Valeria Velazquez // Columnist
During the first couple of weeks that I was here in Mexico, I went to see a psychic. I wasn’t even the one who intended to see the clairvoyant woman—a friend asked me to accompany her because she was afraid to go by herself.
I, curious about the mystical, said yes without hesitation. Of course, I asked how she knew about this psychic to make sure we weren’t going to be fooled by one of those carnival trickster fortune-tellers. She assured me, based on what her friends had told her, that this woman was reliable.
Afraid of what the woman might tell her, my friend cancelled last minute. But the appointment was already made, and even though I was a little bit reluctant about going by myself, I figured I had nothing to lose.
The woman told me a lot of things. She mentioned specific details about my love life, she gave me names of people around me and their intentions, and described certain relevant events of my life.
However, the most important thing she talked to me about was my relationship with my family, more specifically with my father. Instead of telling me about my future, as one would expect, it was more like she was giving me advice on current worries I have.
When it came to my dad’s behaviours and attitudes, she described him as if she’d known the man all of his life. I couldn’t stop crying when she said that there was a lot of trauma that I had been carrying and needed to heal. This was the thing we spent the most time talking about.
“You need to mend your relationship with him,” she said. “It’s ripped, but not fully broken yet. Talk to him, and if you can’t fix it together you need to fix it yourself, for you, so that you don’t go around carrying sadness and hurt.”
I knew this already. I knew that if I tried, little by little, our relationship could improve, but I also knew how close I was to giving up on trying. What I didn’t know and couldn’t fully comprehend was how I could heal it myself without him being a part of the healing process.
All this time, my purpose for coming to Mexico was to find alignment within myself—to become the best version of me that I could be by reconnecting to my roots and healing old wounds. But if the woman’s words were true, if I could heal things myself, then why was I even here?
A few weeks after I heard the psychic’s words, I had an epiphany. I realized that sometimes the best thing you can do in order to heal yourself is to accept the fact that you might not be able to heal or fix every little thing in your life.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely believe that we can (and have to) do inner work in order to heal our souls from traumas, abuse and deep wounds. At least, I think I need to do this so that I can become my most authentic, happiest and truly aligned self.
However, part of the healing process is letting go of the need to heal those wounds by involving the people who took part in causing the wound in the first place. We need to let go of the control and the desire to make them recognize what they did. Most importantly, you don’t have to heal their wounds in order to heal yourself.
I understood that my healing and connection with myself doesn’t depend on other people—it is only up to me. It doesn’t matter if someone apologizes a thousand times or never for the harm they’ve caused me. It’s me who decides when to forgive and let go of the burdens. In the end, forgiveness is not for the other people in my life, it’s for me.
In order to find peace inside myself I have to forgive. I keep thinking of past partners I’ve had and with whom, for one reason or another, things ended. Every time one of these relationships ends, I forgive and let go. Sometimes it takes me longer than others, but I always forgive them, forgive myself, and release control and expectations on how the relationship should have been.
I came to the conclusion that the same can be applied to every person I’ve had any type of relationship with. Just the way I’ve let go of people whom I once thought were my everything, I can let go of anyone else. In the end, I’ve come to forgive and let go of the anger, resentment and hurt I had towards my father and continue to love him with all my heart. I am finally at peace.
