Auriela McCarthy is the author of the multi-award winning book The Power of the Possible. I was lucky enough to chat with her about her book and the life experiences that gave birth to the idea that nothing significant in our lives can change without forgiveness happening first.

McCarthy has been on her forgiveness expertise path since she experienced what she calls “an awakening” in 1987. Since this time she has explored how we create our life, how we must move past the idea of perfection to go deeper and love ourselves and our lives.

We talk about midlife and why so many women are tough on themselves as their looks and bodies go through changes. “The externals have nothing to do with why midlife is hard,” says McCarthy in her wise, calming voice. “If you look at the beautiful ones, the women who seem perfect, you see they are so unhappy and don’t feel beautiful. Everything has to do with internal. You must learn to accept yourself, see your own humanity, your weaknesses and strengths. You see the balance and accept that as a human you will make mistakes.”

McCarthy outlines a helpful process for getting to this point of wise self acceptance:

1. Accept yourself by admitting: “I will make mistakes.”
2. Be gentle with yourself: “For this mistakes I can be forgiven and I will forgive myself.” Judging ourselves too harshly creates an emotional climate in which we can’t change. On the other hand, change will happen automatically from forgiveness. You feel remorse, you cry and then let go and accept.
3. Remind yourself: “Sometimes I prepared for life and sometimes I’m not.” It is okay to respond in an unplanned way to an unexpected event, according to McCarthy. “I shouldn’t have done that or said that. I wasn’t prepared. It’s okay, let it go. You were just human.”
4. Give yourself permission to feel: “What I need and want is important.” McCarthy emphases that this belief doesn’t have to be your first priority, but it is important. Your need and wants matter. You matter. As she recalls about her own life: “I never thought that I mattered. My husband mattered, my family mattered, my business mattered. This concept shocked me, brought me to tears. I realized that outwardly I was successful, but I didn’t believe this, that I mattered.”
5. Give your attention to self-forgiveness. When you feel that something is unforgivable, it can’t be undone, you create a little time bomb waiting to go off.

   McCarthy uses the example of a woman, who as a young child was subjected to the medical experiments that took place during the Holocaust. In midlife she realized that couldn’t live with the poison inside. On the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust she realized that power to forgive was hers. No one could take it from her. And so she forgave the Nazi mentality. She forgave Hitler. She forgave her parents. Even though they died in the concentration camp, she had hated them for not protecting her. And, most importantly, she forgave herself for hating her parents. McCarthy says, “She just woke up and it changed everything. Many Holocaust victims don’t like her because they don’t want to forgive.”

Let Go By Writing a Forgiveness Letter
McCarthy is clear about this critical point: forgiveness has nothing to do with the perpetrators. When we don’t forgive the feelings behind are blocked. They have to be felt with the intention of letting go.
One way to release the hatred is to write a anger letter. This is a three-day process:

• Write a stream-of-consciousness letter until you feel completely empty of everything that needs to be said and expresses. Don’t reread it. Don’t check for errors. Fold it twice and hide it so no one finds it.
• The next day, take it out and read it slowly and focused. Make it stronger. Underline for emphasis. Put it away once more.
• On the third day reread it one more time. You’ll find that there is a lot less emotional charge. Then page by page burn it. Take the ash and bury it or flush it. The subconscious will get the message that you’re done with this issue.

McCarthy has both a six-part YouTube video series on forgiveness as well as a two-part forgiveness meditation download that she offers at no cost on her website. Both are wonderful ways to begin a focus on forgiveness.

When we let go, we create an opportunity for something new to come in and lift us. Everything is different when we forgive ourselves first and then others. As McCarthy so beautifully expresses, “When we heal ourselves, we are able to hold the light for others, and the light will point the way.”

I highly recommend her book, The Power of the Possible, and that you visit her website, www.aurielamccarthy.com. She has several web talk radio programs you can sign up to hear, too.