Making Peace with Painful Memories: Freeing Yourself from Resentment Through Soul Recovery

In this episode of the Recover Your Soul Podcast, we explore one of the most important and tender parts of the Soul Recovery journey—making peace with painful memories. When we hold on to resentment, we keep ourselves tied to the very moments that wounded us, replaying them again and again in our minds and bodies. True freedom comes not from erasing the past or pretending it didn’t happen, but from meeting those memories with compassion, grace, and forgiveness—first for ourselves, and then, when we’re ready, for others. 

As I continue to work on my own memoir, I’ve been revisiting some of the most difficult years of my life, and it has reminded me that every story, even the painful ones, can be seen through a new lens when we invite in spiritual awakening and Soul Recovery. This is not about minimizing the harm or excusing others—it’s about choosing to release the grip of resentment so we can live fully in the present, whole and authentic. Join me as we talk honestly about how to move from grievance to peace, and how the 9-Step Soul Recovery Process offers a path to let go of what was and step into the freedom of who you truly are.

I mention Mattie who is helping me in writing this book as a collaborator. Visit her website if you are ready to write your book too!!! 

The Soul Recovery FREE Zoom Support Group will meet on September 8th due to Labor Day, and there is still time to register for the upcoming in-person retreat in Asheville NC September 13-14th. Visit the website to learn more and register! 

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison or guests. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Inner Peace and Freedom
• 8:50 Making Peace with a Painful Past
• 14:24 Soul Recovery Through Life's Challenges
• 18:59 Our Soul's Purpose and Human Experience
• 26:14 Navigating Family Crisis and Pain
• 29:44 Releasing the Need to Control Others

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

Finding inner peace and freedom means that we have to make peace with our past, regardless of how painful and difficult those memories and experiences were. It's not about sweeping them under the rug and pretending that they didn't happen. It's about processing them in healthy ways that allow you to understand more about yourself, to have compassion and grace and forgiveness around those experiences, mostly for you and then potentially for the people around you, so that you can be present right here, right now, in this moment, in your full, authentic self, letting go of grievance and resentment, being present in your wholeness today. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:52

I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives, as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow and our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recovery Soul podcast and community. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for spending your time with me here today. I hope that this is something that helps you remember your wholeness. I hope that these podcasts and this community is reminding you of the incredible beauty that you are and how complex it is in this world, but that you have a choice, that you can make a decision to step into your own soul recovery. You can make a decision to follow a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:00

And today I want to talk about making peace with the past. And I want to talk about this because it has been such a profound part of my spiritual journey and as I continue to move into a new way of being, I've had to learn how to make peace with the past. I've learned how to step away from what was an incredibly painful and difficult 15, almost 20 years of marriage, of raising kids, and for many of you, I know that you're in it right now. I know that you're in the trenches right now and this is what I hope that this podcast and community offers you a beacon of hope and light to see at the end of the tunnel, to remember that you are okay, it is going to be okay, you can make it, you can remember and step into your higher self, you can allow what is happening. You can allow what is happening from a place of loving detachment, from a place of your wholeness, from a place of allowing other people to be on their own journey, to remember that you're here for your soul's spiritual journey.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:14

And the more that we do this work, the more that our eyes open and our perception changes and we begin to see from this new lens that steps away from all the controlling, all the fixing, all the trying to make it better, all the codependent behaviors, maybe our own addiction, our fears, our very legitimate fears transformation and the feelings that we feel we often don't give ourselves the ability to feel. We push them down, we try to make it better, we try to fix it, we try to have a solution, we go into the solution, which is often about trying to make other people be or act a different way. And what we're learning in soul recovery is we're coming back to our own soul, to our own purpose, to our own true nature. And this making peace with the past is really important because when you have had a difficult past which I don't know anybody who hasn't had some level of difficult past we can get caught up in looping and being present in those memories and those experiences as I often talk about in soul recovery and from a soul's journey.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:30

