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If I could whisper one truth into your heart right now, it would be this:
You are not ‘broken’.
You were and are never ‘wrong’.
And you have always been doing the best you could to survive, to be loved, to stay safe.
Even now, as I write this, I feel my chest soften. Because I know how hard it can be to believe that.
It’s easy to believe this kind of grace and compassion applies to our animals—or to small children. But for ourselves? Especially as adults? That kind of belief can feel nearly impossible.
But based on what we know about how humans work, it’s 100% true.
Self-forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools we have for healing grief—not just the grief of losing our Rainbow Ones, but the grief of losing parts of ourselves along the way. Because as you might have already begun to see, our pure and innocent animals come into our lives to help liberate the pure and innocent child within us.
And yet… it’s not an easy concept to wrap our heads around. Especially because our culture teaches us that forgiveness means saying, “It’s okay that this bad thing happened.” Or worse: “I should just get over it.”
But true, compassionate self-forgiveness isn’t like that. It’s not a mental checkbox. It’s not an intellectual bypass. It’s an embodied experience of truth and love.
And most importantly—it’s a process.
In earlier chapters—especially when we explored inner child healing in Week 7 [Reading] Inner Child Healing through Pet Grief and compassionate presence in Week 5 [Reading] Compassion: The Key to Healing Grief —we explored how our early life experiences shaped our beliefs and behaviors. How we adapted in order to feel loved, safe, and accepted.
One of the most life-changing realizations I had in my healing journey was something I first discovered through my studies in spiritual psychology:
Trauma isn’t what happened to us—it’s what happened inside us as a result of what happened.
That insight changed everything.
When I studied clinical psychology in university and saw a psychologist in my early twenties, I didn’t resonate with the approach at all. Most of what I encountered was cognitive behavioral therapy. And while I deeply respect its intentions, it didn’t help me heal. It helped me manage symptoms. It encouraged me to become aware of my patterns and behave differently—but it didn’t reach the source of the pain.
In hindsight, it just felt like I was being taught how to upgrade my coping mechanisms.
But I didn’t want to become better at coping. I wanted to heal.
It wasn’t until I returned to school to complete my master’s in spiritual psychology that things began to make sense. I was finally learning how to meet the pain inside me with love, to release what was unresolved, and to reconnect with the wholeness that had always been there underneath the hurt.
Years later, when I came across the work of people like Dr. Gabor Maté and Bessel van der Kolk, I felt so deeply validated. The truths I had experienced in my own body and in my work with clients were now being echoed by leading voices in trauma research. We can release trauma. We can heal. And we don’t have to carry it forever.
But to do that, we have to understand something that’s not always obvious:
Trauma isn’t just what happened.
It’s what we did inside ourselves to survive what happened.
The coping mechanisms we developed as children didn’t just disappear. They became us. They became our personality, our patterns, the ways we relate to ourselves and the world.
And they helped us survive. That matters.
But what helped us survive as children may now be hurting us as adults.
Self-forgiveness allows us to finally see those patterns with compassion. To acknowledge how hard it’s been. To honor what we’ve been carrying. And to gently, lovingly release the judgments that have kept us stuck.
Here’s one of the deepest patterns I’ve spent years healing—and how Ellie helped me see it with new eyes.
My stepdad was harsh. Critical. Unforgiving. I never felt good enough around him. Because his approval seemed to hinge on perfection and performance, I learned to hustle for love. I learned to anticipate his reactions, stay small, overachieve, and push myself hard.
Eventually, I internalized his voice. My inner critic became a militant taskmaster, driving me into workaholism, exhaustion, and self-punishment.
That inner critic is a coping strategy. A smart, adaptive way to survive when I was just a little girl.
Back then, it protected me. It helped me stay out of trouble. It kept me alert and prepared.
But now? I don’t need it anymore.
That same inner critic that once kept me safe is now just holding me back. It’s not helping me move forward—it’s keeping me small. And it’s time to let it go.
Let’s come back to what trauma really is.
It’s not just what happened.
It’s what we did inside ourselves to cope with what happened.
When I was sexually abused, I started to believe I was wrong, dirty, and unlovable.
When I was told not to cry while my mum was dying, I started to believe my feelings and needs didn’t matter.
When my mum died, I started to believe I couldn’t survive that kind of pain ever again.
These beliefs didn’t come from logic. They came from trying to stay safe in a world that suddenly felt terrifying.
And of course—it wasn’t my fault that I formed those beliefs.
But here’s the empowering part:
While the trauma may have started outside of me, the beliefs it created live inside me—and that means healing them is completely within my power.
A lot of people think the trauma was the abuse, the event, the loss. But what actually stays with us—what really messes us up—is what we began to believe about ourselves in order to cope.
And while that truth can feel heavy at first—it’s also hopeful.
Because it means our healing doesn’t depend on anyone else.
It’s in our hands.
That’s why self-forgiveness is at the very heart of trauma healing. And I believe at the heart of ALL healing.
It’s one thing to become aware of a limiting belief. That alone can be powerful.
But forgiving ourselves for ever believing the lie in the first place?
That’s what actually clears it from our consciousness.
That’s what allows the pattern to finally release.
Because most of the time, we’re not just stuck in the pain of what happened—we’re stuck in shame for what we believed because it happened.
Self-forgiveness says:
“I forgive myself for buying into the misbelief that I wasn’t worthy…
I forgive myself for thinking I was to blame…
I forgive myself for believing I couldn’t survive this pain…”
And in doing so, we create the space to come home to who we truly are.
Whole. Lovable. Innocent. Free.
Deep loss is experienced by the brain in a similar way to trauma. So while some parts of grief will naturally move and shift with time, other parts can get stuck in emotional loops—especially if we’re holding onto unprocessed pain or false beliefs.
That’s where self-forgiveness becomes so powerful.
In the midst of grief, it’s completely normal to tell ourselves bold, painful, and sometimes irrational things just to survive. And in a way, those thoughts can be helpful in the moment. They’re often coping mechanisms—emotional shortcuts to help us deal with something too overwhelming to fully process yet.
Some of the thoughts I’ve found myself facing through grief include:
When these thoughts move through us, they’re helping us give voice to the immense heartbreak and rage that grief brings. They’re not wrong. They’re not true, necessarily—but they’re real in that moment. They’re authentic.
The danger comes when we resist them or try to shut them down. Because what we resist… persists.
If we don’t allow ourselves to acknowledge these thoughts—to feel them, express them, and release them—they tend to get stuck. And the more we ignore or suppress them, the more likely they are to anchor into our unconscious and become part of our belief system.
That’s when they turn into misbeliefs—subtle, persistent stories we start to live by. And instead of helping us move through our grief, they keep us in it.
Great Job! That’s Week 11 Reading Complete 🏆 🎉 😁 🙌
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