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The Catholic Sobriety Podcast
Welcome to The Catholic Sobriety Podcast with your host Christie Walker!
This podcast is dedicated to empowering Catholics to live lives of freedom by providing tips and tools to help them be successful as they reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. Christie Walker, a compassionate Catholic life and sobriety coach, is here to support you on your journey toward a healthier, more fulfilling life.
Are you questioning whether alcohol has taken control of your life? Do you worry about the impact it may have on your well-being? Many people find themselves in this situation, fearing the loss of pleasure and stress relief associated with alcohol. They assume that giving it up will only bring deprivation and misery. But Christie offers a different and much more positive perspective.
With Christie's expertise, you'll discover the joy and peace that come from embracing a healthier lifestyle rooted in the Catholic faith and tradition.
Ready to get curious? Start listening!
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The Catholic Sobriety Podcast
EP 88: Healing Through Forgiveness: Dr. Carron Silva's Journey and Insights
What does it mean to truly forgive? In this episode, we welcome Dr. Carron Silva, a Catholic wholeness coach and retreat presenter, who shares her powerful journey of healing through the lens of forgiveness.
Raised amidst the brutal realities of apartheid South Africa, Dr. Carron opens up about the racial and personal trauma she endured. Listen as she reveals how her unwavering faith and the nurturing influence of her grandmother guided her towards becoming an advocate for forgiveness and led to her impactful work, including her book "With You Always: A Journey with Jesus."
Forgiveness isn't just a one-time decision but a continuous journey. Dr. Carron and I unpack the complex nature of forgiveness, addressing common misconceptions and illustrating how it involves personal growth and recognizing the humanity in those who have wronged us. We delve into the importance of understanding scripture contextually, practicing imaginative prayer, and the immense impact of letting go of unforgiveness for our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Through poignant anecdotes, we reflect on the innocence of children as a beacon of God's love and our potential for transformation.
Join us for an inspiring conversation that underscores the transformative power of forgiveness and faith.
Learn more about Dr. Carron:
Podcast - Forgiveness Is For YOU - Overcome Trauma Through Forgiveness
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/forgiveness-is-for-you-overcome-trauma-through-forgiveness/id1721956839
Dr. Carron's Website https://drcarron.com/
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Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives, women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, christi Walker. I'm a wife, mom and a joy-filled Catholic, and I am the Catholic Sobriety Coach, and I am so glad you're here. Unforgiveness can keep us stuck and stagnant. It can keep us believing lies about ourselves and others. Unforgiveness can even prevent us from growing in faith, and hearing God's voice can even prevent us from growing in faith and hearing God's voice. Forgiveness isn't easy, though, and there are a lot of misconceptions about what forgiveness is and isn't, and that is why I am so delighted to welcome my guest today.
Speaker 1:Dr Karen Silva is a Catholic illness coach and retreat presenter. She helps women who have experienced complex trauma interrogate negative thoughts and false beliefs that they hold about themselves and create new, honest and authentic perspectives that serve them well. A South African native, dr Karen's rich cultural, educational and historical context lays the foundation for someone who thrives in service to others. As a retreat presenter, she advocates for healing trauma through forgiveness, using poetry, song scripture and the catechism of the Catholic Church. Song, scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Dr Karen is an empty nester entrepreneur, mom to adult children and wife of 30 plus years to her husband Steve.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, congratulations on that as well. Welcome, dr Karen. It's a blessing to have you joining me today. Thank you for having me Pleasure to be here, so why don't we just go ahead and get started with you sharing a bit about yourself and your story and how you became a well-known advocate for healing through forgiveness?
