Empowering Women Project
This podcast is for the women who know deep in their soul they are here for more. They are done with bs stories and limiting beliefs that are holding them back from their dreams becoming a reality. This is for the women who are ready to jump in the driver’s seat and start to pave the way back home, to her.
Empowering Women Project
Reclaim Your Power: How Forgiveness Changes Everything
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Have you ever felt weighed down by anger, resentment, or pain from past experiences? This deeply personal episode explores the transformative power of forgiveness as a pathway to emotional freedom.
Jules opens up about her own healing journey, sharing how forgiveness became a pivotal practice in processing childhood trauma and breaking harmful patterns in her adult relationships. She explains that authentic forgiveness isn't about excusing harmful behavior—it's about freeing yourself from carrying emotional burdens that affect everything from your physical health to your ability to form healthy connections.
Through vulnerable storytelling, Jules walks us through the key elements of forgiveness: understanding others' limitations without justifying their actions, letting go of resentment that keeps you tethered to past pain, developing empathy to create space for healing, and perhaps most challenging—practicing self-forgiveness. She describes how releasing shame and guilt for things beyond her control as a child allowed her to rebuild her foundations and discover who she truly is beyond her trauma.
The episode offers practical tools for documenting your forgiveness journey, from journaling to voice notes, and introduces visualization techniques like energetic cord-cutting and full moon release rituals. Jules emphasizes that forgiveness is a gradual process requiring patience and practice—one that ultimately leads to emotional liberation, mental clarity, and the ability to rebuild trust with yourself.
Whether you're carrying heavy emotions from childhood experiences, past relationships, or recent hurts, this episode invites you to consider how forgiveness might create space for your own healing and growth. As Jules reminds us, "You are the creator of your reality"—and forgiveness may be the key to creating a reality filled with more peace, authenticity, and joy.
Lots of love from the bottom of my heart x
Jules xx
Thank you. Stories and limiting beliefs that are holding you back from your dreams becoming a reality.
Speaker 1:Come, jump in the driver's seat and pave the way back home to her. This is a space for you to feel seen, heard, supported and accepted for who you are, who you were and who you're becoming.
Speaker 2:Celebrating you wherever you are in your journey. Sit back, grab a tea or a wine and come, empower yourself with us, jewels, and day let's grow. Hello, hello, welcome back to the EWP Today. It is just me. And, yeah, I was just thinking this morning. I was like, wow, I actually haven't had the opportunity to do a solo episode. Like it's just been crazy amidst everything and it's been something that's been on my mind for a while. So our poor little Daylene is a little bit unwell, and so I was like, oh, maybe because I'm all ready and prepared, I'll just hop on and do a solo ep today. So here I am, it's just me. But yeah, I hope everyone is having the most magical day.
Speaker 2:And today I kind of want to talk into forgiveness, the art of letting go. So, essentially, you know how that can be so pivotal within our healing journey and how it's such a concept that is hard to navigate. Like it is hard, it's hard to forgive people that have, you know, caused pain or that have harmed us or hurt us, and yeah, so I just wanted to touch in on that because it's been a powerful part of my own healing journey and it's helped me a lot with my emotional and psychological processing, so that way I can release some resentment, some anger. And you know, it's not about for me, it's not about excusing or condoning the harmful behavior, but it's about freeing myself from that burden, because why am I going to carry this for my entire life? Do you know what I mean? And it's hard, it's hard to work through those emotions. But some things that I've found that have been really supportive is my psychology sessions with my psychologist, also my energy healing sessions, and then following that up with a lot of body trauma work, like a lot of body releasing work, and so some ways that I have done that is through osteo kinesiology, remedial massage, one-to-one clinical Pilatesates.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I just go in with an intention every time. I have a modality I suppose we'll call them, and with those intentions I really am like, okay, I'm giving permission for my body to release whatever needs to come up, whatever needs to be released, whatever is ready to be let go, and then, of course, along with that comes forgiveness. So yeah, I just really wanted to talk into it because I think it's a vital role in our emotional wellbeing and our personal growth. As I said earlier, it allows us to release the burden of anger and the resentment and the hurt, because otherwise that's going to weigh heavily on us. We're going to carry that through with us, you know, into our lives, into our friendships, into our relationships, into our parenting. And yeah, when we forgive, we kind of free ourselves in a way, like you know, making space for healing, making space for peace, healing making space for peace, making space for light, and yeah. So I wanted to touch on a few ways that forgiveness supports us. So we've got the emotional healing aspect.
