The Power of Forgiveness

Speaker: 00:00:04

WSC Intro/Outro: This is When Spirit Calls and you on your journey, are in the right place. This show is about magic, miracles and meaning shared through stories, interviews and channeled messages. We have so much to share about who you are and your divine mission here on the earth, let's get to it. When Spirit Calls is right now.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:00:32

Hello, hello, back again for another edition of When Spirit Calls and you get we again for two episodes in a row. I had such incredible feedback from the last episode, I thought, let's just keep on going. Let's keep this momentum going, and we will have some new guests coming on for our next episode. So I assure you, we can have some great new guests coming in for the rest of the season. So today, actually, I wanted to talk about this aspect of forgiveness. It seems to be coming up a lot, and so I feel like it's an important topic to dive into and explore. The reason why I wanted to bring this topic up and to speak about is because it's actually been coming up quite a bit in my life. I have been moving through a lot of layers of grief over the last few months, and some of this grief has been catalyzed from some experiences around some losses that I've had, both through death, but also through people just exiting my my my field, I guess, my energetic field, and so, you know, for me, being a recovering people pleaser, I have really struggled with this idea of people kind of leaving my energy field. I actually find it easier, for some interesting reason, to manage the emotion or the grief that comes when people have passed. In the last handful of years, I've lost two uncles and aunt and a very, very dear friend, a soulmate, friend of mine. And you know, the grief of those, of course, seems to be a little different than the grief of that of those who have just decided to leave my space, or for some reason, you know, fade out of my again, my energetic field.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:02:29

So I want to speak to that because, you know, you might have heard some people say, like people come in for a certain season. Some people have these contracts, relationship contracts with us. So they come in for certain lessons or learning or certain periods of times in our lives, and I suppose that could be the case for everyone and every experience that we come into. But I want to speak from the perspective of the hurt or the sense of sadness or anger that comes up when people who are still alive, either consciously or unconsciously, choose to to leave us. And I want to give you a couple of scenarios here to just help to bring this conversation to light. And most recently, I worked with who I believe is still an incredible healer and light worker. She has this incredible capacity within her to impact people in a really positive way.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:03:29

However, when she came into my community, I'll say this person had made a lot of changes in their life, and I saw these changes, and I was really excited when she decided to step into one of my bigger programs. And I absolutely was so excited and so determined to see her come into great success in her life and great alignment in her life. And one of the conversations we had early on, because there had been some things about this particular person's integrity or lack there of integrity, and I told her this is an area of vulnerability for me, and that I wanted to create really strong, consistent practices and accountability, and to which she agreed upon. Once we got started, she just dove right in. She was gung ho. She took all the programs. She was eager. Absolutely loved having her in class. She contributed in a really big way. Was super, super engaged, and everything was moving along beautifully until it wasn't. And she stopped communicating. And then her payments also stopped. And I reached out on numerous platforms, and I couldn't get a hold of her, and I extended to just chat about what was going on for her, see if we could overcome anything. And over a month went by and still nothing. And this was a client who we were in almost weekly, if not even closer contact in this. Six months previous to so this is a situation where, you know, I had to learn boundaries. And this is something I've struggled with my whole life. As a people pleaser. I tend to accept people or bring people into my life that challenge me around boundaries. And so this was, you know, one of those really powerful lessons, and I know that she had a role to play me learning about my own boundaries and also how to express myself and communicate so after this month had gone by, I felt really betrayed, especially based on the conversations and the vulnerabilities I had shared with this particular client. I also felt anger. I felt rejection, because the client hasn't had essentially ghosted me as well, not responding to any of my forms of communication. So there was a lot of emotions going on. And, you know, at the same time, you know, there was also this agreement that we had in place in terms of payments and things like that. And one of the things that I do in my programs is I offer Angel grant. So I offer the opportunity for people to put very little towards programs monthly in order for them to be able to participate in the programs I have to offer. Because I know I feel so deeply that and confident in my programs that they're going to have incredible results. And so I extend to them these long term no interest grants. And so this is the case with this particular individual. And so now I'm in a position where they've utilized much of the services of the cost of that grant, and they still have, like, four years left to payments, which I'm now never going to see. So I was also worked up a bit about that as well, because I thought, Man, do I have to get rid of this angel grant now? Am I going to have to pull this from the options, and what does that do for the other people that I'm trying to serve? So all of these things are kind of happening in my mind, behind the scenes? And so I sent an email to the client and I terminated their contract. It's the first time I've ever terminated a contract. Usually, I will work with the client as much as I can, but because I was not getting any response from the client, there was nothing really I could do about it, right? I couldn't help her to overcome whatever the challenges were, or work with her to come into some sort of different agreement. And so in the email, I called her out on the integrity or lack thereof. And I might have been a little bit firm. I was maybe a little bit harsh in some of the things that I was saying, which, you know, were catalyzed from, you know, a month of not hearing from this person, and all of the other experiences that I've had in the past where I have felt a sense of betrayal or a sense of abuse or using, right? You know, I have let myself get walked on, which is totally my responsibility in many situations before, and here I was now having allowed myself to get walked on again, and so I was also feeling angry at myself, so I sent this email, but I thought it was very clear and it was firm. And I'm really proud of myself, actually, for sending that email, because in the past, I would have avoided it, or I would have, you know, just continued to, you know, reach out to that person and be as kind as I could, and this is the first time I really set a boundary, so yay me on the boundary. However, I could have done it with a lot more grace. And part of that email, I realized, after reflecting on it, was the opposite of how I wanted to show up.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:08:41

