When Your Teen Comes Out As Trans

Our family is over 3 years in to our oldest child's coming out as agender, a name for a transgender person who identifies as a subset of non-binary, who doesn't identify as either a boy or a girl. If you ask our oldest kiddo if they are male or female, they would say, "neither." (And, note, they use "they/them" pronouns.) And in the last year, we took in and are in the process of adopting another trans teenager. For a couple cisgender people, my husband and I have had a personal, vested interest in supporting the rights, safety, and happiness of our kids.

In the last several years, we've met lots of other families with trans kiddos of all ages and lots of trans adults. In the last several years, we've also seen trans identities and issues become more visible and more political, in everything from bathroom access, healthcare services, and overall civil rights. We helped found and continue to serve on the board of a local nonprofit focused on serving the needs of transyouth, their families, and the transgender adults in our community. I do training for local educational and community organizations. For a cisgender person, I have learned a lot about the issues that transgender folks of all ages face, and I invest my time (and often my money) in helping advocate for them in every way I can. I try to be the best ally I can be.

Very likely, you don't have a trans kid. Statistically, you don't. So let me try to paint the picture of what being the parent of a trans kid is like.

Imagine you have a teenager who comes to you and says, "the gender you assumed I was is not the gender I am." Suddenly, these things are expected of you, in an instant:

• Learn what the term transgender means (most cis folks don't learn about this until circumstances prompt our education, unfortunately)
• Learn what the transgender experience is like
• Advocate with school staff, healthcare professionals, extracurricular event instructors
• Be supportive of the challenges your kiddo is facing
• Use new pronouns
• Use a new name for your child that you likely didn't choose
• Navigate the opinions of everyone you meet
• Navigate the opinions of your family and friends
• Navigate the emotional response of your partner, if you have one
• Navigate your own sense of loss, grief for the dreams you had formed for your child, for who you had believed that they were or who they were becoming
• Navigate and develop new dreams and expectations of who your child really is
• Face the realities of how your trans kiddo may be treated in the world
• Try to navigate your deepest fears of violence against your child
• Try to navigate your deepest fears of violence your child might commit against themselves
• Come to terms with statistics
• Learn about blockers, hormones and trans healthcare. Understand and weigh the pros and cons. 
• Realize how big of a deal bathrooms are for trans folks. Understand why.

In all likelihood, you aren't prepared for any of these things. You probably don't have a community of trans folks who you are already integrated into that you have learned from, seen their struggles, and who you can turn to for advice, or to be role models to your kiddo. 

You will make a million mistakes. You will make a big deal about messing up pronouns and make it all about you and say that it's hard. You will get frustrated that your kid just can't use whatever bathroom they want so you just don't have to think about bathrooms anymore. You will hesitate to talk about your kid with strangers, at work, with friends, sometimes even with family. You will freak out about healthcare and big decisions about things like hormones and surgery that will impact your kids' future choices in having children or that can cause side effects. You will think and maybe even say things like, "It would be so much easier if you were just gay," because, honestly, you are pretty sure it would. You will see Facebook memories and ugly cry at inconvenient times. You will worry about your kid's safety in a way that you never, ever did before. You will look at seemingly benign situations as a threat, or a potential trigger, for your kid. You will worry about their body dysphoria. You will worry about their ability to emotionally deal with all of the things you are having a hard time dealing with, and you're not even trans. 

You will be attacked by your trans kid. Your kid telling you you're not doing it right, not doing it enough, that you can't possibly understand. You will be lumped in with all of the other cis people who just don't get it. Your mistakes as you learn will be held against you. Your feelings and emotions will be dismissed, be seen as hostile and not accepting. You'll be told you're not a good ally. You will be despised as the enemy. All of their anger at the world will be taken out on you. 

You will be attacked by your friends, family, coworkers, and society. You will be told this is your fault. You will be told that you are encouraging this. You will be told that you should just not let your kid be trans. You will be told that your kid is too young to know what their gender is, and that you're a bad parent for encouraging their deviant behavior. You will be insulted by strangers. You may be cut off from your religious community. You will be cut off from people who you love. You will have to cut off people who you love. You will feel alone. You will sometimes be alone. 

