Giving Grace: To Ourselves & To Others

Hey friends, in this episode, I dive deep into the concept of grace—especially what it means to give ourselves grace versus extending it to others. It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately, especially as I continue navigating life post-divorce, deep healing, and everything in between. Through my own experiences in therapy and the soul work of personal growth, I’ve come to realize how transformative grace can be—not just in forgiving others, but in reclaiming peace for ourselves.

We explore the contrast between living in cycles of pain and choosing the brave path of self-reflection and emotional healing. I open up about some pretty personal moments, including the choices I made to prioritize my own peace, the way I learned to let go of resentment, and how I’ve come to understand the role of karma and moral responsibility in our lives. If you’ve ever struggled with being too hard on yourself or holding on to pain from others, this conversation is for you.

Episode Highlights:

[0:02] - Introducing the topic: grace towards self vs. others
[1:20] - Reflecting on the two paths people take after childhood trauma
[3:08] - The long, messy journey through therapy and finding the right fit
[4:45] - Realizing we are often our own harshest critics
[6:00] - How giving myself grace helped me during my mom’s illness and divorce
[7:40] - Extending grace to those who’ve deeply hurt us, and what that says about our growth
[9:20] - Choosing peace and forgiveness over retaliation and judgment
[10:35] - Learning to be neutral before shifting towards compassion
[11:48] - Letting the universe handle karma and consequences
[12:30] - The importance of developing a moral compass and ethical responsibility
[13:35] - Wrapping up with an invitation to introspect and grow with grace

Links & Resources:

Be sure to follow, share, and leave a comment if this show resonates with you! Send me a message at podpage.com/themusicoflife to share your experiences, or to leave a comment. I'd love to feature it in a future episode.