So here I was calling someone else out on integrity when how I responded was actually out of integrity for me. So it's so interesting to me that these scenarios come up for us that really can allow us to learn so much about ourselves as well. So in recognizing that I had to go through a great deal of forgiveness work, and as part of that, I did end up right writing this person again and apologizing for some of the way that I had expressed myself and I said I was I was hurting and I was angry. You know, is there an opportunity for us to come together and to to heal from this experience to which they have not responded, and that's okay. I have recognized that they are no longer in my vibrational field. I have gotten what I've needed from that experience, and I hope that they got as much as they could have possibly got out of it. My hope is that they're going to break their cycles as a result of me breaking mine. That's my hope, and that's the energy I send to them, because I do believe that they're a really incredible person, and I think that there's just an area of improvement for them, and there was an area improvement for me as well. But needless to say. Still had to move through a big part of this forgiveness piece, and so I wanted to speak about this aspect of forgiveness and how it can hang over our heads in allowing ourselves to perhaps be angry or be resentful to other people in our lives.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:10:21

Now, I also want to give the side note about this opportunity around forgiveness and the work I did around this particular situation three days after I terminated that contract. By the way, guess what happened? A new client, out of nowhere, calls me up and says, I'm going to sign out for your big program. So releasing or letting go of the client that was no longer serving me open up for an opportunity for somebody really amazing who was in deep harmony and alignment to come in, is that beautiful. So what happens to a lot of us is we end up holding ourselves hostage, yeah, where we have an experience, and, you know, it's an uncomfortable experience, and we're mad about the experience, and we kind of sit in that cesspool. We sit in that anger, and we stay in that anger. And what that does is it holds us back from something greater. It reminds me of the mean that was going around, and I want to give you a visual of this mean to drive from this point, there's a little girl who's maybe like seven or eight years old, and she's holding this little teddy bear, and she's holding onto this little Ted Bear really tight, and in front of her is a picture of Jesus and or is Jesus in the image? And Jesus is holding this giant teddy bear behind him, and he's gesturing for her to hand over the little teddy bear, because if she would hand over the little teddy bear, she would make room for the big teddy bear, and letting go of this client made room for a client who was way more aligned and ready to take her business to the next step. So it's so beautiful that that ended up being this beautiful working example for myself and holy ring two in reminding us that as we evolve, as we grow into ourselves, into deeper remembrance of who we are, and step into that, what happens is there are going To be certain people or certain experiences or certain traumas that we are going to let go of, and as we allow ourselves to let go of those experiences, we make room for the better, brighter experiences to come in or opportunities or people or whatever, right?