Speaker 2:So holding on to those past wrongs can prolong your emotional pain, it can prolong your physical pain. Forgiveness helps us to let go of those painful emotions, which enables us to move forward and enables us to grow and just, yeah, move forward with ourselves. Because the longer that we stay in those feelings of resentment and anger, the longer that you know we are giving up our power. So let's take our power back, ladies. And yeah, it's not meaning oh, just because I forgive them, I have to tell them I forgive them. No, it's all about you. So just building a relationship with yourself and forgiveness within yourself and forgiving them allows you to then sort of move forward, and forgiving others can restore that trust and strengthen your current relationships, so your relationships with your friends, your family, your children, your spouse, if you have one. It can foster understanding and compassion, which are key to resolving conflicts and building stronger connections.
Speaker 2:So when we're coming from a place of love and light which can be hard depending on what we're forgiving, you know, ultimately it's helping us at the end of the day, which then feeds the overpour everyone around us gets. It gives us some mental clarity, so it helps us to let go of resentment, clears our mind, reduces our stress and our anxieties right. So our body's able to process it, our mind's able to process it, it's able to let it go. So we're not carrying that weight. And the weight can be so heavy and I know from experience we are better able to focus on the present and the future instead of getting caught up in the past. The future is so incredible. Like we are in the driver's seat, we pave the way to what our future holds for us.
Speaker 2:And you know, if we're constantly stuck in the past, it can make it really hard to move forward. And I've been there, I've spent a lot of my life there really, just like you know, numbing things and trying to. You know, use alcohol to numb the pain. In the past, way before I had Hudson, and you know, just not happy, like I just was stuck, I was unhappy and I held so much anger and resentment in myself, in my heart, in my body, you know, for things that had happened to me in my childhood, for things that had happened to me in life, for things that had happened in past relationships. And then it kind of just builds and builds, and builds, and builds and builds, and then I was stuck with all of this pain, like I have pain that I'm releasing and working on in my pelvis, I have it in my neck and my jaw and my hips are my most painful areas, and then again in, like my back of my neck and my traps. And so, yeah, I've noticed that as I am slowly releasing that trauma and along the way offering forgiveness, that trauma, and along the way offering forgiveness, I am able to then give myself my own restorative justice in a way that makes sense. Because, yeah, I found that my anxiety is much better, my stress, my sleep. It's a powerful tool for physical well-being and then it also stems into personal growth.
Speaker 2:So when we forgive, we demonstrate emotional maturity and self-awareness, like it teaches us that empathy and encourage us to evolve past negative experiences, because when we're stuck in the past, we can't move forward. It's not just a gift to others, but it's a gift to ourselves. Like it is a huge gift to ourselves. And when I say a gift to others, I don't just a gift to others, but it's a gift to ourselves. Like it is a huge gift to ourselves. And when I say a gift to others, I don't mean a gift to the perpetrator or the person who hurt you, but I mean a gift to your future relationships, your future interactions with family, friends, with your kids. You know, whoever it may be that's going to get the present and future versions of you. Like it's such a gift.
Speaker 2:When we do the work and we can, you know, land in a space where our heart is open to forgive and for us, you know, ultimately it's all stems back to us. We can live a lot more peacefully, we can reduce emotional and physical strain, we can promote our inner strength and our resilience and it's just so beautiful Hard, hard, hard, hard, but beautiful. So I just jotted down some key elements of forgiveness, and so the first one is understanding. So forgiveness begins with understanding the person or situation that caused you hurt. So it doesn't mean we're justifying their harmful actions. It doesn't mean that you know what they did was okay, but it's recognizing that everyone has their own struggles, flaws and limitations. But it's recognizing that everyone has their own struggles, flaws and limitations.
