The Wings of forgiveness for yourself and others
- sara carson
- Jan 29
- 3 min read
There’s a point in life where you look back at the younger version of yourself — the one who didn’t have the experience, the maturity, or the emotional vocabulary to handle the things that came your way — and you finally understand you weren’t weak. You were unprepared. You were doing the best you could with the tools you had at the time. And sometimes those tools were blunt, broken, or borrowed from people who didn’t know any better either.
You forget that wisdom isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you grow into. It takes time, mistakes, heartbreak, confusion, and a whole lot of living to learn how to navigate obstacles without falling apart. It takes experience to realise that nothing stays the same forever — not the pain, not the fear, not the thoughts that once felt so loud they drowned out everything else. Life moves. Feelings shift. Seasons change. And just like the world outside, you need both sunshine and rain to grow into who you’re meant to be.
There are moments when life forces you to shed things you’ve been carrying for far too long — old beliefs, old wounds, old versions of yourself that no longer fit.
And there are other moments where the most powerful thing you can do is simply stand still and take stock of everything that has happened. To breathe. To look at the mess and the beauty side by side. To acknowledge the weight you’ve carried without judging yourself for how you carried it.
Growth doesn’t always look like progress. Sometimes it looks like pausing. Sometimes it looks like falling apart so you can rebuild with stronger foundations. Sometimes it looks like learning the same lesson twice, or three times, because you weren’t ready to understand it the first time around. And that’s okay. That’s human.
The truth is, you only learn how to handle life by living it. You learn resilience by surviving things you didn’t think you could. You learn compassion by recognising your own pain in someone else’s eyes. You learn strength by getting back up after the world knocks you sideways. And you learn self‑forgiveness by realising that the person you were back then didn’t have the knowledge, the clarity, or the experience you have now.
So if you’re looking back at your past with frustration or regret, soften your gaze. You weren’t supposed to know then what you know now. You weren’t supposed to have the answers before life taught you the questions. You were growing — even when it didn’t look like growth.
And the beautiful thing is this: once you understand that, once you allow yourself to release the blame and honour the journey, something inside you settles. You stop fighting your past and start learning from it. You stop carrying old baggage and start travelling lighter. You stop wishing you’d been different and start appreciating how far you’ve come.
Life will keep changing. You will keep changing. And with every season, every shift, every rise and fall, you’ll gain more of the experience you once didn’t have. You’ll meet challenges with a steadier heart. You’ll trust yourself more. You’ll move through the world with a kind of quiet confidence that only comes from living, learning, and choosing to grow.
And that — that right there — is something to be proud of.
When I chose the name Butterfly Mind Works, the symbol of the semicolon as the butterfly’s body hit me hard, especially after someone I know lost someone they loved. The blue butterfly has always symbolised freedom, and during my own caterpillar phase — like so many others — I learnt, loved, hurt, survived, and then shut myself away in a cocoon of what felt like never‑ending trauma, distress, and disaster.
But then my heart and mind won, and the cocoon broke.
This butterfly learnt to forgive herself, to forgive others, and to heal. It wasn’t easy, but it was
worth the journey a hundred times over.
The Butterfly Mind Works mindset works.
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