From a soul's journey are part of the reason why we're here to have these complicated, sticky experiences. And when you're in the middle of it, you don't remember that, you don't think to yourself oh good, I get a challenge. My husband's going to really irk me today and make me feel belittled and small. Or, yay, my kids are falling apart and falling apart in addiction and not making good choices. Oh good, I get to step more into my wholeness and my fullness. No, of course that's not how you feel. You want to jump into action, you want to jump into solution. You want to jump into the parts of yourself that say, ah, here's how we're going to fix it, here's how we're going to make it better. And my hope is that, as you've done this soul recovery work with me, you're reminded to turn the attention to yourself, people around us, so deeply, so fully, with so much compassion that they are able to have whatever their experience is, and to be witnessed and still seen as whole through the midst of their choices. Can we do that? Can we allow them to be fully who they are and accept who they are you know always have to like it but to begin to allow them to have their experiences without the resistance.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:55

One of the reasons why this is up for me is because I'm continuing to work on my memoir, which is taking many twists and turns. I'm working with the amazing Maddie, who is somebody who's worked some of this process herself and offered to help me with the book, and it really has been this profound experience on all levels for both of us really to allow it to be what is to be shared, to really be present with the experience and this isn't a memoir as if I'm telling my story and I want everybody to really revel in my story. It's really our story. It's our story. We all have been through so much and, as you've shared with me in your feedback about this podcast, my willingness to talk about my life, my husband, my kids, my experiences, my beliefs and everything that came up from my childhood gives you ways to look at your own life, and so this book is something that I really want to be as raw and gritty that you can reflect and see the grittiness that I've had in my life and, at the same time, be in inspired hope, reminded that you can make it through, that you can do this, that there is indeed a process that you can walk through, to remember your wholeness, to let it all go.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:22

But it's also meant that I have to go back, as I've mentioned in other podcasts, and revisit a lot of the memories and the feelings that I had tucked away and have had to tuck away and stand in this new presence of who I am today, to be able to maintain my marriage with Rich, who was indeed really painful and difficult for a long, long, long time. And I was reminded of this as I've gone back and reread my journals and done recordings of them so we have transcripts for the book and what it reminded me of. And what I really wanted to talk about is there is this propensity for us to rehash and relive the story, the painful stories. I think it's very interesting how easy it is to go back and really want to rehash and relive those painful stories instead of seeing that that's part of our perceptions, our beliefs, the parts of us that thought that was the only way to show up or was on top of the rock, as I described in step two, letting go of control that generally, we're on top of this situation. We're trying to fix it, we're trying to change it, we want it to be different. We're in our suffering and underneath is actually all of our soul's experience and our soul's journey and our soul's journey and our soul's exploration and our remembering and our ability to have these profound experiences, as painful as they may be.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:33

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to learn more about the nine step soul recovery process. I hope that you'll join us the first Monday of every month for the free soul recovery support group on Zoom, where we learn more about soul recovery and connect with each other. If you'd like to work directly with me to move through the nine-step soul recovery process, I'm here for you. But you can also choose to work the steps on your own, with individual modules intended to support you to work at your own pace and on your own, with individual modules intended to support you to work at your own pace and on your own time. And if you want even more soul recovery, join us for the Recover your Soul bonus podcast for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, where I interview amazing people sharing soul recovery tips for us and also do spiritual book studies. You can also find Daily Inspiration on Facebook and Instagram and join our private Facebook community. Visit the website for more information, links and registration for everything.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:30

Back to the episode, and when I look at our life now and I go back and I read through those journals, if you've listened to this podcast at all, you know how incredibly painful and difficult it was. Basically, starting from the time that I was pregnant with Bodhi, rich started a project up in the mountains building a cabin for my mom actually doing his life dream mom actually doing his life dream and in that part he stepped into his alcoholism in an incredibly deep and profound and difficult and painful way. And here I was with these two small babies, raising them basically by myself, because he was working during the week and would come home on weekends, exhausted, hungover, disconnected, and it changed the timeline and the trajectory of our what seemed like perfect, beautiful, loving relationship. And when I read back over those journals, there is so much sadness, so much loneliness, so much confusion, and rightfully, so right. So when you look at these emotions that you're having, those emotions are saying there's something not aligned here, there's something doesn't feel right here. But instead of having tools to be able to know how to handle those feelings, of course I don't know how to handle those feelings. I'm like in my 20s, I'm just figuring my stuff out. And so I went into complete overdrive and used all of whatever tools I had at that young age to try to make it be different, to try to fix it, to try to change it and mostly just to be sad about it. And in the sadness I covered my heart and I began to have resentment towards Rich and he began to come back. We have talked about this quite a bit, actually, rich and I. He came back with whatever tools he had. He came from a very difficult, alcoholic, angry home, violence maybe not in the way that some other people experience, violence, but that kind where you don't want to poke the bear. And in that those were his unconscious, subconscious, reactive ways of being. But underneath was this really tender, sweet soul who wanted to support his family.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:57

