Aging with Purpose and Passion

Embracing Forgiveness and Spiritual Healing with Dara McKinley

• Beverley Glazer • Episode 103

Share episode

What does it mean to truly forgive, and how can this journey transform your life? Join Beverley Glazer as she explores these profound questions with Dara McKinley, who brings a unique perspective shaped by her upbringing with an atheist father and a Catholic mother. Encouraged to find her own spiritual path, Dara discovered a deep connection with Buddhist psychology and the concept of Maitri, or unconditional love and kindness. Through her story, you'll gain insights into how spirituality and psychology intertwine to offer transformative healing and personal growth.

Dara takes us through her personal battle with resentment and the resulting toll on her health and well-being. In a moment of desperation, she turned to spirituality, only to find an unexpected path to forgiveness—not through conventional pardoning, but by blessing situations with love. Her journey underscores the power of listening to one's inner voice and finding a personalized approach to healing. This episode promises to inspire those seeking to liberate themselves from past burdens and embrace a form of forgiveness that resonates with their unique truth.

Resources:
Dara McKinley

Website: howtoforgive.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaraMckinley108/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/daramckinley/

Beverley Glazer
Website: https://reinventimpossible.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverleyglazer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beverley.glazer
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenover50rock Instagram https://www.instagram.com/beverleyglazer_reinvention
How can Bev Help You https://calendly.com/reinventimpossible/15min

Send us a text

👉 Free checklist to go From Stuck To Unstoppable - to break free of old habits that you want to change

Have feedback or want to be a guest on the show? Contact us at info@Reinventimpossible.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert Beverly Glazer.

Beverley Glazer:

Can forgiveness really reshape your life? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverly Glazer and I empower women to overcome challenges in life and business with renewed purpose, so you can always find me on reinventimpossiblecom. In this episode, you will hear Dara McKinley's story of turning emotional pain into peace. This conversation will shift how you actually reclaim your freedom and your forgiveness. So join Dara as she reveals how forgiving others has reshaped her life. Welcome, Dara.

Dara McKinley:

Welcome. Thank you, Beverley. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here to be here.

Beverley Glazer:

It's really a pleasure, dara, and you grew up being raised by an atheist father and a Catholic mother, and very often in a home such as that, the children are kind of either pushed one way or the other way or, in your case, left to choose whatever you liked. And how did that affect you? What was going when you were a child back in the day?

Dara McKinley:

Well, my mom was raised Catholic but she actually ended up rejecting it because she was a seeker, she was a questioner and she would question it when she was a child and she would be reprimanded for it. So she actually raised me to be a seeker. I was a very spiritual little girl, like I described myself as someone who was born with a felt sense of unconditional love. I was born with a sense of something greater than what is you know before our eyes.

Dara McKinley:

And so, as a little girl and having all these Catholic aunts and uncles orbiting me, you know telling my mom in a very strong way like you must get her confirmed, you must get her in Sunday school, you must teach your children to be Catholic. At that, when I was little, I was like, wow, if these people have the answers to this feeling I have, if this thing called Catholicism can explain this spiritual sense I have, bring it on. I want to know. But my mother was so protective and she said, no, these kids, my daughters, will figure out spirituality for themselves and align with their own truth, which ended up being exactly what I did. And you know I'm 53 years old now and I look back on her decision and how fierce she was about upholding that decision as just one of the, you know, greatest blessings of my upbringing.

Beverley Glazer:

So let me ask you though so it actually shaped your spiritual life, did it not?

Dara McKinley:

It shaped me that like I could try on whatever I wanted to try on and see if I found it to be relevant and true, and I love when spirituality is practical. That's kind of what I'm always testing for when I try something. It's like does this have a practical relevance in everyday life? And so she really liberated me to be that seeker and to kind of create my own standards and measures.

Beverley Glazer:

And they did give you, though, a Bible, a child's Bible.

Dara McKinley:

Well, that was the compromise, because the aunts and uncles were relentless. So they bought me a children's Bible and I remember reading it at about nine years old and excited to read it, like oh, here's the book that has the answers that I'm looking for, and I got about, you know, 40 pages in and I had, you know, illustrations and big writing. It was really a work of art and I got past the creation stories, which I was totally, you know, fine and game to learn, and all of a sudden God became punitive and so I had a felt experience of unconditional love that very much clashed with this punitive voice that I was reading in the Bible. So I say I declared myself as spiritual but not religious at nine years old.

