In my readings one of the most repeated things I encounter is the subject of guilt!!
There are times in our life when we will all feel guilt in some form or another.  Guilt that we let someone down or perhaps didn’t cover a shift when we could have – simple things.
But when someone we love dies, the guilt can literally consume us following their passing. I myself, have also felt this guilt following the passing of some of my family.
Here’s the deal – It’s impossible when someone tells us to not feel guilty to just press a button and STOP IT – as it is a raw emotion and often it is better to actually feel this and reflect on why we feel it but I do believe there is a place for it and it needs to be looked at objectively and not over played or often over thought! Just because you feel guilty it does not mean you are guilty! And even if you are guilty of something, can lamenting over it for the rest of your life change it? NO!! What’s been has happened and no matter how hard you try we CANNOT change the past.
This is a brilliant statement by Dr Wayne Dyer who sums it up beautifully:
“I forgive myself, and then I move on. You can sit there forever, lamenting about how bad you’ve been, feeling guilty until you die, and not one tiny slice of that guilt will do anything to change a single thing in the past”.
— Wayne Dyer
One of the most common guilt feelings I have come across is that of the long term carer.  For those of you who have perhaps for many years had to give up parts of your life to be there to look after a loved one and then they pass, the aftermath of this can overwhelm you when you try and return to life . Often such things as going out and having fun or laughing can bring guilt to the forefront of your minds.
In the case of suicide, this is also a very common feeling especially if the person who crossed showed no signs of this way of thinking in their daily life.  We are then left trying to put back together our life and wondering what if, we should have, if only and so on. So many of us bear a huge amount of misplaced guilt in this situation.
I felt guilt after my mum died as we hadn’t spoken and I realise so many of you will feel the same way.
Over the years, I have very much decided to forgive myself as I realised the hard way that it took two! And no amount of wrecking my future happiness with the every day consuming feeling of guilt would ever make amends to my mum or myself. I simply had to let it go.
It doesn’t mean we forget these feelings at all or even what caused us to feel them in the first place, but forgiving ourselves most certainly enables us to perhaps close a door on guilt.
Sometimes, there was perhaps nothing we could have done differently and given what we had, we did our best!
One thing I know for sure is that our loved ones in heaven never want us to feel guilty at all!!!