Well, when I read the journals, it's interesting to really see how and this is what I really want to describe in the book and I hope that I can eventually do it we're resetting again to. It's got to be just right. It's got to really share this part. There's two parts of us. There's always two parts of us. There's our higher self, our soul. That is always whole, always awakened, always present with spirit. It is unfaulted, it is pure, it is light. It is this energy that is glorious and divine and beautiful and that essence comes here into this body to have an experience, to be fully immersed, to forget as soon as you come in that beautiful essence of who you are for the most part and to step fully into this wild ride of humanity experience. Very complicated, very sticky, very full of all kinds of stuff that happens from how our brains work. We step into a conscious brain that has a system that has been slowly, slowly, slowly developing over time. And so when you're in that world of the forgetting the asleepness, world of the forgetting the asleepness, that's when we get all caught up in the perception and the reality in which we choose, and it becomes very complicated because we're trying to control what's uncontrollable.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:33

Step two in soul recovery we're powerless over every single thing outside of ourself. So if you look at my photo albums, you see a life that was beautiful. You see two people that loved each other very much and we absolutely did, and you see us with drinks in our hands having a great time, and you see us taking the kids to skate parks and on trips and all the things that we absolutely did that were really fun. Things that we absolutely did that were really fun, beautiful birthdays and Christmases. You know, for the most part, there's always this joy that's intermixed with the complexity of being a human being, and then there's the part of us that is underneath, not knowing how to process or feel the feelings that we feel, and experiencing very tumultuous, difficult situations huge fights, violence, upset, grievance, resentment.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:25

I was thinking about how incredibly difficult it was in the years when Alex was really struggling and he started having a hard time in middle school, and the reason why he was having a hard time was multifaceted. Right, he's got his own karma, he has his own situation, he has his own belief systems about himself. He struggled with Rich and how Rich responded to him and that affected his psyche and his soul in the way that it was. That's their soul contract. And then, in addition to that, he is a super sensitive and so he took on the energy of a slightly dysfunctional, or most lot dysfunctional, alcoholic home and it came out in ways that were difficult for us, and so then we put all our energy into him as if he was the problem. We defined him as the problem. We called him. The problem was the problem. We defined him as the problem, we called him the problem. And so in middle school he started finding ways to be able to act out the feelings that he was feeling, and by the time he got into early high school we were in blown out, full on crisis mode with drugs, with skipping school. He had to go to truancy court. Eventually it was truancy, it was going to be detention for him or he had to go to rehab. And we sent him to residential rehab for five months and we thought that that would fix him. But it didn't because we were still a system that was broken, and so when he came out of that, it just got worse for him and then he got in legal trouble.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:03

And I read the journals about those times and how much in conflict Rich and I were about how we were handling it, what we thought about it we separated for a year during that time and everything that I think about during those times had so much complexity and so much pain and what I watched in myself as I reflected on my journals and how I felt was this constant desire for me just to make it better for everybody. And of course I do desire for me just to make it better for everybody. And of course I do, because I love everybody and I just, I just want us to be happy. But in the midst of it I was losing myself. Over and over and over.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:47

I'm writing in those journals about how I'm losing who I am. I don't know who I am. I don't know how to allow myself to be loved. I don't know how to love. I don't know how I failed so much. I wrote over and over about failure. How did I mess this up? And then you see that there's a belief in there that it was my job to make sure everyone was okay and as I went through my soul recovery process so gently and kindly and interestingly over the last seven and a half years, those painful memories have been able to loosen their grip.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:26

