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That desire to be forgiving while also knowing like, okay, where's the line? When does my boundary come through? When do I know that I need to just walk away from this relationship? And if I'm forgiving, does that mean that I just stay in these relationships and I'm supposed to just accept what other people are doing? And if I work on my mindset so much and I get so forgiving, Do I just let people walk all over me? These are the types of questions that I get and they are so valid. And I want you to feel very confident in knowing that Tessa is very intentional with the relationships that she allows into her life. I am someone that really deeply treasures relationships and I have few real friendships. Personally, I feel really great with less friendships. and making sure that in the friendships that I have, each one aligns with morals, values, principles, boundaries that I want to live by. And if someone else doesn't want to live by them, that's okay. That's okay. And it doesn't mean that I need to change mine either. I love to learn from other people as well. And I have found that there's so much for me to learn from other people, and I love the opportunity to do so, and it's okay for me to to recognize when is something truly helpful and of service to me? And when is it really hurtful and actually hold me back or creating the opposite effect in my life? So if this is something that you feel like you've been struggling with, I want to teach you what really helps me because I want to be a forgiving person. I want to be as forgiving as I possibly can. I've been able to forgive people that I once thought like ruined my life and took away my opportunity to ever be , bright and bubbly and fun and energetic and confident and secure in myself and never feel safe in like a home or relationship again. I've been able to forgive all those people as well as people that I feel maybe like took advantage of me or really just weren't quite who I thought that they were. And I've been able to forgive them too, while also feeling good about ending relationships. when I believe that they need to end. And there are a few things that really helped me. Number one, the mentality that some things are just for a season. Some friendships, some health conditions, some routines, some desires, some dreams are just for a season. Just because you want something right now doesn't mean you're gonna want it a week from now, 10 weeks from now, a year from now, and that's okay. It's okay for what you want to change. It's also okay that your lived experience helps reveal to you and get more clear on what it is that you want. Sometimes it takes going through the friendships, opening yourself up, being vulnerable, being trusting, to realize, oh my goodness, I thought I wanted a friendship like this that included these things. And now I realize I actually want a friendship like this that includes these things. An example could sound like maybe you thought you wanted a friendship that you could just like sit around and gossip with your friends or complain about your spouses and you found that. You found a friendship with three other people where you guys could just get together, drink some wine, gossip about what's going on in other people's lives that are not in the room, right? And complain about your spouses, what you're unsatisfied with, how could he and how dare he and he shouldn't have, and then complain about your kids together. Like you thought that that was the type of friendship that you wanted, and then you got it, and it felt good for a little bit. And then something happened where you're like, you know, I really want to work on myself. This isn't feeling good anymore. The wine, I'm waking up with a headache and waking up groggy. It's really not my kids waking up in the morning. That's the problem. It's the way I'm waking up in the morning and the way I'm preparing myself to do so. And I've really noticed that blaming my husband for all these things, complaining about him and putting him in this position, one, was never fair to me as his fair to him as his wife to speak of him that way. to these women. And I would feel devastated and heartbroken if he were doing the same thing. And I have noticed that I just leave feeling resentful and annoyed with my husband. So when I come home, I'm not even excited to see him. That's not good for you. So again, it's being in that environment though, in that relationship, getting what you thought you wanted that helps you gain some clarity of like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What I actually want is to be able to get together with some girlfriends, learn a skill, enjoy a hobby together. talk about the successes of others, talk about the ideas for ourselves, workshops, solutions with each other. When someone says, yeah, like the spice or the spark and our intimacy is just gone, I want us focused on solutions. Okay, now we're all gonna read this romantic novel together and we all have a plan to go get a new piece of lingerie and wear it under our clothes and like maybe just spice things up ourselves, stop waiting for something else to change and be the one that makes the change. I want friendships like that. That's what I freaking want. And it's again, it's important for you to know what you really want. And when it's time for something to end, it's okay to appreciate what it gave you for that season that you had it. Imagine that for that season, I needed that thing. I needed relationships like that. I needed friendships like that. I needed those evenings together. And now I recognize that what I need is something different and other people are not responsible to to meet what you think you need for yourself. You're the one that needs to go out and create that. You're the one that needs to know what it is that you want and then find the right people and environments that align with that. And you're responsible for removing yourself from relationships and environments that no longer align with you. And you can do so with appreciation