I found this in among the tarotscopes and yoga class listings in a local Byron Bay magazine while on holiday. The column is called heavily meditated – and I do love a good pun. This was something I needed to read today and a lesson I needed to learn. Again.

The line that jumped out at me was this: “An inability to forgive others is reflective of an inability to forgive yourself.”

The truth for me is that it is only since I learned to forgive myself, to let go of past regrets and guilt, that I have found it easier to forgive others and let go of blame too. In learning to judge myself less, I judge others less.

Sometimes we make poor choices and we hurt others. But we are not hateful people, we usually act from good intentions or out of fear, or to meet our unfed, maybe even unrecognised needs.

And so it is with the others who hurt us. If we can see this about ourselves, we can see it in them. We can look past the hurtful action to see truly see the person, often times the hurting person who needs our forgiveness and compassion.

None of us is perfect at this, sometimes we need a bit of time and perspective to work on that forgiveness. We can forgive ourselves for that too.