Speaker 2:And you know, the more we host that anger within us, the more it impacts us individually. And I don't know about you, but for me the thing that really hit home was that I didn't want them having control over me anymore into my future For example, my stepfather from my childhood, my future, for example, my stepfather from my childhood. I didn't want him to be able to control what is happening in my body and my mind as I'm moving forward. And you know there are still moments where I can still be angry, you know, and I can still have resentment, but it doesn't overcome me, like I'm not embodied by that anymore. Anymore I'm embodied by peace and love and light and empathy for myself.
Speaker 2:Um, and letting go of that resentment and it is another key element being able to, yeah, just let it go and free yourself from it um, it's just like the most beautiful thing. It keeps you tethered in the past and then, you know, you'll reflect on it, you'll have emotional mental breakdowns. You might, you know, have lots of anxiety around it and we don't even realize that that's how our body's reacting, but it's because you're in fight or flight and you're not really focusing on. You know how to calm that nervous system, and so when we really focus on a few of these key elements forgiveness being one it really can help us to lift the weight, move forward, gain further emotional and mental clarity.
Speaker 2:It's about choosing to let go of that. You're in control, right, and you don't have to tell anybody that you've done this. You know it can just be between you and your journal, like you don't have to tell anyone that you've done this, you're doing it for you. So it's not about oh, you know, I forgave this person. Everyone needs to know or I need to make a letter to this person or something. You do what feels right to you. If you want to write a letter that you never give them and you end up burning it and then burying it in the backyard to release it, by all means do that. You know we have to take things with how they land with us so we can listen to all the podcasts and read all the self-development books that we want, but ultimately it's about how does that feel within my body? Am I ready to do this, or, oh, that sounds like something I might be able to look a little bit further into.
Speaker 2:So I suppose that's one of the things that I found along my healing journey is just picking and choosing the things that feel right to me and I'm like, oh yes, you know, this resonates with me. I actually want to move forward. So I'm going to try this forgiveness thing, and it took me a couple of times, especially with my stepfather from childhood. It took me a couple of times to be able to, you know, offer that, because I couldn't break past that barrier of yeah, but he, you know, had taken a big chunk of my childhood and it impacted all of my life, my relationships, my teenage years, you know, my relationship with my mom and my siblings and everything. But at the end of the day, I was like the longer that I stay stuck in this space, the longer that I'm not going to be able to move forward. So we've just got to kind of do all of these tips and tricks that we know are going to help us and, you know, maybe you can move forward without the act of forgiveness, but I'm just sharing a part of my journey and what I found was really powerful for me.
Speaker 2:It offers you to have more empathy and compassion. So when you practice empathy and some it might just come natural for you, but it helps you see the humanity in others and creates room for healing. So it allows you to connect with others pain which you can make it easier to forgive. And so, for me, I've looked at oh well, what did they go through in their life to do harmful things to me? And I'm like, okay, you know, I can sort of empathize with that. Yes, it might not be something I do Like I don't personally go around hurting others because I've been hurt in particular ways throughout my life but maybe other people have no other way of coping and they think that that's normal, that that's their normal to. You know, to yell and to harm and to do hurtful actions. That's all they know, because that might have been all they've seen, right. So it's just about looking at it from a different lens. Doesn't excuse what's happened by any means, but it allows you to look at it from a different sort of perspective. But it allows you to look at it from a different sort of perspective.
Speaker 2:And then I think, amidst all of this, another beautiful thing that I practice is that self-forgiveness. So sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. It is hard. We can carry all this guilt and this shame and this regret and all of these really heavy emotion for things we've done, things we wish we'd done differently, you know, in parenting or in friendships or in relationships, at the end of relationships, in dating, in work, whatever it might be. But self-forgiveness is such an essential part of letting go of these burdens so you can forgive yourself.