And yet, you will fight for your kid. You will find strength that you didn't know you had. You will push yourself to learn faster, for the sake of your kid. You will fight through the tears and your own broken heart. You will know that everything you are doing, you are doing out of love for the perfect person that your kiddo is and who they are becoming. You will work through the grief. You will buy them new clothes. You will compliment them on new hairstyles. You will proactively look for places with gender neutral bathrooms. You will find community resources. You will have awkward conversations with healthcare professionals. You will fight with insurance companies for benefits. You will find therapists who can work with your kid. You will advocate for your kid at school. You will get used to the new pronouns and learn to apologize and move on when you screw up. You will find other parents who have trans kids. You will connect with them in ways you can't explain. You will meet trans adults and will watch them as role models for your kiddo. You will learn about trans rights. You will learn about name changes and gender markers. You'll learn about hormones and what medical interventions are possible for your kiddo, and when. You'll rejoice when you see trans folks successes and grieve when you hear of violence and oppression. 

You will learn to move past the insults. You will embrace you inner mama or papa bear. You will do whatever it takes, anything that it takes, to fight for your kiddo. 

Even after you learn, even after you gain confidence, even after you know in your heart that you and your child are on the right path, you will be attacked. It doesn't end when you evolve. Your kid will still accuse you, other trans folks will still dismiss you, complete strangers will still insult and attack you. Your skin will be thicker, but it will still hurt. 

You will never know what it is to be transgender. But you know what it means to love someone more than you love yourself, fear for someone more than you fear for yourself, fight for someone more than you would fight for yourself. Because you are a parent. And when your kid comes out as trans, you learn in a new way what that means. 

Note: I couldn't have written this three years ago, two years ago, or even last year. If you are in the throes of coming out as a parent of a trans youth, be patient with yourself, brave mamas and brave dads. It is a journey for us, as much as it is a journey for our children. You are not alone. 

The annual resolution post, 2015 edition

Every year I try to set some goals for myself, usually to pretty good success (except for picking yoga back up in 2014...total failure on that one).

I've been struggling with resolutions for this year, and as I've been reflecting on the past year, I think I know why: my life and time right now is not wholly my own. Being a part of a large family, and one of only two people in that family who drive, means that much of what I spend my time doing is doing for others. I don't think people talk much about that side of being in a big family, but it is the truth. You can't be selfish. You can't put yourself first. You can't only think about what you want, or what you need. You are part of something bigger than yourself, and when a big family is at its best is when everyone is working together and looking out for each other.

This is not to say that you shouldn't make time for yourself. This isn't to say that there are times when some members of the family do more than others. As one of the parents in our big family, it means my attention is often focused on keeping the family machine running smoothly. Meal planning. Laundry. Cleaning. Cooking. If I'm not doing it myself, I'm usually coordinating who is.

So this year, as co-founder of our big crazy bunch with another full time job (that pays me!) to boot, I'm cutting myself a break on my 2015 resolutions. No pressure, no guilt. I'm putting things on my list that inspire me and that I'm passionate about. Here they are...let's see how I do.

• Get that second book done. 
• Get isanno off and running. I know you probably don't know what I'm talking about here. I'm hoping by the end of 2015 you do. 
• Use my AMAZING new camera every day...I've already started a 365 day challenge for myself, maybe I'll share with you. 
• Draw something every day. Use that dusty sketchbook.
• Learn Illustrator and Photoshop and Lightroom. 
• Learn a few songs on my ukelele. I really miss playing music.
• Take care of myself. I'm not getting any younger. OK, this one is a necessity, not a passion...but I'm trying to make it a passion :)
• Do some real work with those cool Nevermind folks. Maybe that's related to isanno. Figure that out. 

And that's it. Yep, it's a long list, but it's the kind of list that's a little art, a little science and a lot of learning. It's the kind of list that I'll make time for, or that I can pretty easily squeeze in time for. It's a list that inspires me right now, to do more of the things I love and am passionate about. 

What inspires you? Are they your resolutions?

Ring it, 2014!

It's my end of the year post, and I probably should be writing it tomorrow because this morning I have such a heavy heart. When I think back on this year, I'll remember so many amazing things: a scruffy little dog joining our crew, John finding a job he loves, our wedding, how the kids have grown and blossomed, finishing my book, finding an amazing community at USSB (and jumping in with both feet), and exciting new ventures on the horizon. It has been such a great year.