Transcript

Caryn Portnoy: 0:02

Karen, hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Karen Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. I wanted to talk today about the concept of grace, specifically giving grace to ourselves versus giving grace to others. And it really got me thinking, because what I've learned over decades in therapy is that you know, there are kind of two different paths to take. You could either learn about your childhood traumas and wounds and try and heal those wounds as you go into adulthood and late adulthood, and that requires a lot of therapy, sometimes, and introspection, and it's very difficult and scary and intense work. And some people go that route. I went that route. And then there is the other route people take where they don't address these things and just kind of live their life repeating the same cycles of abandonment and not feeling worthy and not feeling love and not feeling deserving, and all of that. And they they live their life that way, and there's no judgment either way, good or bad. I'm not telling anyone how to live their life, but it's, it's a question of which path you want to take. And for me, it was, it was a very intense journey for most of my life, I would say, mid high school, I started therapy, and I'm still in therapy, but, you know, I went through a bunch of bad therapists along the way, so the fact that the one that I'm with now is the one that I believed was the right fit for me, I really got the most work done in the most intense way, because I finally found the right fit. And I always say that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your prince or princess, in my case. And so I truly believe that we're born into this earth with certain wounds and certain lessons that we're meant to learn throughout our lives, and oftentimes we spend the rest of our lives trying to heal those wounds in one way or another, and even if we don't do the work and we're just repeating those cycles. You know you could very easily as an adult, recognize those wounds and patterns and learn to break them yourself. Maybe you read a good self help book that helps you to do that, or whatever it is. But in essence, you know what happens along the way is we end up being our worst critic, because, you know, we're we're so hard on ourselves, we're so judgmental of ourselves, regardless of what anybody else thinks of us, and we really beat ourselves up good in a way that nobody else could ever and it always amazes me, because we know ourselves better than anybody. And don't you think that you know that would require the most amount of love and kindness and grace and compassion for ourselves, and yet we don't. So I was thinking about this because I know in my last episode, I was talking about, you know, the weight that I gained during my divorce and and how I was able to lose weight so organically, you know, when my mom was sick and dying, and I was dealing with her care, her medical care long distance, and I was really able to give myself a lot of grace then, and just be in the moment, be in my flow and release stress, how I had to, and it just all came together. And now dealing with my divorce and moving out of my house, and, you know, living somewhere else for a year, and doing so much intense healing along the way, it's just been, it's been a lot of giving myself grace, because how else am I going to start a new life. How else am I going to move forward if I'm not loving and compassionate and kind and graceful to myself? So I've done a lot of that, and I've also given a lot of grace to people who have hurt me deeply, and that's just a testament to how far I've come within myself. Because, you know, often times, a lot of us are very much in the the mindset of an eye for an eye. And if someone does you bad, or does you wrong or hurts you so bad. And in my case, my ex husband tried to destroy me on every level, and it. Would have been very easy for me to just stoop to his level and retaliate and wish bad on him and all of that. And I will tell you as as much work as I've been doing on myself in the last three years. Out of our four years divorcing and now officially divorced for six months, I never once wished bad on him, and there were even times that I prayed for him. I'm not going to say a lot, but there were times, but I will say that I do find myself more currently giving him grace, because I know how unhealed he is. I know what his traumas are because I see how it played out, you know, in his in his effort to hurt me as much as he could, so I can give grace for the fact that he is so wounded and in so much pain, and someone like that, you know, banks everything on the facade that he portrays to everybody else, and it's a sign of weakness. It's not a sign of strength. But, you know, I'm not saying that judgmentally. I'm just saying it sort of matter of factly. And the reason that I've come to a point of grace, A is for my own peace. You know, like when you forgive somebody, it's not for the other person, it's for yourself. And so I forgave a lot of people that did me wrong because I wanted peace for myself. I don't want to carry those burdens around and have that weigh me down that's not, I'm not interested in that. So for me, it was more, you know, I prioritize peace over everything right now and everyone. And if somebody doesn't bring peace to my life, they're not in my life. You know, at the time when I was so broken down and in the depths of hell during my divorce, while we lived together, I was really in a bad state. And when I started healing, I was slowly moving towards not wishing bad on my ex husband. And at that time, I remember very consciously thinking, well, as long as I'm not wishing bad on him, then I'm okay, because I'm thinking in terms of my own karma. So I kind of got to a place of like indifference, or I was just being neutral, like I'm not wishing bad, but I'm also not wishing good, and and I stayed in that space of neutrality for a while, and I would say, only more recently have I moved the needle more towards giving him grace. But the reality is is I'm I'm very intentional about the fact that it's not up to me to issue him any karma. It's not up to me to issue him any punishment or consequence or anything like that. I completely defer that job to God and the universe. And whatever is meant to be is meant to be my ex husband will reap what he sows, or, you know, get his karma, or however you define that, cause and effect, whatever. So I'm not looking to play God. I'm not looking to, you know, be the authority on anything. I'm just sharing my thoughts and feelings and perspectives on things, and hopefully giving you something to think about. So when I think of other people who have hurt me, deeply betrayed me, wish bad on me, gossiped about me, things like that and more. I'm able to see very clearly that they are coming from a very unhealed place, possibly toxic. And to that extent, I could say it's not really their fault, although I do believe that we need to take responsibility for our own actions and our own behaviors and all of that, no matter how toxic we are. But again, it's, it's that whole cause and effect if you're if you're going to live a life of toxicity and behave in a certain way towards people, especially people that are kind and generous and, you know, love you. It's, there's, there's a price to be paid for that. But again, you know my peace is my priority, and in order to live a peaceful life, I'm aware how important it is to forgive people. My life, how to give grace to those people and and wish them well? I mean, what else can I do? I don't believe in an eye for an eye, and I do very much believe that if you know better, then you should do better. You have a responsibility at that point. If you don't know, how are you supposed to be held accountable? But when you know, you have a responsibility, an ethical responsibility, to do better. Whether somebody takes that call or not is up to them, you know. But again, there are consequences, universal consequences to that so people. I don't wish bad karma on anyone, because I know that when you're a good person and you want good for other people, and they turn around and stab you in the back, it's not an equal exchange from the universe, because the universe acknowledges people with pure hearts and and good souls and all of that. And so if somebody's going to do someone like that wrong, they don't just get karma. They get like karma times 10 bad karma. So, you know, it's something to think about. I don't know. I mean, how does one develop a moral compass? Let me say that again. How does one develop a moral compass? Where do your ethics come from? Is it how you were raised? Is it the environment you grew up in? Is it the society we live in? I mean, I'm sure a lot of that comes from all different places and influences, maybe things we see on TV or in movies or whatever. It's just we are influenced as we live and grow up and become adults. But it's, it's our own personal choice, how we navigate that, and how we move and how we grow, and what your internal North Star is, what that thing is that pulls you towards right or wrong. So, you know, we're obviously, we're all human. We're not perfect. We're not meant to be perfect. We are meant to grow. We are meant to learn. We are meant to strive to be better, and it comes down to who's going to answer that call. And I'm not here to, you know, be holier than thou and say that. You know, I got it licked and I got it nailed and I know better. That's not my job. But I live my life as best as I can, as pure as I can, whether I'm doing the right thing or not. You know, God will judge me. But I do feel that I've gone through a lot of experience and a lot of hard times and a lot of lessons that I did learn and grow from, and I feel like I have a lot to share and to offer and perspectives that I don't think most people really think about. So in that regard, I'm looking to contribute and hopefully inspire different ways of looking at things based on my own experiences. So while I think that it's important to give grace for other people, for hurting us and hurting others and all of that. It's just, I think we really have to focus more on giving ourselves the grace that we deserve anyway. I hope this is helpful to you guys, in terms of, you know, seeing things a little differently and maybe thinking about some of these things yourself. Thanks again. I'll see you in the next one. Please join me every Thursday for our new episode if you'd like to reach out to me and ask questions or share stories of your own, your own experiences through any of these things, I would love to hear from you. Please also subscribe. You.