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:13:05

And so this is that invitation for all of you listening, is to think about, okay, what are my little teddy bears in my life right now? Are they people? Are they experiences, you know? And when I say experiences, I'm talking about those stories that play over and over in your head, that you know have been cycling around you, that are maybe holding you back, or, you know, creating some negative perceptions. You know, those are little tie bears too. And so as we allow ourselves to start leaning into this, what it comes back to is leaning into forgiveness and ultimately accepting things the way that they are. And So forgiveness is a wonderful tool to alchemize the energy. Had I not alchemized The energy and allowed for me to process this experience with this client in the way that I did, I might have not made room for the person who was in deeper alignment for me, right?

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:14:05

And so this idea of leaning into forgiveness is so very powerful. I believe that as part of this forgiveness piece, that there is an opportunity for us to work on forgiving ourselves first. I don't know about you guys, but for me, if something goes amiss in my world, like if drama shows up, which doesn't happen very often, but it does from time to time. And when it shows up, when I get triggered by something, there is an opportunity for me to look at myself first and foremost. So this is not about getting caught up in blaming and shaming the self, but rather for us to say, Hmm, I wonder what this is reflecting back to me. So that's the first question I'm going to invite you to ask yourself when you are faced with a situation, a trigger, drama, trauma, whatever. Where you want to call it, you might ask yourself, what is this reflecting back to me? Another way to put that, is, what is in this for me? The reason why I invite for the reflecting back to me is because it allows us to look at ourself again, not coming into judgment, but saying, Hmm, I wonder how I showed up in this, you know, in this particular situation, you know, I was triggered, but I and I sent an email that, you know, had some things that were firm, but maybe I took it a little too far. So was able to look at that as saying, Okay, I'm accusing this person of lacking integrity. Where am I out of integrity? And where's this reflecting back to me, right? And it was the integrity piece, because my response in itself was not like me. It wasn't an integrity for me. So then I had to go back and create another response to say, Hey, listen, I recognize how I showed up. Was in, you know, in my integrity. And so I called myself on my own stuff, right? And what that did is it allowed for me to see that reflection again. I didn't beat myself up for it. I just thought, Oh, my God, thank goodness. Ah, this is where I went and missed. This is where I went astray. And it gave me this opportunity to rectify it, so that I wasn't sitting in guilt or shame about it. So what is the reflection for me? What is this reflecting back to me? Okay, the next question you might want to ask yourself is, what can I do about it? What can I do about it? Is there something I can do about recognizing that, you know, there's some learning or lesson in this for me. Is there anything I can do with that? Can I take that lesson and can I do something about it again? In this case, I knew that writing another note to this client was the best next step for me. For you, it might just be that, like, maybe the next time that some situation that similar shows up, you're going to do X, Y and Z instead of a, b and c, right? So what can I do about it? So now we're applying it, okay?

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:17:10

And then another piece of this, of course, now is to ensure that I've forgiven myself about it. Now, there's a beautiful book called Radical forgiveness that you can source. It brings you through a whole process of forgiveness work, but now we've got an opportunity to deepen our forgiveness for ourselves, forgiving yourself for feeling a certain way, forgiving yourself for responding a certain way. What this really comes back to is acceptance. And you might even want to just create a statement that says, I lovingly accept the way that I showed up and the way that I felt about the experience. It's that simple. And in that acceptance, what we're really doing is we're extending ourselves grace. I love speaking about grace, because grace is such a Poland energy. And when we can give ourselves grace and say, Ah, yes, no wonder you responded that way, no wonder you felt the way you felt, then it's like we're giving ourselves permission to just be ourselves and at the same time, to be able to learn from the experience. So this aspect of lovingly accepting the way that you showed up, I accept the way I showed up in that in that situation, I accept that I set a boundary, but maybe went a little too far. I accept that. That's how, that's how it might have been showing up for that other person as well. I accept that. But I was talking with somebody the other day, the beautiful Chet net out of India, and she said, she said, Because I was feeling bad about sending that email, she said, What if you needed to be that firm in that email for their own growth, and what if you needed to be that firm in your email for your growth?