And still, there are things to do. Today the youngest kiddo got on a plane back to Pennsylvania, throwing the house into a gloomy quiet as we all deal with missing him. We have more work to do to replace the band-aids put in place when we moved to California and it's tough to know what to say to him when he tells us he doesn't want to leave. We don't want you to either, little guy.

This year challenged me to heal and forgive myself for past mistakes. Early in the year, I took a deep breath and told the truth about a past relationship, which was hard and scary and long overdue. After I finally just said the truth out loud, I realized that although we're all the heroes in our own stories, you can easily be cast as the villain in someone else's. Do any of us really see ourselves as a villain? And yet, we make mistakes, we hurt other people, we act out of selfishness and fear. We all do it. As we travel along our paths and make good and bad choices, some of us look at others with compassion and love and forgiveness for the mistakes that we make. Others call names and throw stones and vilify people for their bad choices. I guess it all depends on how you look at the world and how you write the story of your life. I have never thought in terms of good guys and bad guys; real people are so much more complicated than that. And yet every day you meet people who throw a label on you, fitting or not, and there you are, cast in a role you didn't audition for.

This year I've come to terms with being other people's villain. It hasn't been easy. When you're your own toughest critic, it's easy to hear the bad stuff because it justifies that little voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough.  I want to be worthy of all of the good in my life, and it's so easy to believe that I'm not. When I see the amazing people our kids are, when John shows me every day what an amazing partner I have, when I walk out the door in the morning and see ocean and mountains...it's easy to wonder if I'm worthy of all of this beauty. Maybe I'm not. And yet, here it is.

If there was a word of the year for me, it was appreciation. I do not take for granted a single second of the happiness of 2013: so much growth, so much joy, so much love. I'm looking ahead with wonder at the possibilities of 2014 and the work I still want to do. And with that, here's the resolution recap and reveal. It's good to have goals :)

In 2013, I had 3 resolutions: play more games, run another 5k and get to know the local Unitarian Universalists here in Santa Barbara.

I definitely played more games, although they were more of the board game variety. Maybe it was the fact that I can't get much console time with all the kids in the house, but I branched out to mobile and new board games this year. All in all, I'd say mission accomplished, although I'd really like to up my video game play in the next year.

I didn't run another 5k because my doctor told me no. Shortly after running my first 5k, I threw out my back spectacularly, and afterwards was basically cut off from running. Instead, I did p90x before the wedding, which would have been great, but as soon as the wedding was over we were DONE. Not a total bust, but not really what I had in mind in terms of consistent training.  

I totally pwn'd the third resolution. Not only did we join USSB in January of this year, but I'm now serving on the Worship Committee and the Membership Committee. I have grown so much from being part of this community. I can hardly remember what it was like to not be part of this church and am so looking forward to the opportunities to participate in the next year. 

So, for 2014, I've been giving the resolutions a lot of thought. There are some big ones. Let's see how it goes!

My first resolution is to consistently practice yoga. Back in my pre-kid days, yoga helped  me overcome anxiety attacks, kept my back in shape, and generally made me a happier person. Plus, I like it. So for this year, I'm committing to practicing yoga consistently again, finding a studio or two that I like, and carving out an hour or two a week for some time to find my center. 

Second, I'm resolving to find my focus in my "hobby" ventures. I've had a couple great starts in 2013, but 2014 is all about follow-through. There's some great things ahead and I'm ready.

And finally, the big one: I'm giving up meat. This one is going to be a huge challenge, and I don't want to say I'm going to be vegetarian, because I'm still planning on eating fish and eggs. I'm also pretty sure that I'll eat bacon, and if I go to Michigan and my mom makes venison steaks, well...I'm eating them. Despite these exceptions, I've just been reading too much about factory farming, and I've come to realize that I don't believe in the practices that provide us with meat. Having grown up a butcher's daughter, I knew exactly where our meat came from. Today is very different, and while I have no moral opposition to eating meat, I want to know how it got on my plate. I already started on this resolution, and so far, so good. 

Thank you 2013 for all the adventures and wonder and love. You're gonna be a tough act to follow.

