Episode 1:  Conversations that Matter

Forgiving Yourself and Letting Go

A practical, radical, and self-honoring approach to letting go… 

Forgiving yourself and letting go is the 1st topic on The Conversations that Matter Show. You’ll be learning about radical forgiveness, be guided through a sacred forgiveness exercise, and learn more about letting go.

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Partial Transcript of Episode 1 of the 
Conversations That Matter Show – Forgiveness and Letting Go

Dr. Dar ~ Welcome to conversations that matter.
This is the launch of this wonderful series that I’m going to be doing this year. And today we are going to be talking about forgiveness.

I feel like it’s so relevant with what’s happened this week and really for the last four years, with the divisiveness, between different thoughts, different and opposing belief systems, opposing organizational cultures, you know, we could probably I could probably list a lot of things, things there, but I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole. You know who you are, you know, what you’ve experienced in your life over the last four years, and especially this week, as we’ve observed, what’s happened in DC and in many of our states with with the Capitol, buildings and government locations.

So I really wanted to share that I chose this topic of forgiveness a couple of weeks ago, and then reached out to a resident expert and friend, Lorree Appleby welcome. So glad you said yes to do this today. Lorree is a certified Radical Living Master Coach, intuitive energy healer, and creator of the self growth game, Soul Adventure, Journey to the Real Me.  She guides, heart centered women to gain gain self confidence and self love, by creating a soul connection through radical forgiveness.

I think we all need a dose of that I know I do. This spiritual technology allows us to get to the root of our blocks so that we can transform them into wisdom and live our lives in harmony. So we’ll share more about how to connect with Lorree  later on in this program. And I am going to say welcome, Lorree, it’s a pleasure to have you again. And I just think this topic is so relevant right now, and I’m just thrilled to learn from you, as you share your wisdom with us.

Lorree Appleby ~ Thank you, Dr. Dar, I am really happy to be here and to talk about forgiveness and the divisiveness, this larger issue that you brought up. Thank you so much.

Dr. Dar ~ You’re so welcome. So my first question is, you know, there’s a lot of different sayings, you know, about forgive and forget, and you can forgive, but you never forget, you know, I mean, there’s just a lot packed into that word forgiveness. So I’d like to know how you define it. And then to unpack that word a little bit?

Lorree Appleby ~ Yes, for sure. So I defined forgiveness as letting go of the pain, the suffering associated with holding someone else, or something else responsible for our happiness for our circumstances of our life. And so that we can take that wisdom that we’ve gained through having the experiences so that we can move forward in our life and really improve our quality of quality of life.

Dr. Dar ~ That’s really, really beautiful. So it’s really what I’m hearing you say it’s it’s more about letting go of external influences on our own life and selves. Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, we’re going to talk about the larger context, because we are dealing with being influenced by what’s happening in our society and culture, and definitely political landscape. You know, there are family members with the pandemic Now, having opposing views and it getting really difficult for those of us who are peacemakers and harmony makers and just want everyone to get along and putting in rules that we’re not going to talk about that just so that we can get along kind of thing. So, you know, in that context, many people think of forgiveness as something that you give others or associated with a religious or spiritual context. What do you say about that? Yeah,

Lorree Appleby ~ That is a common perception that a lot of people have… I too, had myself before I really, you know, got into this work. But I would like to share that forgiveness is first and foremost for you is for you, the person who’s doing the forgiveness is the other person will probably benefit because you’re going to change your views are going to change and how you see the situation. So when we’re able to forgive, we no longer feel that we are a victim. And I like to look at it from you know, I say the spiritual point of view because the work that I do can be whichever religion a person has, as long as they believe in some kind of higher power can be applied to it. And true forgiveness is really coming from our soul, not from our logical mind, not from our ego. And we are as soul in a body in a human body. And we came here to have these experiences these feeling experiences of duality of right wrong Good, bad black white, like all the different opposites, the polarities. So we come here to have these experiences, and we have a certain amount of pain that we feel, and then we, eventually we start to, you know, grow and evolve, and then we start to see how there are learning lessons within these experiences. And then we can really get in touch with our feelings and move through the process of being able to find those lessons, and the learning the wisdom, right, and we start to see what our limiting beliefs are, that are actually not true at all, that we were, pick them up along the way of growing up.

