Forgiveness & Letting the Old Story Go

A week or so after the first day of spring, I printed four copies of the first half of Worthy.

"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers (and sisters) totally without judgment." - A Course in Miracles

Fall and Winter.

The old story.

Even the printing process felt symbolic - chaotic, frustrating, almost absurd. I spent $375 photocopying everything, only to get home and realize it had been done wrong. Pages out of order. Sections missing. A mess.

I salvaged what I could. Then I went back the next day. The manager refunded me half, and I stood there at the machine, feeding page after page through, slowly rebuilding it all with my own hands (trying not to lose my mind).

There was something about that - the redoing, the tending, the choosing not to abandon it.

By the time it was finished, I wasn’t just holding paper. I was holding years of my life.

I prepared the copies carefully. And then, before sending them out, I held a small ceremony. I sat with the stack in my arms, pressed against my chest, and played The Goodness of God.

And I wept.

Not just one kind of crying - but the kind that comes in layers.

Grief.
Relief.
Gratitude.

It felt like holding a younger version of myself. Like holding every version of myself.

And saying, we made it.

I sent one copy to my editor friend. One to a spiritual mentor. And then I drove the last two out to land that holds deep significance in my story.

Land where something in me shifted years ago. Land where, during a medicine journey, the name Ava Soleil first came through - before I fully understood what it meant.

One copy would stay inside the house. The other, we placed in a container out on the land.

On the drive there, the stack sat beside me in a box. And I could feel it. The weight of it.

Physical, yes - but more than that. Energetic.

“Holy shit,” I thought, I’ve got the old story sitting right next to me.

My faithful companion.
My survival.
My identity.

And I’m about to drop her off.

When I placed that final copy on the land, I didn’t rush.

I thanked her. I blessed her.

I let myself feel the enormity of what she had carried me through.

Because the truth is - there is nothing wrong with the old story.

It kept me alive.

It made meaning when there was none. It held me when I didn’t know how to hold myself.

_______

On the drive home that afternoon, something was different. The box was empty. And so was the space beside me.

And in that quiet, a question came - not loud, not urgent, just a whisper: Who will you be without the old story?

But the answer didn’t scare me. Because I realized - I already knew.

I had been practicing.

In small ways.
In quiet moments.
In the way I got dressed in the morning.
In the way I spoke to myself.
In the way I stopped chasing, stopped proving, stopped performing.

I had been titrating into a new story long before I named it.

And underneath all of it - the real reason any of this was possible - was forgiveness.

A Course in Miracles says: “I forgive the world.”

And when I first understood what that meant, something cracked open in me. Because it doesn’t mean the world was wrong.

It means… I forgive the way I learned to see it.

I forgive the lens shaped by trauma. By fear. By protection. By all the ways I had to survive.

There was a time I said those words over and over again.

“I forgive the world.”
“I forgive the world.”
“I forgive the world.”

Dozens of times a day.

Because something in me knew - If I could soften the lens, I might finally see what had always been here.

Love.

Not the kind you chase.
Not the kind you earn.

But the kind that was never actually gone - only obscured.

Forgiveness, I’ve come to see, is not something we force.

It’s a grace. A quiet unraveling. A loosening. A returning.

Over the past few years, I have forgiven myself in ways I didn’t know were possible. And in doing so, I found that others were already forgiven too.

Not because they changed. But because I did.

And that is what made it possible to let the old story go.

Not perfectly. Not all at once.

There are still moments I feel the pull of it.

Old patterns. Old reactions. Old ways of seeing.

Sometimes I still fall back. Sometimes there is still a purge.

But now I know - That’s not failure.

That’s integration.

Because once you’ve seen differently, you can’t fully unsee it.

"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world." - A Course in Miracles

Letting the old story go isn’t a single moment. It’s a process. A practice.

A series of small, brave permissions to live as if love might actually be true.

And I can say this now, with my whole body: It is the most beautiful, wild ride I have ever taken.

And it is worth everything.