  

 

A Habit of Forgiveness

Wayside Pulpit quote

Yesterday morning I led my first service at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. This month's theme was forgiveness, and I focused the service around learning to forgive, and building a habit of forgiveness. I can tell you that this process of leading a worship service is one of the biggest challenges I think I've ever taken on. It has taken me weeks of focus and thought to figure out how to approach the service, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to push myself to learn and grow and hopefully help others to see forgiveness in a new way.

A surprise good luck card

Thanks (always) to my wonderful family who were amazing cheerleaders, to Minette Riordan for being a great worship associate partner for the service, and to Ken Ryals for surrounding us with beautiful music.

Here, in its written form is my reflection: 

A Habit of Forgiveness

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry.

I have a really bad habit of apologizing for...everything. Problems big and small, things that I did directly, or things that I had nothing to do with, chances are if you are upset about something and tell me about it, I'll apologize. It’s not that I walk around carrying the weight of the world; I just tend to take on responsibility for things in an attempt to alleviate the burden on everyone else. So I'll say I'm sorry for all manner of things and shift the responsibility of dealing with issues from other people to myself, as if to say "this is my fault, I'll try to fix it and make things better for you."

A few years ago, I made it my New Year’s resolution to stop apologizing.

It's not that I didn't want to offer support or friendship or kindness, but just the simple act of apologizing misplaces responsibility when the apology isn't warranted and puts me in a position of constantly being responsible to everyone. Quite frankly, I make enough mistakes on my own without taking on other people's.

To be honest, I failed pretty spectacularly at breaking the habit. What the resolution DID do was force me to take a look at how much I apologize and why. 

We all learn to apologize at a very young age. Our caregivers prompt us to say I'm sorry as part of the process of learning from our mistakes. We learn that apologies do two things: first, they allow us to take responsibility and acknowledge our mistakes and secondly, apologies are implicitly an ask for forgiveness from whomever our actions impacted. I learned this from my parents and teachers, and in turn, I'm teaching my children the importance of apologizing too. 

We also are taught, from a young age, that there are "right" ways to apologize. It's not simply a matter of saying the words...you have to show that you mean it and that you don't intend to make the same mistake again. We learn that an insincere apology often has the exact opposite affect of what we want; when my kids try to give me a fake apology like "I'm sorry that you're upset that I didn't finish my homework" or "I'm sorry that I can't seem to do anything right" or "I'm sorry that you didn't wake me up on time"...typically, that will escalate the conversation to a more unpleasant one about taking on personal responsibility, sincerity and consequences for not owning up to your mistakes. But a sincere apology conveys an important message: the person who hurt me is sorry, I believe that they understood what they did and I believe that they will try not to hurt me again.

Usually by the time we're adults, we've learned from role models and experience the importance of a sincere apology. For some people like me, the lesson was over-extended, learned so well that it became a habit. I had begun to confuse empathy with apology.

We learn how to apologize, but do we learn to forgive? 

Forgiveness for me is a much harder habit to form than apologizing, because apologizing is a simple ask, both a statement and a question: I’m sorry and will you forgive me?  But forgiveness is not so simple. Forgiveness is a process of letting go, and healing that doesn’t always happen right away. Forgiveness is both healing and release, and some times those things take time.  But it is worth it, learning to forgive, because without forgiveness we would walk through our days with broken hearts…suspicious, bitter, angry…when we forgive our hearts are mended and we are able to move forward in joy and love and an openness to what is next.

Forgiveness is also much harder to teach because while apologizing is an outward expression of regret, forgiveness is an internal process, often unnoticed and not explicitly communicated. How do we learn something that needs to happen within us, without external feedback from others?

Colloquial wisdom tells us to "forgive and forget." But let's be honest: when we are hurt or when someone does something hurtful to us, do we ever really forget? Yes, the intent of this quick phrase is good...when you forgive, you should truly forgive and let the hurt go. But forgiving should not be followed by forgetting, even if we'd sometimes want it to be, or else we can’t learn from our experiences. 