for what they did bring to your life and the way that it did serve you for that season. So understanding that mentality. I guess there was a few of them in there. One, it's okay if it just lasts for a season. You can leave that season with appreciation for what it brought and clarity on where you're going. Two, it's important for you to know what you want and to start allowing what you want to come to you so you can really get a taste of it. And you can refine your vision. You can refine your desires that much more because you have experience with it. Now let's talk about this idea of forgiveness though, because what if the circumstance looks different? I'm gonna use a personal example of this. I'm, I want to talk about, with my, with my mom's ex husband. So growing up, my mom remarried after my biological dad passed away when I was six years old. And I was so excited to have another dad. Oh man, oh baby, all my dreams were made. I was so excited. Um, I asked him to adopt me. I mean, I was head over heels for him. And the first couple of years of their marriage was great. And the following few years of their marriage was. Really, really devastating, just really destructive, very traumatizing. And it took me a long time to work out of those things. And for the longest time, I thought he ruined my life. He's the reason why I'm so angry. It's him. He's the reason why I ignore people. He's the reason why I have such a short fuse. He's the problem. And he never apologized. So I need him to apologize, to take responsibility, to go to jail, to face punishment for what he did, to be held accountable for his life choices. voices like, I need all these things to happen before I can heal, before I can move forward. And what I found, though, in this whole 12-year span is none of those things happened. And I was still angry 12 years later. And the idea of forgiveness honestly used to just really rattle me. I mean, my feathers got rough folded at the idea of forgiving other people because I didn't want to let them off the hook. I just thought, I'm the one person that cares that he faces judgment. And I cannot be the person that lets this go. I can't be the person that forgives because then he's off the hook. I wish so badly I could have understood this sooner. And I'm honestly so grateful that it was such a long journey to get here because now I'm so convicted in this, nothing and no one could change my mind. I wrestled with this for so long. I feel like I know it forwards and backwards. and really difficult circumstances. It's not just the forgive the person that said the mean thing. It's not just like, forgive someone that forgot about your date together or stood you up or forgot to give you something. To me, it's much deeper than that. So what helps me though is this idea of attaching forgiveness to myself. I want to free myself from this circumstance. I want to free myself from this experience. I want to be able to truly look at the experience with appreciation and gratitude for what it brought to my life and move on as the person I want to be. And holding on to all this anger, all this resentment, all this judgment, all of the, like everything, holding on to all that is the thing that's stopping me from being the person I want to be. I want to be someone with a kind tone and a gentle touch and eyes of sincerity and an open, warm, soft heart and a mind that can handle that has the capacity to hold several perspectives at one time and decide for myself what I think. And the only way I'm going to do that is if I learn to forgive. So in my pursuit with forgiveness, it was truly and is every time I do it about allowing myself to move forward. I'm going to forgive this person so that I can move forward because no amount of me forgiving someone or what I think about them changes what they think about themselves or the way they choose to spend their time, what their habits and Tendencies are, what they want for their own life. If anything, the time I spend hating someone, hating what they did, holding on to all this anger and resentment, the time I spend doing those things just confirms the story they're telling themselves about who I am. Oh, you know, she's so difficult. She's such a grudge holder. She's. She's the angry one. Oh, you know, Tessa, she'll just never get over it. that was like, that was what was spoken over me as a kid and through my teens. And I really believed it about myself and the adults in my life saying those things. I'm like, well, yeah, I am the grudge holder. And I just, I didn't know I could be different. I didn't know. And this is why I think, again, it's so important to speak life over your kids. And I'm, I'm just so grateful that I've had these lived experiences that at the very least I can live by them. I can bring them into my motherhood. And I mean, in the best, best case scenario, I get to share it with you and you get to bring it into your motherhood too. So deciding to change was really just understanding that people are going to think what they're going to think about themselves and about me. And the best thing I could do for myself is give evidence to prove that I really am a forgiving person. I really am easy going. I am light hearted. I am open minded. I am sincere. I am faithful. and if I just live that way enough and just express it and model that, then, you know, I'll let people decide for themselves who they believe I am. And the way I've seen it is the, in the years that I've grown into this, anytime someone tries to say something different about what I've modeled, it only just Sparks, like, a little bit of curiosity. And in that curiosity from the , person on the receiving end, they're like, wait a second, that's not at all like how Tessa's been with me. That's not at all my experience with Tessa. And if anything, it just leads them to get really interested and curious about the person delivering the information or misinformation at that. So I've, I've released all this anxiety and fear about what other people are going to think because I know I'm in alignment with who it