Dr. Dar ~ So I like to say that, you know, limiting beliefs originate in the left brain, which is the logical analytical critic, critical comparing judging brain and it sounds like, you really can’t do forgiveness with just the left brain?

Lorree Appleby ~ no
You, you get stuck, because the left brain wants to make someone wrong? Have a judgment? And as long as you’re doing that, you’re not going to be able to fully forgive? Yeah, it’s gonna just keep coming up. Again, and again,

Dr. Dar ~ not just not just with yourself, but what in whatever relationship it is, as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Lorree Appleby ~ Absolutely.

Dr. Dar ~ Wouldn’t it be easier just to not have to forgive ourselves or others? Why Why do we even have to do it?

Lorree Appleby ~ Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, we could and what will happen is, we’ll never feel that we are in control of our lives, we’re always going to feel that we are a victim, we’re not going to be able to, you know, how can you change something that you don’t have control over. So as long as we’re blaming someone outside of ourselves, I’m not saying blame ourselves. But as long as we’re holding someone outside of ourselves responsible, then we are not able to change that. So blaming others for what’s wrong within the world and feeling that we have no control over it. That’s what’s going to happen. If you are not, you don’t bother to forgive, you’re just going to get more angry, more resentment and more upset, and it’s going to affect all areas of your life eventually.

Dr. Dar ~ One of the things that I’m aware of… just as you were talking about that, you know, as long as we continue to blame someone else, or hold someone else accountable, how, how can just with the recent events, there’s there’s a lot of being blame being tossed around both sides, right. But I have no, you know, I have no control over other than my vote, right, potentially, and being more active in my community and supporting communities to see all sides of a picture, so to speak. At the end of the day, I’m not accountable for the choices that were made by these individuals, though, you know, the ones who stormed the capital, the leader in charge who stoke the fires for so many, you know, years, I’m not accountable for that. So how, how do I shift that to myself?

Lorree Appleby ~ Well, that would take going through the process of forgiveness to be able to do that. And that is the work that I do with people is I help them to, you know, start from the beginning of noticing what is like, what is the story that you are upset about, like what you just said, noticing what your judgments are, what your feelings are validating yourself? And then we start to collapse the story of seeing where are we looking at interpretations? And where are the actual facts because as we know, there’s so much flying around, we don’t even really truly know what is true and what isn’t true.

And it’s very confusing. So we feel that we have to pick a side and then we are stuck in a judgment. So really being able to expand your expand your thinking so that you’re not just narrowly stuck in one way of looking at something and also being able to have compassion for everyone that we’re all right where we need to be whether we feel that it is the right place or not. And some people are experiencing a lot of pain and hurt and suffering and for us to be able to do our inner work really helps us to be able to come to terms and be okay, not saying that.

We’re saying it’s okay what’s happening but feeling that we can do something productive with something that’s going to foster Peace and love and and, you know, connecting again and having you know intelligent conversations and trying to understand the different points of view and come to some kind of mediation of some sort. Yeah, that’s what I would suggest. But every individual is different. So it’s really a case by case scenario to really dig into it.

Dr. Dar ~ Yeah, because our filters and our perspective is based on our life experience and the way that whether it feels good or not, is, to your point. I’m hearing you say that forgiveness allows creation of an opening, if you will, for collaborative dialogue, without the need to agree or push the other person to change to seeing things our way, which is a beautiful neutral place to be.  It seems pretty basic to self is self healing and self esteem, but more importantly, self acceptance and acceptance of the other.  Why don’t we learn more about this at home or at school? Why, you know, one of the reasons that this isn’t more prevalent in the world?