We've probably all known someone who, as I call it, is prone to bring out the "laundry list." You know, the person who appears to forgive some infraction in the moment, but who, at some tipping point, can list out everything you've done wrong in the last 10 years in great detail. It becomes clear that they didn't truly accept your previous apologies, just as surely as they won't truly accept your apology in that moment. Maybe you've even been that person, the one who has brought out "the list" even though you knew that you would neither receive a real apology for your list of grievances, or if you did, you were likely not in a place to offer your forgiveness. It's hard to forgive the accumulated hurts we collect over time all at once, if not impossible. And forget them? Not a chance. 

I taught a workshop a couple weeks ago on learning; specifically, the cognitive science of learning and memory. There's sensory memory: everything you perceive creates a sensory memory that you may or may not even realize moment to moment. We remember the taste of really good hot cocoa or the sound of our partner's voice or the subtle smell of our grandparent's house that we probably can't describe, but we know it when we smell it. There's also short-term memory: a little bit of information that we can store in our brains until we use it...and then it disappears. And then there's long-term memory: things that we remember because as we take in the information, it makes connections in our brain. Those memories strengthen the more connections that are made, or when the same thing happens repeatedly. Each time I walk into my kids' rooms and see that they didn't put their clean laundry in their drawers, it connects to the previous times that that has happened and fires a series of responses in my brain: they're lazy! they're dirty! they're rooms are a total mess! i'm a bad mom! i'm not appreciated! or, they're just kids and when I was their age, I didn't much like putting away my clean clothes either...and it's with that last one that I set aside whatever anger and frustration I feel and move on to forgiveness, and resolve to work as a family in keeping our house in working order. 

When we remember, we have learned something. When we use that information, retrieving it from our memory over and over, to apply it in new situations, with new memories formed each time we use what we know in new contexts, it strengthens the staying power of that information in our brain. That's the value of the memories of my childhood in raising my own children - I can remember what it was like to be 11, and it allows me to empathize with my kids and move past hurt to forgiveness. 

There are different types of memory: episodic memory is the composite of your experiences. And "flashbulb" memory - the memory of a particularly emotionally charged event. I used to ask the question "where were you when the space shuttle challenger exploded?" until I realized that many younger folks weren't born yet. Unfortunately we have a more modern collective memory: where were you on 9/11?  Our episodic memory and our flashbulb memory are why it's difficult to forgive and forget. In fact, we shouldn't forget, because forgetting means we haven't learned. Keeping the memory of a past hurt or pain is what can help us not repeat mistakes, or motivate us to approach life differently, or reprioritize the things in our life that are truly most important. If those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, then remembering the past, good and bad, helps us to move forward, learn and grow.

Sometimes, we use knowledge so much and in so many different contexts that we develop muscle memory - the type of memory that causes you to automatically brake when you see a police officer with a speed gun on the highway, or not remember how you drove from home to work, or allows my pre-teen boys to play a video game using complex button controls without thinking about it...or allows me to play the song from my freshman year of high school marching band from memory if someone were to hand me a mellophone. 

This muscle memory is the sign that you've mastered and internalized a process that you can retrieve at the right time without even thinking about it. This is the same type of memory that forms habits, like my constant apologies. 

What if we learn to forgive and practice it so much that we create a habit of forgiveness? What if, just as we learned the right way to apologize, to identify and communicate the feeling of remorse, we could learn, internalize and build muscle memory around the process of forgiveness? 

Charles Duhigg, the author of the book The Power of Habit, breaks down the process of building a habit into three steps.

Step 1 is “The Cue.” The cue is the context, the trigger for the habit that you want to create. If the habit we are hoping to develop is forgiveness, then you might think the context or trigger would be an apology.  But how often is an apology insincere, or never comes at all? An apology might be the prompt to express forgiveness to another, but can’t be the cue to develop a forgiveness habit. Better, the cue for forgiveness is actually the hurt itself, the point at which we feel emotional, psychological or physical pain. 

Step 2 is “The Reward.” When forming a habit, Duhigg tells us that one of the critical components is making the behavior more favorable than any other action. In the case of forgiveness, it’s hard to imagine what type of reward would be better than the forgiveness itself, and that’s actually a good thing. Because in order for a habit to really form, we have to be able to remove an extrinsic reward like a cookie, and replace it with the intrinsic reward of the feeling we get from repeating the habit. Anyone who has had to potty train a toddler knows this all too well. The tipping point of potty training is not when the child gets a gold star on the potty chart, but when she is motivated to use the potty because she’s proud of being a big girl. Until the intrinsic reward is motivating, though, cookies and star charts help to tip the balance to motivate us to practice our desired habit.

