Forgiveness as Freedom

When you experience a profound loss, the grief is so loud that it becomes the only thing you hear. It sits right in front of you, taking up all the space in the room. And because it is so heavy, it becomes incredibly easy to start blaming everything on it.

You feel anger, and you assume it's the grief. You feel sadness, and you assume it's the loss. You feel a deep, lingering exhaustion, and you tell yourself that this is just what it means to survive the hardest thing you've ever been through.

But what if the grief isn't the only thing you're carrying?

What if, underneath the very real pain of loss, there are other layers? Old wounds. Old expectations. Old anger that you've been dragging around for decades, long before the loss ever happened.

I didn't realize how much I was carrying until recently. Just a few weeks ago, I was on a Zoom call with my mentor and about 80 other people. I was the one called up front for a session. And in that moment, I had a breakthrough that had absolutely nothing to do with losing Jesse, and everything to do with what I had been holding onto for most of my life.

It was a release of things I should have never carried in the first place. Things that were handed to me, expectations that were placed on me, and anger that I had quietly folded into my own identity.

When you finally let go of something you've been carrying for that long, the physical relief is almost startling. It felt like an anchor had been lifted. I didn't even realize how much that weight had been suppressing me how much it had been coloring the way I saw my life, my business, and even my own healing.

Forgiveness is a funny word. We often think of it as something we do for someone else. We think it means saying that what happened was okay, or that the hurt didn't matter. But that's not what it is at all.

Forgiveness is freedom. It is the decision to stop carrying a burden that was never yours to hold.

When that weight lifted for me, everything shifted. I looked at my life differently. I looked at where I was then, and where I am now, and I realized how much energy I had been spending just trying to hold it all together.

Now, that energy is going somewhere else. It's going into making my business stronger and more intentional. It's going into showing up for my teammates differently. It's going into being more present with my daughter and my grandson. I've always been here with them, but now, my physical being, my mind, and my heart are actually connected in a way they weren't before.

I'm not making the excuses I used to make. I'm getting back to exercising. I'm taking the steps to strengthen my health naturally, because I want to be here. I want to be here for me, so I can be here for others.

We talk a lot about trying to be 1% better every day. But sometimes, being 1% better isn't about adding a new habit or pushing yourself harder. Sometimes, it's about putting something down.

Whether you are 25 or, like me, in your 63rd year of life, you are carrying things that do not belong to you. You are carrying old stories, old resentments, and old pain. And if you aren't actively doing something to release them, you are missing out on the life that is waiting for you underneath all that weight.

There are physical things in this life that we have absolutely no control over. We cannot control loss. We cannot control the things that happen to us. But that doesn't mean we can't make other things better. It doesn't mean we can't lighten the load.

You don't have to wait for a massive breakthrough on a call with 80 people to start. You just have to be willing to look at what you're carrying and ask yourself: Is this mine? And do I still need to hold it?

The moment you decide to put it down is the moment you actually start living.

Forgiveness isn't about the past. It's about giving yourself permission to finally step into your future, unburdened and free.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are holding onto something that isn't serving you. Maybe it's a resentment toward someone who hurt you years ago. Maybe it's an expectation that was placed on you by a parent or society, and you've been twisting yourself into knots trying to meet it. Maybe it's anger at yourself for a mistake you made.

Whatever it is, it's heavy. And you've been carrying it for so long that you probably don't even notice the weight anymore. It just feels like a part of who you are.

But it isn't.

Think about the energy it takes to hold onto that weight. Think about how it colors your interactions with the people you love, how it influences the decisions you make in your business, how it affects the way you treat your own body. When you are carrying old anger or old expectations, you are not fully present in your own life. You are living with one foot in the past, tethered to something that has already happened.

We often resist forgiveness because we feel like holding onto the anger or the hurt is a way of protecting ourselves. We think that if we let it go, we are somehow saying that what happened was acceptable. We think that our anger is a shield.

But it's not a shield. It's a cage.

The person who hurt you, the expectation that was placed on you, the mistake you made those things are in the past. But the weight you are carrying? That is in the present. And you are the only one who is suffering because of it.

When I had my breakthrough on that Zoom call, I realized that the anger I had been holding onto wasn't protecting me. It was suppressing me. It was keeping me from fully connecting with my family, from fully stepping into my business, from fully living my life.

Releasing it didn't change the past. It didn't rewrite history. But it changed my present. It gave me my energy back. It gave me my focus back. It gave me my freedom back.

You deserve that same freedom.

You deserve to wake up in the morning without the heavy blanket of old resentments weighing you down. You deserve to interact with your loved ones from a place of genuine connection, rather than through the filter of past hurts. You deserve to build your business, pursue your goals, and live your life with all of your energy, rather than just the fraction of it that isn't tied up in holding onto the past.

So, I want to ask you the same question I had to ask myself: What are you carrying that isn't yours to hold?

Take a moment to really think about it. Don't brush past it. What is the thing that immediately comes to mind? What is the old story, the old anger, the old expectation that you've been dragging around with you?

Now, ask yourself: What would my life look like if I put it down?

You don't have to figure out how to forgive right this second. You don't have to have all the answers. The first step is simply acknowledging the weight. The first step is simply realizing that you have a choice.

You can continue to carry it, or you can choose to put it down.

Forgiveness is not a one-time event. It is a daily practice. It is a conscious decision to release the past so that you can fully inhabit the present. It is the choice to stop letting old wounds dictate your future.

It is the choice to be free.

You don’t have to carry it all alone.
If this spoke to you, reach me at:
[email protected]

In support,
Claudette Eames 🌻
Rooted in healing. Grounded in purpose.