is a no win situation. A dangerous course that will keep me entrenched in living life on the dark side, far from the light of love and joy and peace and harmony.

When I was released from that relationship that was killing me, I was afraid to ‘get angry’. Deep within me I believed that if I became angry, I would never become ‘unangry’. That was my experience in life. My father was an angry man. His anger could erupt like Vesuvius spilling over its rim, burning everything in its path.

And then, he’d stop. For my father, the anger was done. Over. But it never felt like it to me. Hyper-vigilant, I waited for the next eruption because, the ripple of his anger remained. It’s energy was always present and the longer I experienced his sudden explosions, the less I trusted the states where his anger was not present.

In that relationship that almost killed me (and in the end set me free), the memories of my father’s anger were triggered with every instance the man in question erupted in anger. The pattern was so similar to my father’s I eventually lost all discernment. I became convinced, somewhere deep within me, that his anger was my father’s anger and I was once again a powerless child.

Consciously, I was not aware of the deep-seated patterns of my fear of anger. I thought my angst was because of my fear of losing the man who promised to love me and who then continued to lie his way into my heart. In my confusion, and vulnerability to the deep-seated nature of my pattern of freezing and staying still in the face of anger, I became lost in the tsunami of fear that eventually overwhelmed me. Caught in the constant turmoil of my fear that the past truly was the present, I could not see my path out of the darkness. I began to believe there was no light.

I am so blessed.

When he was arrested and I was set free on that morning in May 2003, I was given the miracle of my life.

I knew I had to heal. I knew I had to set myself free of the past so that I could help my daughters heal from the trauma of that relationship, from the horror of almost losing their mother. I knew, deep within me, that if I did not heal myself, if I did not forgive myself and love myself, the sorrow and guilt and sadness of those dark days would be forever present between us.

At the time, there were a lot of voices telling me what to do. Get angry. Write a list of all the awful things he did so that you don’t forget how horrible he was/is. Don’t let down your guard.

I have to forgive myself first, I told them.

But it wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong.

What if it isn’t about fault and ‘wrong’. What if forgiveness is the gift I give myself so that the past no longer has a hold on me? What if, forgiveness is the path to love?

To heal, to be present for my daughters, to be real, I had to forgive myself so that I could love myself. All of me. And that included the part where I was a mother who deserted her children.

I could tell you it was a long journey to forgiveness. But in fact, it wasn’t. It was a choice. A daily decision to say, “I forgive me”. And, in that decision, in that simple statement was the choice to not write the litany of my sins, his sins and all the sins of everyone in the world who ever hurt me…

“I forgive me” became my mantra. My touchstone. My strength.

The more I said it, the more I believed. And the more I believed, the greater my truth became, I forgive me.

In forgiveness, the path to Love is always present.

Through forgiveness, the door to my heart is always open.

I am so blessed.

Once upon a time, I almost died for love. Today, the truth is, I live for Love, in Love, with Love always at the core of my being true to who I am, in every way I am in the world today.

In Love, I know my ripple radiates out in constant waves of all that I want to create more of in my life and my world. Because, the deeper my knowing of Love, the stronger its flow becomes in my life and in the flow of Love, the further my ripple stretches out to where I am living on purpose — touching hearts and opening minds to set spirits free.

Namaste.