Step 3 is “The Routine.” It’s not really a new step so much as a call to action to commit to performing the desired habit whenever presented with the Cue and to follow that up with a Reward. Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into sleep mode and transfers responsibility for performing the behavior to the habit-performing part of the brain. That transfer of memory from intentional to automatic is the goal of forming a habit, and establishing the routine to reinforce it is critical to getting your basal ganglia to take over.

Duhigg cites research that suggests the best way to create the routine is to write down your intentions.  In it’s basic form, your plan should be  “When the Cue, I will Routine because it provides me with Reward.” For example, if your goal is to lose weight: When my 2pm meeting is over instead of getting a snack in the break room, I will take a walk with my co-worker because it provides me with a chance to catch up with a friend.

While Duhigg uses lots of examples in his book of how this process works, one of the most recognizable is Alcoholics Anonymous. He says,

“There's no real logic to how AA was designed. But the reason why AA works is because it essentially is this big machine for changing the habits around alcohol consumption and giving people a new routine, rather than going to a bar or drink. ... It doesn't seem to work if people do it on their own. ... At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness. And at that moment, if you can look across a room and think, 'Jim's kind of a moron. I think I'm smarter than Jim. But Jim has been sober for three years. And if Jim can do it, I can definitely do it,' that's enormously powerful."

In the case of AA, the Reward is the social connections and support for not drinking, until you get to a place in your life that you’ve created new habits, removed triggers and established an ongoing support system to help you handle the inevitable cues that used to result in having a drink.

But what about forgiveness? Some of us have already developed routines to help us along with the process. Taking a drive, going for a run, grabbing coffee with your best friend, listening to your favorite song…these are all examples of routines that we establish to help us work through our emotions when we are hurt or angry or sad. Sometimes they help, but sometimes they are more of a distraction, a temporary band aid that doesn’t elicit the forgiveness we want to achieve.

Forgiveness is a process prompted by a decision to forgive. In creating a habit of forgiveness, the intent is to get to a point that we can bypass that decision and internalize the forgiveness process for the little hurts, and be armed with the ability to forgive when we are strong enough for the big hurts. Not all forgiveness is equal, not all pain is the same, and hurts may not be forgiven equally. But by knowing, and internalizing the process of forgiveness, by making forgiveness a habit, we will have the ability to truly forgive when we are ready.

Although I wasn’t so successful in breaking my habit of apologizing, I’m now more interested building a habit of forgiving. I’m learning that this forgiveness habit, not surprisingly, comes easily now when with the daily hurts and grievances, but I still have to work at the big things. I think that’s ok, because when I face those big things, my heart is already light, not weighed down by accumulated pain, but open to begin the journey down the tougher paths and armed with the knowledge and experience of the process and joy of forgiveness.

There are many examples of how to intentionally practice forgiveness, and I’d like to share one with you today in our meditation.  This process can be used as your Routine to practice, a few simple steps to repeat on the path to making forgiveness a habit.

(This exercise is adapted from Robin Casarjian’s Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart.)

Everyone take a deep breath.

Close your eyes.

Take one more deep breath, and think about someone who recently upset you, made you angry or hurt your feelings…someone who you want to forgive.

Think about what the real issues behind this conflict are for you. Think about what you are feeling about this person.

Think about what is still valuable, still workable for you in this relationship.

Take another deep breath and feel the strength and wholeness within you.

Now imagine yourself in a safe place with this person.

In your mind, tell this person, as simply and clearly as possible, how you perceive the issues between you and the truth of your experience.

Speak from your deeper self to his or her deeper self.

Imagine that the person really listens and hears you.

When you are ready, bring your attention back to the present moment.

As you bring yourself back, think about what it would be like if you could actually have the conversation you imagined. If you can’t have that real conversation, imagine what it would be like to move forward as if you had.

As you go out into the world this week, find opportunities to actively practice forgiving. Think about what it feels like, think about the steps in the process and practice a meditation or reflection when you’re faced with an opportunity to forgive. Let your heart be light with forgiveness, towards yourself, towards the people you love, and towards the world. Let’s all work on building a habit of forgiveness together.