And this is the part about making peace with the past is it's about not trying to think that I wish I could go back and make it different, those journal entries where I'm saying I just wish I could do a do-over. Those journal entries where I'm saying I just wish I could do a do-over make so much sense, right? Because there's a lot of timeline switches and changes and crossroads that we hit in those moments when we're making those decisions. But when you step into spirituality, you remember and you begin to understand that there are no wrong turns. Spirituality, you remember and you begin to understand that there are no wrong turns and that each turn that you make, you get more and more aligned with who you are to be able to make the choices at each one of those turns, each one of those crossroads, each time when those doors open, to be more clear about who you are and what you want in your life, and you become better and better at allowing, accepting, loving, unconditionally, lovingly, detaching from the other people in your life and seeing them more clearly for who they are as souls and potentially, what their experience is and how it needs to be.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:38

Because the more that we've got our fingers or attempt of fingers to have in everybody else's business to make it better for everybody else, the more that we're entangled in whatever their choices are. We're powerless over their choices. And it doesn't mean that we don't have opinion. It doesn't mean that we don't show up. It doesn't mean that we don't care. It doesn't mean that we don't love. We just stop holding on so incredibly tightly to yeah, but if they would just yeah, yeah, that that's true and turn the attention back to yourself.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:16

So reading over the journals has been very interesting and working on this memoir has been interesting because it is this essential element of who I am and where I've gotten to where I am today. I can see more clearly, and you know that I'm in the super woo of the spirituality. I don't even begin to talk about where I've gone into the spiritual journey, but it is so peaceful there and it's the reminder that every moment we are choosing to be separate from the knowing that we are divine beings of source energy, we are the creation of source and love in the universe itself. Having the opportunity to have these pretty difficult and sometimes painful experiences for the potential of our own awakening, and when we remember the true nature of who we are, we can look back on those experiences with compassion and deep forgiveness. Not the forgiveness like something happened to me that is wrong and you were at fault, but forgiveness for the pain that we were all in and the lack of tools that we had and the way that we dealt with it. That wasn't ideal. That kind of forgiveness opens up a level of compassion and grace for everyone involved. And you know that I'm still with Rich.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:48

So, 33 years in, and when I go back and I read that really difficult truth of how hard those years were and again, I'm never saying that someone should stay in their relationship or leave their relationship I think it's really really important that you are making those decisions for yourself, because I am here in this relationship. But I can also see that there would have been an entirely different timeline and trajectory for me had I made a different choice when Rich and I separated to not come back, and both of them have value. This is just the one that I ended up choosing, and the reason why it continues to be the choice that I'm grateful that I made is because we are both doing the work. Does his work look like mine? No, but he is indeed doing his own work, these experiences than we ever could have before, because we've let go of that woundedness, that attack that you're the one who did this to me. This was the fault, this is what you did versus. This is how I felt, this is how I perceived it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:11

And recently, when I was talking to Rich about reading over the journals as I was recording them and and it made me cry, and he said I never really saw how painful it was for you and I'm sorry. And I said, well, I never really gave you credit for how hard you were working for our family and how hard it was to not be seen for that, and I'm sorry. Those allowances for us to be seen and witnessed from this place of compassion and to have those kinds of conversations are so healing. Right, because there's this need and want for us to justify our side. But when we quit doing that, there is this release of the past. And the more and more and more I do this work, the more that it's as if I'm picking up a book that I'm reading but it doesn't necessarily feel like it's mine. I can feel the intensity of it, but there's no point in continuing to rehash those stories and say my son was like this and my husband was like this and our life was like that.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:22

That becomes a habit of talking about what you don't like and in the woo-woo of the universe you are attracting that energy. You are continuing to bring that energy to yourself. Your life is what you think and feel and believe that it is. It is absolutely the energy that you feel on the inside that reflects the life that you have on the outside. So, as I turn to this new place that says I am going to witness a life that is love and connection and a healthy marriage and appreciation, that is what I'm going to receive. Not that I'm controlling him, not that I'm controlling my kids. I cannot visualize enough to be in charge of their experience. I can allow and release and let go and be present in it for what it is to me and have more clarity about how it feels to me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:24

And I've said over and, over and over again, and I'll say it again. Rich has asked you know, can you basically promise that you'll, that we'll be together forever? And my answer is always no. I can't make that promise. That's not integrative, that's not genuine, that's not authentic. What I can say is I want to. I am 100% in today and I want to be present with him and with my children in the human beings that they are today. I mean the same thing If I look back at Alex and who he was, and I read how manipulative and angry and I read violent episodes where he was threatening to kill himself, threatening to hurt other people. We had to call the police. I mean, we went through so much stuff and if I get on the phone with him right now and that's who I'm talking to I'm not going to see this beautiful young man with his new family who's making every effort to also release the past, to let go of those parts of himself that he has shame and guilt and sadness over that he's healing. I want to encourage his healing. And when I allow Rich to be the person that he is working so hard to be today, then that's who I'm interacting with. Because all you have is this very second right here, right now.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:48

