Amy Newmark's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-help"

Forgiveness is one of the best tools we have at our disposal to create a better life for ourselves. It really is an amazing tool... you can transform your life in just one one second — just by deciding to put the past in the past, where it belongs!

In our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Forgiveness Fix we have a collection of stories that show you how to look beyond the hurt and use the power of forgiveness to move forward.

Here are previews of two of my favorite stories from the book that show how you can use forgiveness to create a better life for yourself:

Let family back in
In "There for Each Other" Lauren Magliaro describes how her father and his younger brother were estranged for many years, not even talking to each other when they attended family functions. But when Lauren’s father was hospitalized with a life-threatening brain aneurysm, his brother showed up to help the family, and whatever had transpired between them was put in the past. Lauren’s father recovered, and the two brothers enjoyed twenty more years together until Lauren’s uncle tragically died at age 58. Lauren says, “Though devastated at the loss of his brother, my dad was there for my uncle’s wife and three grown sons, the same way my uncle had been there for me and my mom two decades earlier. I miss my uncle every day, especially seeing him and my father together. They always reminded me of the importance of forgiveness, and that all things are possible with love.”


Make sure you understand what lay behind a hurtful action.
One of the best ways to find forgiveness is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and try to understand his or her motivation and circumstances. It took years, but in her story, "No Fault," Christy Heitger-Ewing eventually got over her feeling of abandonment after her mother’s suicide—by recognizing her mother’s mental illness. She began attending a support group and came to realize that her mother was in agonizing emotional pain and that it wasn’t her fault that she died. As Christy sees it, “She didn’t choose to become inflicted by a chemical imbalance that messed up her brain any more than a cancer patient signs on to have cancer cells ravage her body.” Christy was able to stop feeling hurt and instead feel gratitude for the forty-six years that she had with her mother.


Amy Newmark

The holidays may be over but there's still one last gift to open — and it's something you can actually give yourself — it's the gift of forgiveness.

Yes... forgiveness. We all need that little reminder to look beyond the hurt and resentments and use the power of forgiveness to move forward.

Did you know that there are real health benefits to forgiveness? According to a study from the Mayo Clinic forgiveness can lead to a stronger immune system, lower blood pressure, improved mental health and less anxiety, stress and hostility.

That's why I love our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Forgiveness Fix. So many stories that show how forgiveness can help you mange your hurt and focus on what's really important.

Here is a preview of one of my favorite stories from the book about how it’s never too late to use the power of forgiveness:

In her story "Writing to My Dead Father" Noelle Sterne had locked away her feelings about her father for years, burying them under all the distractions of daily life. But then, years after his death, she took a personal-growth workshop in which the students were encouraged to write about an unresolved issue. Noelle decided to write to her father, letting out all her disappointment in a rush of words. As she wrote she realized how much her father had actually contributed to her life, and how he was a role model in many ways. And that’s when she was able to write that she loved him and forgave him for his cold silences and sarcastic putdowns. She recognized that he had been living a life that deeply disappointed him, a Juilliard-trained musician forced to work in unfulfilling administrative jobs instead of pursuing his passion. Noelle says, “I felt lighter than ever before. The armor of resentment and unexpressed sadness dissolved, yielding to long-buried love.”


Amy Newmark