Speaker 2:For example, me with my childhood, you know I had to work on forgiving myself for not, you know, like I was just a little girl, like I was a baby. I was a child, so you know a lot of it was this guilt and shame that you know I let things go on for so long, but it was like, no, you were a child, you know you were scared, you were told particular things, and so that's in order to keep yourself safe. You know you, you froze and like that's okay. So I had to forgive myself for that. You know, cause I always went back to well, what if? What if I had said something to my mom? What if this, what if that? But no, what if I had said something to my mom? What if this, what if that? But no, it's not my fault, it was never my fault.
Speaker 2:So it's about forgiving yourself as well. You know, if you've carried things from your childhood, such as attachment styles, anxious, avoidant attachment, things like that and those have been the demise of your relationships in the future, like in you know the present moment then you know you've got to just be able to look at that and reflect and forgive yourself. So, even though I used to be anxious, avoidant when I was going into relationships because that's what kept me safe as a kid and that's the attachment I had, that's what I learned but then when I went off into my adult relationships here, I was bringing that into those relationships. So I would be very needy, I would like need to hear from my partner and if I didn't hear from them I would get worried and I would wonder, and then you know the overthinking would start. But ultimately it's like no, like you are safe. You are safe to forgive yourself.
Speaker 2:And as I started to move through the act of forgiving myself and forgiving others and continuing to do this in life at the moment. Then I was able to be a lot more free, like I didn't feel so weighed down. My nervous system felt more regulated and you know, it just has helped me really develop my foundations, my values, like what I actually want them to be, not what my beliefs I carried from childhood were. But no, who am I, who is Jules and I think that was so pivotal was just creating those foundations from the base up. So looking at my values and my beliefs and what I actually believed in not what I was taught to believe in or not what my parents believed in or you know, nothing like that it's who am I, and so essentially, it was totally reshaping the woman that I was. And it's been a messy a messy as, but also very beautiful process.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that I found extremely helpful through the forgiveness and the self forgiveness and the reflection, is being able to journal it, so writing those thoughts down, or sometimes as a solo mama, I'm so busy Like I just do not have the time to sit in journal, but I've got so many things floating around in my head celebrations, or you know things that I've worked through epiphanies, forgiveness, self-forgiveness, you know things like that reflection, and so I know I've mentioned this in previous episodes, but I actually like personally WhatsApp myself, so I will share voice notes. So if I'm too busy, I'll chuck a voice note in there, and every time I have a therapy session or like a massage therapy remedial massage or osteo or something and I have big releases and epiphanies and reflections, I'll then go and share them. And it's really cool because you can look back. I think I've been doing it now for about a year and a half two years almost but I can look back and I can listen to my voice and I can listen to the emotion and I can listen to the epiphanies and it's so powerful to see the growth. I'll check like some quotes in there or, you know, I'll check different little things that resonate with the stage that I'm at within my journey.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, if I'm feeling overwhelmed with writing things down, then using your phone, which we all have access to all the time, is a powerful tool to just make sure that you're documenting your journey, because so often we go, go, go, go go and it's like, oh, you know, look at how far I've come, and so that just gives you like a little timestamp of where you've got to, from where you were, um, and a good place for you to leave yourself little love notes as well. Like you were doing amazing today, like, oh, I forgive myself for, you know, raising my voice this weekend with my child because you know I was feeling overstimulated, but I restored it and you know, you can add your little follow-ups and so it's just nice to see and it makes you feel really in your power and your cup overflows when you can look at how much growth that you've had and how much self-forgiveness and how much forgiveness you've done along the way. So, yeah, if you haven't done that, you know I highly recommend it. It is an incredible way to just sort of share and love on yourself and it doesn't have to be all positive. You can pop, you know when you're crying, when you know when you're having a hot minute, when you're having a little mentee be so. Then you can also come back and be like, wow, look at how I overcame that, you know, and it's a great little tool.