And when I go back and look at myself an alcoholic, a control addict, a nag, a way control you think that you're trying to be helpful. You think you're trying to be helpful by saying here's what you should do. We've got to take care of this. This has to be different. Why don't you do this? That is not beneficial to anybody, because you're diminishing the power that people have in their own life and then you're ultimately giving your power away by saying I need you to be okay, for me to be okay. But in the end what we're really saying in all those situations is, as you're hurting, you show up in a way that is painful to me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:33

But when you do your work on yourself, you recognize no one can make you feel any way. No one can make you do or feel in any way. The more sovereign you are in your own well-being, the more you work on your soul recovery process. The more you work on your soul recovery process, the more you understand your subconscious and what are your beliefs and what are your stories, what are your patterns, what are your reactive mechanisms. And you begin to heal them. You can begin to rewrite them. You begin to change your mindset. You begin to turn over to that connection with the higher power of your understanding and seeing your wholeness being in your sovereign, most beautiful, light centered self that can see the perception that everything actually is okay, even when it doesn't feel or look okay. It's part of that person's process. It shifts and changes everything. And then I see that incredible journey that we all went through and how every single one of us is on the other side to some extent right now, every single one of us and my kids are on the other side. Way sooner than I was, I didn't get sober till I was 48 years old. They're 26 and 28. They're already ahead of the trajectory in which I was.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:59

But what if we can make peace with the past? That doesn't involve the other people having to also make peace with the past, or that they have to be a certain way for it to be okay. Now it really is this releasing and letting go of everybody's situation, everybody's story, everybody's location. We can't make anybody else heal, but we can stand more fully in our awakened state, in our wholeness, and reflect light and let go of the past. The Course in Miracles says the only thing that's real is love. When we are in pain, that isn't love. That's all of our perceptions, it's all of our fear. So it doesn't dismiss or diminish that those experiences happened or happen or are happening right now. But we have this choice that we can make at every moment to see it from our higher self, to release the pain, to let go of the story, to not be the victim.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 30:12

This is a slow and steady process, and I was going to read for you, as just to close one of my journal entries from 2012. So this is over 10 years ago and it was just prior to the separation that Rich and I had for a year, 6-18-2012. Years of marriage. Yesterday and again it's another year, with struggle surrounding the day. I know this is not easy and there are wonderful moments and great things about rich. However, we're just different and those differences are getting more and more pronounced. I look back over the years and there's ongoing sadness. Can we overcome it? Can I overcome it? I just want to run. I know I do that so often, but at this point it's all that's on my mind. That was just prior to my finally making the decision to give a break in my relationship, which ended up being a year A year of trying to work it out where we I asked for a divorce and then, in the midst of that, decided to give it another chance.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:20

There are no wrong turns and our history has such value in us learning more about ourselves, but we don't have to carry it forward with this incredible depth of wound and suffering and pain. That is a choice that we make, but those feelings that you feel in the midst of the experiences are part of your soul's journey and experience and they are important. And the more you actually just touch in on the feelings and ask yourself and your higher self and spirit to help you process and understand and learn and heal from whatever the pains and the sufferings are, the more opportunity you have to actually grow and be in earth school and see this curriculum as your opportunity to be your full, whole, authentic self and to know that there will always be challenge, but we can stop seeing it as a painful past. Be present here now in your awakened, whole self, until next time. Namaste, thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 32:30

Just a reminder that every Friday is the Recover your Soul bonus podcast. This podcast is for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, and not only do you get an incredible interview or book study that comes with being part of that community, but your subscribing helps support this podcast and the Recover your Soul community. If you want to listen to those bonus episodes but can't subscribe right now, do know that you can be a free Patreon member and have access for limited time to new episodes. Visit the website RecoverYourSoulnet or check out the show links below for coupons and information for upcoming events. I thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I thank you for giving it five stars, and the reviews that are left bring tears to my eyes. I am honored to be part of your life. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.