Beverley Glazer:

But you still went on a quest and you started to study psychology. And, as you know, psychology has its roots in religion and it has its roots basically in spirituality. And so you were seeking, you were looking, but you were looking now on a psychological level. And what went on there as you studied psychology?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, I mean as you and I understand it, like psychology is the study of the inner realm and in terms of what our options were, you know, or what my options were, growing up, I was very drawn to the inner realm and psychology was the path to do it. So I went on to get my BA in psychology and then I found a master's program that united Buddhism and psychology, and I didn't even know what Buddhism was, but I was so excited that there was a master's program that was bringing together some alternative spirituality that I could learn all about, and psychology. This moment I heard about it, I knew that I would attend this program and I did so. I have a graduate degree in psychology, in Buddhist psychology, yes yes, and talk about that.

Beverley Glazer:

Talk about Buddhism for those who do not understand or think it's really a religion, or how did that affect you?

Dara McKinley:

It affected me in a very positive way. I ended up also seeing a psychotherapist at the time who had a Buddhist perspective, and you know it's very much about anchoring in to reality, into the present moment, and developing an appreciation for all the many small gifts and blessings that are around us. It's very much about awareness of thoughts and watching the mind, and in Buddhism is actually where I found my strongest teaching on unconditional love. I studied Tibetan Buddhism.

Dara McKinley:

In Tibetan Buddhism, unconditional love is called Maitri and it's referred to as unconditional love and kindness, and that was the first time that a spirituality mirrored back to me, this feeling that I was walking around with, mirrored back to me, this feeling that I was walking around with, and it was. You know, it was profound for me to receive that teaching and to know that there was this force out there that we could apply. So it was the first and that's how they explained it that it was something that could be with you in the darkest moments and that you know had a medicinal quality and could comfort us in even the most trying times. And I remember thinking that that was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever heard. I guess in Catholicism that would be like the teachings of Mother Mary or, you know, I mean even Jesus and God. I didn't, I never went that far into the Christian religion, but I know that that's where that unconditional love comes from.

Beverley Glazer:

But I know that that's where that unconditional love comes from. Right, and you actually experienced that in the real world. What you did was you had a business, the business was in the real world and you had business partners. And what challenges were there with your business partners?

Dara McKinley:

So in the early 2000s, this is how we were yielding, merging into the forgiveness saga. In the early 2000s, I had an idea for a business and I teamed up with a couple of partners and the business took off. But me and these partners ended up being incompatible. But because the business was successful, we endured each other for as long as we could, which was a good number of years, and then things fell apart and I lost my share of the business and at the time I was half relieved because I wanted to be free from these relationships.

Dara McKinley:

It was very stressful to carry on in these relationships. It was very stressful to carry on in these relationships and I was half heartbroken that, like this thing, this idea that I'd had, that we'd raised up, it brought me a ton of joy, was gone. However, at this moment in my life, I had two decades of psychology and spirituality behind me. So I thought okay, dara, this is very hard, but you have the skills to move forward and you will move forward and it's just going to take some time. Yada, yada, yada. And I did, and I did, I pulled out all my skills and I moved forward. And three years later and I can credit my Buddhist training to this. I was very aware of the fact that I still had a resentful narrative looping through my brain and yeah, what does that resentful narrative do for you?

Beverley Glazer:

Because that is so important. You know, when you feel you're wronged, you can hold that. You can hold it with all your strength, with all your might, and it can torment you, it can affect your health, it can affect your sleep. What did it do for you?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, I would say it was definitely draining my life's life force. You know, negative narratives are not replenishing, they're draining and they are logical. My negative narrative definitely had a lot of logic to it, that the whole thing was wrong, that it shouldn't have happened, that I deserved justice. These are all logical thoughts logical thoughts, but it was a draining thought pattern in my brain. So I began to what paralleled me having this negative narrative was.