Speaker 2:Yes, I was born and raised, like you stated in my bio, in South Africa under the apartheid system, and for anyone who doesn't know what that means, it's a caste system based on simply the color of your skin, and, as a woman of mixed race, we were classified as colored. Mixed race. We were classified as colored, which relegated us to second-class citizenship. And if you think about all the races that were identified in the country, sort of on a ladder, we were second from the bottom. So you had your African you know Africa Africans the black, dark-skinned people, and then myself being a part of the colored race, having mixed ancestry. And then you would have the Indians, who were brought to South Africa to work on plantations, and then you had the Europeans or the whites. They were on top, and so you can imagine that my entire life was designed around my identity as a person of color, and being denied my human rights caused us as people to be displaced within our own country. So on my mother's side, their entire livelihood was destroyed and they ended up living in a ghetto called in South Africa it's called a township in these, what they would call in the United States projects of substandard housing, and at the time my parents were both unemployed, and so they gave me to my grandmother, who had been displaced twice and had raised a very large number of children. The government had declared the Race Classification Act, which had declared the Race Classification Act, which split families apart because they identified which could qualify as white and which people could qualify as colored and which people would qualify as black, and so a lot of families to give, a lot of parents to give their children the opportunity to have a better life, encourage their children to register themselves as white, and so it tore the whole family apart. And so that's how I started. My life is in this family where I was given to my grandmother because my parents couldn't afford to raise me at that time in a place that was extremely violent and experiencing violence in the home and violence to my body and growing up with that under that political terror.
Speaker 2:So you can see, I'm just painting for you the picture of how much forgiveness I have had to work through, and it wasn't until I actually wrote a book in 2021 called With you Always A Journey with Jesus, because I believe that the Lord was always there.
Speaker 2:I had models in my life of people who were very faithful.
Speaker 2:My grandmother was a very faithful believer and she kind of laid that foundation for me as a believer and I wrote this book and then I was asked by a priest our parish priest to present a retreat shortly thereafter so during Lent of 2022, I presented my first forgiveness retreat. And that forgiveness, the theme of forgiveness, came to me as I went to adoration and just sat there and said Lord, you asked me to do this retreat, why do I do it all? And he just gave it to me and he said look how far I've brought you. This is your message, this is what you need to talk about. And he gave me everything. He gave me the entire outline, he gave me the stories that I was going to use from my book and I just put it together and he showed me that this is his work and that this is the reason why I was saved, why I was able to leave South Africa to be in this free nation, to build this life and to spread this message of forgiveness. And his love.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing all of that and what you endured and how far you've come. It's in recovery. We call that our experience, strength and hope, and I see that woven throughout your story. And what a gift that your grandmother gave you of faith and your willingness to not just hear the Lord's voice but your obedience in doing exactly what he was asking you to do. And look at the fruits that have come from that, and I truly believe that our experiences and our healing or at least in the process of healing, because, right, it's a lifelong process of healing we just want to give that to others, like the Lord has given it to us for his great glory. Yes, so how do you approach helping individuals who struggle with forgiving themselves? That is something that it was, for some reason for me, it was easier to forgive other people than it was to forgive myself, even after availing myself of the sacrament of reconciliation over and over. How do you help other people who have that similar problem?
Speaker 2:We don't heal everything all at once. The last person to forgive is yourself, and what I've learned is to go in and really be self-compassionate. And to be self-compassionate and this is my philosophy is to zoom out and to look at the context within which you made whatever decision or whatever happened to you, because the more you can see the broader context, the more you can start developing compassion and empathy for that part of you, because it's not the whole of you, that part of you that either was victimized, or you were the victimizer or you did the self-harm. And I start there. I start with let's look at what were the circumstances, what were your thoughts then and what are your thoughts now? And let's examine, let's find the facts here.