Speaker 2:So, with all, of this comes for me has been a huge emotional liberation. So when I forget myself, others that have harmed me, it's freeing. I don't have that emotional hold. It's almost like you can envisage sort of like a cord cutting like that's kind of a good way to see. It is like, especially with if I've dated somebody that hasn't been really great for me and I've recognized that and you know I've put my boundaries in and then stepped away. Well, I sort of picture like myself just cutting this cord, because when we are in relationships or friendships or something, it's almost like we have this invisible string, like this little invisible cord that connects us because you have connection with people, and so when I need to do the forgiveness and the letting go, I will literally pretend that I'm just like chopping that cord and that's just a good visualization.
Speaker 2:That has helped me. But it allows me to really embrace the present and the future. I can be open, I can be peaceful, you know, and I have found so much, especially lately, that I'm able to easily move forward. You know, it's not like I stay stuck, like before if something happened I would be stuck for days, weeks, months. But now that I've created this beautiful toolkit of all of these things that are supportive to me and I know work for me, I am able to move forward with more openness and love and peace for myself, like it's it's been a long time coming, but I feel like I can honestly look at myself and be like, wow, like I love you from the inside out. I love all the parts of you. I love all the vulnerabilities. You know, I love the hard moments. I you know everything is a lesson in life and everything is an opportunity for growth and healing.
Speaker 2:And you know, I often will see things that are like, oh, I'm healed, you know, and it's like that's great if you feel that way, um, like I don't want to put anyone down, but also I think that it's a lifelong journey, like we're constantly, especially if we've had trauma after trauma after trauma that's impacted us. It's going to be a lifelong journey of healing and you know you don't have to do what makes you feel uncomfortable. You can find the things that spark your soul. So, like I will go.
Speaker 2:I've done weekly psychology sessions and I it sparks my soul, I love them. I think there's so much opportunity for me to reflect and grow and have that safe space, that secure attachment with my psychologist, where I'm able to share and work through things and I find that I'm able to work through and navigate things a lot more easier. I suppose I mean, it's never easy, but for lack of a better word, I'm just able to process things a lot better because for my entire life my nervous system was just in shambles, like I just felt like an anxious mess and, yes, I might've looked great on the outside, but no one really knew what I was navigating on the inside and that was so much insecurity, doubt, guilt, shame, like I just harbored so much, like what if you didn't go out that night?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what if you didn't reply to that text message? What if you didn't date that guy? What if you didn't have rose colored glasses on, like, constantly putting myself down, and I was like no, absolutely not. You know, now I reframe my thoughts a lot and I'm like no, you can forgive yourself for X, y, z, because you're not just doing these things purposely to harm people or to hurt people. You know, and you're learning, you're reflecting, you're growing from it. So it's been a powerful, powerful part of my journey and just very emotionally liberating, I suppose. But yeah, it's not. It's a gradual process. So it does require patience and practice, especially at the beginning, and it can be seen to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I've seen this misconception a lot as an active weakness, but it's actually such a courageous choice. You get to reclaim your peace, you get to reclaim your emotional freedom, you get to reclaim yourself. You know, you get to remove any of those feelings that are just holding you back and weighing you down and you get to move forward with love and light and authenticity and, at the end of the day, like everything that you do on your healing journey, if you are on your healing journey or if you are trying to work through something, everything you do is for you, it's for you, and the overpour, as I said, is going to extend to others. It's going to extend to your children, if you have them. It's going to extend to your partner, if you have them. It's going to extend to your family, your friends, your work colleagues, even strangers, like people feel. You know, when you're genuine and authentic and like I just think that's been such an important and pivotal part for me is just being able to hold the space for myself a lot. And now it's at the point where you know when I forgive, I leave more room for building new. So when I forgive a friendship, you know within a friendship, or you know, if a friend and I haven't worked out and we've decided to part ways because of different stages of our lives, like you know, I forgive, I forgive them, I forgive myself quietly and I, you know, I thank the universe for providing me with these opportunities for growth. So it's like this cycle, so with you know, with trauma and pain and hurt. Then comes forgiveness, which then brings growth, which then helps you as you move through sort of that cycle, see things clearly and you start to build trust with yourself. You start to build, you know, trust with your intuition, you start to build self-compassion and self-love and before you know it, it's just like an everyday practice. So, yeah, you can do it in many ways, as I've sort of highlighted amidst this podcast. But we'll just recap some of them quickly off the top of my head Soaling, um, whatsapping or texting or, you know, facebook messaging, whatever works for you yourself, so like having an open conversation with yourself.