Dara McKinley:

I began to have symptoms of a mystery illness that included insomnia, anxiety and fatigue, and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I had a three-year-old and a six-year-old and I started to get very upset and very concerned about what was going on. And so I'm a very spiritual person. Spiritual people turn to be very intuitive, and so I can, in these moments, really like look to the universe, what, whatever this great mystery is, I can turn to it and say, like I need you to lead me out of here, like I'm, I'm in a horrible moment, I need a sign, I need guidance, like what am I supposed to do here? And so I I did that. You know many people call it a down on your knees moment. It was definitely a down on your down on my knees moment and the message I got back was forgive.

Beverley Glazer:

So, when we listen to our inner voice, we often come out with the answer. I think that's a message that all the listeners that are out there throughout the world really truly because this I truly believe when we are so upset, when we are involved in our own thought processes, we don't stop and we don't listen. We don't stop and we don't listen, and we don't listen literally to our hearts. We listen to our story, and it goes on and on and on. So what you did, dara, was you just pause. No one can help me. I'm going to have to help myself. What is going on here?

Beverley Glazer:

And meditation, the practice of meditation or yoga, anything that takes you out of yourself, going for walks, anything that takes you out of your day to day and bring you back and ground you to your reality. And that is exactly what happened to you, dara. Exactly. It was affecting your health and you just realized you had to do something. So, now that you had to forgive and very often we don't want to forgive we still feel you know we're right. How did you turn that around? How did you turn down that pain into? Now I'm going to forgive my enemy.

Dara McKinley:

How Right. So I got this message to forgive and I didn't like the message. So and I I know I'm representing a huge demographic of people in this moment yes, I felt like I had already lost this business. So I'd already, in the word give, started, already given too much to the situation and I didn't, you know, I understood forgiveness as pardoning and I didn't want pardoning to be the solution. And then, quite honestly, I just didn't have, and I still don't, and I'm a very compassionate person. I do not have any wiring for pardoning, you know, and I'm not, and I'm very, I'm very much into healing, I love making amends, I think accountability is a really healthy thing and, as I said, I can walk in the room and feel the feelings of other people. I do not have a problem with compassion, but there's something about pardoning, till this day, that just doesn't land with me. So here I was, in this situation and I thought, okay, I don't want to do this, but I'm a woman who can follow directions. Let me get online, google, you know, some five step list of how to forgive and I'll follow it and I'll see what happens, because I'm a seeker and I'm open to trying anything, and so I can. I can try this and see what happens.

Dara McKinley:

And I got online. I typed in how to forgive and 99% of what came up was why a person should forgive, and the teeny bit I could find on how, which was these random forums with desperate people like me saying but how do you do it? The response they were getting back was you just do it. And so I was like, wow, I'm on my own here, like I can't just do it. I need some, step by step right now. And so I thought, okay, dara, you have two decades of psychology and spirituality behind you, you can figure this out.

Dara McKinley:

And so the question I asked myself that stepped me onto the path was okay, I've had this negative narrative looping in my head for three years. It's gotten me nowhere. It's possibly making me sick right now. What is the opposite of this negative narrative? And my answer to that question was oh, wow, I would bless this situation with the highest love. And you know, in reviewing what I did in that moment, I actually got beneath the pardoning definition. I actually got beneath letting go. I got beneath what it is to have compassion. I got beneath ceasing anger, which are all the mainstream definitions that are constantly being pumped into people and I believe they work for some people. I believe there are people who do have the wiring for pardoning, but if you look around, there's also a huge mass of people that don't, and that's who I'm.

Beverley Glazer:

I'm their ambassador know, when people come to me with anger and rage and resentment and all this kind of thing and say, no, I'm never going to forgive them, etc. I always say you don't have to, okay, but you have to. For yourself, you can forgive. You can actually forgive yourself for getting involved and not seeing and not knowing or not getting out of it, in your case, fast enough or whatever was going on. You know, but you cannot forget it, forget. You have to let go. You do have to forgive. That it's over, it's done with. Okay, my bad, your bad, whatever it is, but you don't forget. And that's the point, you don't forget with anger. You've been wronged.

Dara McKinley:

Accountability is a very healthy thing, for sure.

