Come close. Sit for a second and let me share a story...I held a giant amount of guilt and resentment for over 20 years. It wasn't something I thought about daily but it would show its ugly head every so often. The trauma was molded to my worth. It would visit and linger and poke in a way that I felt my breath leave me, especially in the middle of the night. In the last few years I needed to release it. And back in February I did.I met with this amazing woman...a true soul sister...and apologized. We had something in common. We had both been with the same man for 18 years, and in between those years there were years that overlapped. She didn’t know it. I was also told a different story. We co-inhabited with a man who fed on our lack of self worth. We handed him the right to place a price tag on our souls.I was young, stupid, and foolish. I was naive. I was in my twenties with two little boys while needing a father figure as he was 18 years my senior. He was a master manipulator, the poster child for narcissism. We believed him. I loved him. She did too. But, what happens when you grow into yourself and the shame is still lurking? You must find a way to shred it, surrender the yuckiness, and forgive yourself for mistakes.We are human. We are imperfect. We are entitled to screwing up and growing. We are given the extraordinary beauty of falling miserably and rising to greatness.You must enter the discomfort and allow the healing to begin. You must acknowledge your part in the stories and own the lessons. You have to allow for the truth to come out of every pore of your being. That’s when light comes in and you are recreated.Guess how that happens! It happens through love. It happens through total release of culpability. It appears through the total abandonment of monsters in closets. You open the door and let them go free. Those suckers need release. They need light to vanish.I own every part of the stories: the ugly and disgraceful; the lovely and magical; the ridiculous and careless; the spirituality and the human. I own it because it brought me here to this very moment of midlife with a giant exposure of truth. It allowed me to fall in love again with someone who could love me back for the real me.Once we met at a retreat, we spent four days with one another. We spoke truth and opened up all the lies. She forgave me for being with her husband while they were still married. She also gave me permission to let that shit go. I gave her permission to forgive him for all the atrocities he created in both our lives. We held one another, hands intertwined, walking on the beach. We cried. We shared in disbelief the stories of two young women wrapped in the web of deception with a cunning Machista.What happened after that gathering was pure ecstatic. I found myself. I dug into places of me that I didn't know were available or even existed in my perception. The truth of it all shook my core belief. My imperfections were embraced by her which allowed for me to accept in me. I fell in love with this woman who shared similarities, not just our children but a man we once loved with ferocity. He had a type and we saw it while laughing, communing, speaking and crying.I ask that you let the shit go. Whatever is in you that is breaking you needs release. You might not get a chance to say it to another so allow yourself the surrendering to divinity. Truly let it all go.And start loving all the parts that have made you whole...because you are precious and loving. Fly, darling! ~m.a.p.