Speaker 2:I know it sounds a little loopy, but trust me, it works. Um, you know, if you want to, you can actually have those conversations with people. You can actually say to someone I forgive you for xyz and now I'm going to let this go and move forward. And then you let it go and move forward. You can write a letter um to the universe every full moon. I write what's called a letter of release and I just release everything I want to let go of from the month before, and often things are on there that I want to forgive and I want to release. So with forgiveness comes release. So, yeah, a good way to do it is under the light of the full moon, but essentially you'll write it all down and you can do job notes and then I'll burn it.
Speaker 2:I'll put different herbs that I feel drawn to at that point in time. So I've used sage, I've used rosemary, I've used roses, like I've actually used like tiny little dried roses. What else can you use? Cloves, whatever, whatever you're drawn to cinnamon, clothes whatever, whatever you're drawn to cinnamon. Um, and obviously, doing this safely, you know, make sure you're burning it outside. But I'll burn it and then I'll literally be saying to myself like I'm releasing everything, like I don't want to hold on to this anymore, I'm releasing and letting it go. And then I'll always bury it in the backyard, because with the back, like you're releasing, you're letting go. You know, if I'm manifesting and I decide to bury it, it's in the backyard. Because with the back, like you're releasing, you're letting go. You know, if I'm manifesting and I decide to bury it, it's in the front yard.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, another way of working through that forgiveness is to have open and vulnerable conversations with your friends or if you're seeing a psychologist or a counselor, having those open conversations there and working through especially when you start the art of forgiving and letting go, working through what feels best for you when you're doing that so having a safe and trusted person to talk through that is so pivotal and important and then, like, go in search of podcasts or books or, you know, even write it on your social media. What is your experience being with forgiveness? So, yeah, I hope that that little spiel. I feel like I just was like bleh because I just was so excited and so passionate to just, yeah, get on here and share.
Speaker 2:I've been thinking about forgiveness, the art of letting go and how that's been so pivotal for so long, but now I just, yeah, I want to share what's worked for me with you ladies, with the world, because there is hope. I promise, promise, promise. There is light at the end of the tunnel and, yes, we may never be fully healed. In my opinion, there is light at the end of the tunnel and, yes, we may never be fully healed. In my opinion, some people might believe you will be, because life is going to throw its ebbs and curves, but when we have the tips and tricks and tools, we can move through more effortlessly, more seamlessly, more graciously. So, yeah, please, please, like, share, share, follow. If this was something that resonated with you, and please let into the dms if you want to chat about it further. But I am so incredibly grateful to have had this little pocket of time today with all of you ladies.
Speaker 2:Wherever you're tuning in from, however you're listening, whether it be on a walk, run, driving, whatever Thank you from the bottom of my heart for tuning into my solo app and have the most magical day. Lots of love. We hope you feel inspired to take back your power. Thank you for listening into the EWP potty with Jules and Day. We want to challenge you to share this party with someone you love. Let's get all women involved. Follow us on Insta at empoweringwomen underscore project, facebook and TikTok at empoweringwomenproject.
Speaker 1:We invite you to interact with us on our socials, our threads and in our DMs. We are open to collaborating and invite you to reach out if you feel inspired to be a guest on our EWP podcast. Remember, you are the creator of your reality. We encourage you to start believing in yourself and the magic of the universe.