Beverley Glazer:

For sure. Yes and yes. But all of a sudden you can't get into that friend zone again, you can be hurt again and you've learned, and so, no matter what happens, to move on, we have to learn from each and every experience and you've done that. So for you you've created a course and it helps people. Let go in steps, so it really does make it easy. What role does unconditional love play in that?

Dara McKinley:

Right. So I define forgiveness as one's ability to apply unconditional love. And then the second part is one's ability to identify exactly what needs that love. And so unconditional love is a spiritual love. It's something that operates through us and for us. About it is that people in moments where they know that forgiveness could help them but just really feel like they can't do it. I love that.

Dara McKinley:

With unconditional love, it's like you don't have to, just like you said. But I think I'm coming at a little different angle. Like you don't have to actually love this person, you need to know how to enlist this outside force, and this outside force will do the loving for you. Because when you're in the throes of betrayal or rupture and you're dealing with all those strong emotions, it really feels impossible to then all of a sudden become this holy, unconditionally loving person that can pardon others. And so I tell people like no, it's forgiveness is not our ability to love unconditionally, forgiveness is our ability to enlist unconditional love. So I draw parallels between what I'm teaching in AA, which is you know, in AA, you, you enlist a higher power to you know, move you forward. So, yeah, I, I teach people that forgiveness is actually a delegation, it's the ability to, it's the ability to delegate out the task.

Beverley Glazer:

It's true. How has this learning helped you?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, oh, my goodness, it's been one. I feel like the what I've always was seeking for as a little girl was healing modalities that were effective. I feel like I've that. That. That quest has been inside me, um, since my earliest memories, and I feel like I have found the healing modality that has a very practical use in the world, and I am a fan of almost all healing modalities. I'm a geek for healing modalities, so I believe we're all unique and we all, and that's why there's so many wonderful ones out there, because we all need to figure out which ones match our wiring. This one matches my wiring and I believe like it really does bring inner peace to the body, because that's what we ultimately want. We ultimately want to feel less burden in the body, and that's, in my view, where the rubber hits the road, for what's an effective healing modality or not is does it make the body feel lighter?

Beverley Glazer:

Body, the mind, just make whatever makes you feel uplifted, right Way to go. And so what advice would you give to someone who is struggling and really feels that they feel wronged and they just can't let go? Dara, what advice would you give?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, I would say that forgiveness is for you and that you're, you know, anatomically designed to forgive. This is another thing I teach is that it's the right hemisphere of the brain, which does not get the attention it deserves, that has all the skills that help a person forgive. And so this is in you. You just have to have it activated and ignited and to have a very practical understanding of what the effects of applying unconditional love are. You know, it's really I's.

Dara McKinley:

I invite people into the research question. If you take this difficult thing that happened to you and you put it in the path of unconditional love over and over and over again, over a consistent period of time, what might happen to it? What might soften, what might dissolve, what might release? And I don't want people to listen to what I say. I mean, I want them to like, let me, let me guide them, but I want them to have their own results and their own experience and to be able to make their own decisions and assessments about like wow, did that really help me or not? So, yeah, that's what I would say. That, like I say, what if forgiveness isn't pardoning? What if it's something bigger than that?

Beverley Glazer:

Beautiful there. Thank you, Dara McKinley teaches forgiveness, she guides others beyond pardoning and teaches them how to use their divine mind, move, stagnant energy and unconditional love. Where can people find you, Dara?

Dara McKinley:

They can find me at howtoforgivecom, and how to forgive is what I typed in that fateful night when I was looking for my five-step process, so that is my domain now, and you can also find me on social media, but I really, you know, mainly put my energy into conversations with like-minded people like you, and yeah, it's perfect.

Beverley Glazer:

And if you didn't pick up that link, then all these links, all her links, are going to be on the show notes right here, and they're also going to be on my site, which is reinventimpossiblecom. And now, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you really passionate about life? Get my self-coaching tips and that can be in your inbox and it can guide you right through your journey weekly. That link is also going to be in the show notes. You can connect with me, Beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook that's Women Over 50 Rock, and you can also schedule a quick Zoom to talk to me privately. Thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please join me next week, subscribe and drop a review and send it to a friend, and remember you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, www. reinventimpossiblecom and, while you're there, join our newsletter and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.