is that I want to be obviously constantly growing. I'm doing my own work. I've got tons of work to do. and I've made a lot of progress that I can stand behind. And I know I'm on the right path. I'm gonna slip out of alignment, I'm gonna slip up, and I'm on the right path. And forgiveness has been a huge act in that. And what I needed to understand is I can have forgiveness for people like my mom's ex-husband. I fully forgive him. Like, I can talk about him, I can talk about what's happened, I can talk about just the way things are, full forgiveness, assistant I love my kids. I love my marriage. I love the person that I'm becoming. And I love the journey that it takes to get there. I love that no one snaps their fingers and becomes who they want to be. No one snaps their fingers and changes their circumstances. If you've seen someone change their circumstances, it's because it took a lot of time and intention and energy and effort and sacrifice and hard work and pain for them to get there. And I think it's really admirable. So I would do it all over again. and my goal for you is that you can love your life so freaking much today, tomorrow, the next day, the next year. You love your life so much and you just appreciate the journey so much that you look back on your life and you're like, I would choose it all again. This is just so good. This is just, this is wonderful. I love this so much. And in that though, when I did really in that act of forgiveness, what I chose to do was actually call my mom's ex-husband and it had been about six years of not , not interacting at any capacity or seeing each other, anything like completely cut that off for my life and did everything I could to avoid, any type of interaction. And what I chose to do was give them a call because to me, being able to speak, to let myself have that opportunity to speak, and in that experience to see myself as someone that can protect myself, I'm safe and secure and my life is completely different now. And I just saw it as like a really wonderful closing of a chapter and a moving forward. And like a, you do got this test. Look at you, go. Look at you. And that was, that was excellent for me. I know it can be a different experience for everyone. I just like to share my own personal experiences and I will always remember what I said to him on the call. Um, I told him that, like word for word, this is literally what I said, that I've been working really hard on myself lately. And in doing so, I recognized that holding on to all of that anger and resentment towards him didn't serve either one of us. And that I was sorry for holding on to all that anger and resentment. And I just really wanted him to know that I'm not angry anymore. And my life changed from that moment on. I swear to you, just to be able to tell someone, tell the person that you used to swear up and down made you so angry, you can't go out and be the person that you want to be because of this person did all these things and. and was all these ways, especially during your childhood, your upbringing, and they rocked your sense of safety and they put all this trauma in your nervous system. Like, I get it. And to be able to tell that person, you know, I'm not angry anymore. It was, it was, I mean, it was truly unmatched in my life. And I have had three home births, hospital birth. So I've, I've birthed four children. I've been married for 10 years. I've had the pleasure of experiencing just some really cool triumphs and just rich, emotionally rich experiences. And that one is still unmatched. I just want you to let that sink in. Like that forgiveness, that act of taking back who I am, my ownership, my ability was truly unmatched. And then there's really the second piece to it. Right? Because this forgiveness takes place. And then I think this is just such a really excellent example using a real circumstance because after that phone call, we get off the phone and I'm looking at us, okay, this is completely done now. I'm moving forward in my life. I control me. I'm responsible for me. I know who I am and I'm gonna determine who I am, the way I feel and what I do next. Well, then my mom's ex husband started sending me pictures from like my childhood and , and it was just, and like there was just a clear sign, and his understanding that like, oh my gosh, like we're rekindling something here. Like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have a relationship moving forward. Now we're gonna be talking and life updates. And I'm like, oh, absolutely freaking not. And this is the part where I believe like forgiving and choosing and what it takes to move forward is the peace that is so rarely talked about, which is righteous judgment, where you can be forgiving and you can forgive someone and you can let yourself move forward. You can forgive yourself and have the righteous judgment to determine who belongs in your life in the upcoming season. It's. Remember, I said it's okay if you can let something serve you for a season. Look back on that season with appreciation, move forward, and have the righteous judgment to determine who goes into that season with you. Who's coming with you into that next season? What are you bringing with you? What habits? What tendencies? What relationships? What environments are you bringing into this next season of your life? And that is righteous judgment. And I love this idea of marrying forgiveness and righteous judgment together because it allows us to express more of our integrity. And in that Integrity, we are able to look at our circumstances more objectively. Is this helpful? Is this healthy rather than through the lens of anger and gossip and emotional reactivity, where we literally, our body becomes addicted to the stress, to the drama, to the trauma, and we We make the wrong choices because we're fearing what other people may think or however people, how other people may feel based of our in our decision making rather than just what's right for us, what is the right thing for me to do? And I mean, I again, I have fully forgiven my mom's ex