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:19:06

And again, it's that reminder that we're always doing the best that we know how, and as long as we're willing to look at the bigger picture in it and learn from it and grow from it, remember everything is, um, divine. So even the things that we might perceive as, oh, that was really bad, or I showed up really poorly in that, or they showed up really poorly in that, whatever it is, if we can come into this, everyone is showing up and doing the best that they know how with what they have in any given moment, then it's like, oh, man, what a relief, what a relief that it's okay that I sent that. What a relief that that was the way that it needed to come out for myself and for that other person, right? Even if we don't know the end of the story, we don't need to know the end of the story. All we need to know is that we. Right? And everyone else is showing up the best way that they know how. That person is showing up the best way that they know how. And because of that, I get to learn from the experience. I get to reinforce my boundaries with more grace, right? I get to handle my clients and better way now moving forward so there's so much value, so that would be the next piece is to, like, really soak the value in, oh yeah, all of these lessons, all of this learning, and all of a sudden, before I know it, now, I'm tuning into complete peace around the situation. I know that they showed up for me the way they needed to, and I know I showed up for them the way they needed to. And now I get to receive all of that value and all of that wisdom. I get to completely absolve myself and forgive myself for the way that I was showing up, because I was showing up the best I knew how in that moment, I get to receive all of that innate wisdom and apply it for the future. I'm winning. I'm now winning. I went from an experience in which I felt like I was losing so much, and now I see I have gained so much from this experience, so much learning, so much value, and when we do that, some of the other stuff becomes irrelevant, like the money is now irrelevant to me, because I got this beautiful experience to learn more grace, to be in even more integrity with myself, for me to set better boundaries moving forward. And to me, that's a real win.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:21:47

So underlying all of that is the opportunity around forgiveness and when we can forgive ourselves for showing up, the way that we have been showing up, when we can have compassion for ourselves, for the way that we have been showing up, it is so much easier to extend it to others. So the reminder for you, if you get nothing else out of this conversation today, my reminder to you is that you think about how you might start with more deeply, loving and forgiving yourself, extending yourself compassion, extending yourself grace. Start there. If you are struggling to forgive another, if you're holding anger towards another or holding somebody hostage to a standard in which you believe that they shouldn't be apt. Start with forgiving yourself. Start with allowing for that reflection. Right that reflection? I wonder what this is reflecting back to me, and what can I do about this moving forward, and how can I deepen this beautiful relationship and this divine connection with myself in forgiving myself for showing up exactly the way that I needed to in that situation.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:23:13

So I hope that some of what I've shared with you will help you as you move forward in your day to day. And in the next couple weeks, we'll have a whole nother episode for you, and we're going to dive in with the lovely Sandra, who will be coming in to speak about philanthropy, how to give, the givers gain, and how we can get so much more out of this life that we are living. So until next time, thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back again soon. Bye for now.

DeeAnne Riendeau: 00:23:50

WSC Intro/Outro: So happy you could join us today, and we hope that you found comfort and inspiration with wherever you are at right now, if you feel you received a gift in today's message, please pass that gift along to a loved one by sharing this episode with them. To continue this conversation, please join me @rosehope.ca and when you do, be sure to access your free gift by signing up for the When Spirit Calls newsletter, I'm looking forward to connecting with you again soon.