husband. I can talk about it all with peace. I feel at peace. I have great appreciation for The great things he brought into my life. I had wonderful experiences and memories as a kid, and things that I learned from him. And he had some really, really unhealthy and toxic and traumatizing traits and tendencies and behaviors and perspectives that I'm so grateful are away from me now. And I'm grateful that they taught me some things that I want to be mindful of and what to look for. And I believe that equips me to be a really awesome mom. And I love that. I love that. And I've moved forward from that relationship. So when he was pursuing the relationship, it was easy for me to say like this, this is over for me. It was really important for me to have this conversation with you and let you know that I've fully moved forward and I forgive myself and I forgive you. This is over. And then there was, there's no communication from there until, gosh, six years later where he was hanging out at my mom's house. And again, it was one of those opportunities for me to just see who I am around the people that I thought once made me a certain way. And I chose very independently and confidently to, to handle that circumstance in that environment in a way that I felt really proud of where I was very observant and objective. and saw myself in a really excellent light. And I let them see me in an excellent light because that's where I belong. I belong in an excellent light. And that's where I put myself. So for you, when you focus on forgiveness, you truly are doing it so that you can move forward. There's no letting other people off of a hook that they're set on being like they're set on being on that hook. You're not going to be the one that lets them off of it. You're not going to be the person that frees them from the guilt. from the shame, from the agony that they create for themselves in their own mind, in their own behaviors and Tendencies and perspectives and experiences. You will not be the person that sets them free from that. You're not Jesus. You're not the savior. You get to be the person that turns to Jesus, turns to your savior, however you view your faith in this. And that allows you to heal, move forward, have fresh starts, and realize, like, I. I am forgiven. And now it's a matter of me being forgiving. Like, I get to forgive myself the same way my heavenly father forgives me, and I get to forgive other people the same way I want to be forgiven. That's one of my favorite Parts in the Bible, is this. This idea of forgiving other people the same way that we want our heavenly father to forgive us. And it's like, who are we to judge? Who are we to hold these? these situations over other people's heads when we ourselves are not perfect and we never will be. And that's really helped me with forgiveness too, is reading the Bible for real. So yes, your righteous judgment, instead of acting that anger, you're able to view it objectively and really ask yourself, like, is this friendship aligned with my values, my emotional well-being and the kind of relationships I want in my life? Is this a friendship I bring into my next season? Yes or no? And it doesn't have to be done out of anger. And this is where I think people get a little bit mixed up in it because they are making choices off of anger and they're not clear on their values. And it's really difficult to make decisions when you're unclear on your values. When you're clear on your values, decisions are easy. So you need to get more clear on your values, step into forgiveness with the understanding of, Righteous judgment allows me to decide who comes into my next season, what I bring with me, and it's all within your choice. And that forgiveness allows you to release the resentment, letting go of the anger so it doesn't control you and your decision making and your view of the world. And that forgiveness is for you. It's not for them. You're not going to be the person that lets them off the hook. and honestly, when you think of any of these relationships, friendships, anything you're going to leave in a season behind you, you can leave, you can leave it and end it with Integrity, and you can choose to be direct and kind in your approach. And simply allowing a friendship to fade also is not a bad thing. Some friendships just fade, and the closure is the understanding that it's over. Some people are so hooked up and set up on this closure idea, like, oh, I need closure. When it's like you're looking at the back of the door. It's closed. There you go. You've got your closure. And I guess that's just my unique way that I've gone through, like, some endings of friendships and not understanding what happened. Like, it's all right. I don't need to know everything that happens in order to understand that. It is over and I can accept that part. So, you know, when you, when you marry together forgiveness with righteous judgment, it gives you permission to decide who and what you're bringing into your upcoming seasons and who and what you bring into your next season. And the one after that is greatly going to determine the way it goes for you. So if you feel like you've been in repetition of seasons and repetition of circumstances, yeah. I like to think that God gives us the same lesson until we learn it. It might be a little bit different disguised in a different circumstance, a different person, and it's still the same lesson. Ah, that one behavior that I seem to gravitate towards, that one trait characteristic that seems to catch me, like those are things that you're going to continue experiencing until you finally learn them. So forgiveness. married with your righteous judgment so that you can forgive and still be free, forgive and still move forward. I hope this was so helpful for you, my sweet friend. And if it's something that you love to work on, well, then join us over in the Moms at Membership so you can coach with me and my awesome team inside of our wonderful courses and tools, challenges, topics that we're going through. It's been an exceptional place to be together.