Speaker 2:What's the truth? What lies are you telling yourself about who you were? Because if you look at the context so for me I was a child you know, if I enjoyed the experience, it's because my body responded, because we actually don't need our brains to enjoy sexual activity, but we can leave our bodies and our bodies can respond. So if I'm in that place where I can look back and I can think my thoughts, I can observe my thoughts from afar, what I was thinking at the time. Then I can start seeing oh okay, I was only this old. All of these other factors came into play. And how can I look at that with curiosity instead of judgment? Can I love myself right there. If it was someone else, if it was a friend, even a complete stranger, would I be thinking those thoughts about them? So, really, just looking at myself with so much tenderness, with so much compassion and with so much love and, the most important thing, with zero judgment.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure that a lot of people listening will find that very helpful as well. We might take something from scripture and maybe it's out of context and it doesn't make sense, but then when you look at the whole of the scripture and also like the history of what was going on at the time, then it's a lot easier to understand what was being said or why it is even in there, and so I think that we have to do the same for ourselves, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know St Ignatius tells us we can use our imagination to put ourselves in the scene. I highly encourage anyone who is struggling with self-forgiveness to go to that scene and put yourself in the scene with Jesus and observe and see the truth of what was going on. Now, if you have anything to own, own it, take responsibility, go to the sacrament of reconciliation and repent. That's all he's asking us to do. Repent, but he's always there, he's always loving and he's always present.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times people don't want to let go or forgive. This, again, is something that I've struggled with and had to really work on myself. But we don't want to forgive because there are misconceptions about what forgiveness is and what it's not. So, from your perspective, can you explain that?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. A lot of people think you just have to say I'm sorry once or hear I'm sorry once and then everything's just going to magically get better. That is not true. Forgiveness is not a one-time event. It is a process. It is an iterative process, and what I mean by that is every single time you forgive or are forgiven, you become someone new. It is adaptive you change, the other person changes, the situation changes. Adapted you change, the other person changes, the situation changes. It's a constant work that we do all the time. You know, it's like prayer. You can't just pray one day and think, oh, god is just going to say put a big old rubber stamp on what I'm asking, right, we have to keep coming back to that place of am I done? What is still here, that's still sort of in the back of my mind, that I haven't completely let go of yet I've surrendered.
Speaker 2:It's not justice. Forgiveness is not justice and I always make the distinction between criminal justice, which should always be pursued if at all possible. If we can take someone to court and get justice in court, that would be my recommendation. My number one recommendation is yes, you deserve criminal justice. When it comes to justice of the soul or moral justice, the justice that we seek for that moral injury, we may never get it from that person. We may never get the I'm sorry, right. So forgiveness is not receiving that type of justice, the feeling better about myself, the building up of my self-esteem after whatever happened to me, right. It's not holding the other person accountable. We can hold them accountable for perhaps in court they can go to jail, they can serve their time, but we cannot hold them accountable for our reaction to what happened to us. We cannot hold them accountable for our reaction to what happened to us. We cannot hold them accountable for our emotions, because they don't have any control over what we feel or think. That is not what forgiveness is. We're holding ourselves in bondage when we are trying to hold them accountable, to try to make them see what we're feeling and what we're experiencing. It's a very natural inclination to make them want to feel what we're feeling right, very natural.
Speaker 2:It doesn't erase any consequences for myself or for the other person. The consequences will still be there, even after I forgive or am forgiven. It's not forgetting. We cannot forgive and forget. That is a complete myth. We can forgive but we may never forget, because we know that with scientific research, that our cells in our bodies retain memories. Our brains are wired to retain those memories. It's just how we as human beings are wired. The difference is does the memory control me or do I control it? Does it dominate my life or am I willing to say oh, here's that memory again. You know, I'm done with it. I don't have to have it control my life. It's not reconciliation. We may never be able to reconcile and we may never even want to reconcile, especially if there's a threat to our physical or emotional safety. We can say I forgive you, but I don't ever want you in my life again. It's okay to give yourself permission to say I don't need you in my life if you're going to continue to hurt me. It's not a weapon.
Speaker 2:People want to do this whole thing of revengeful being a, you know, taking revenge with their forgiveness. Like well, I'm only going to forgive you if you do X, y and Z for me like well. I'm only going to forgive you if you do X, y and Z for me, or drawing attention to yourself by telling the whole world I forgave so-and-so for what they did to me. Did you see that? Look how great I am.
Speaker 2:We have power in what happens to us. If we keep our focus on the perpetrator or the offender, we give away all of our power. We don't have to do that. And then, finally, forgiveness is not defining the person who did harm to us by just that act, because then we reduce them to the act and we forget that they are human beings also created in the image and likeness of God. And that's perhaps the hardest saying that I have for people is that they are human. Something happened to Zoom out. What was it that made them to behave in a way that was dehumanizing or subhuman? Something happened there, because when they were born, they were a naked baby, just like you, just as vulnerable as you.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes it's like I've heard the saying unforgiveness is drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die, like it's hurting us far more than it's hurting them. And I'm glad that you also talked about I love little children and their innocence and every time I look at them I think of just how much God loves them and how trusting they are and everything. And then I do look at I have really taken time to look at people in my life that have harmed me or caused trauma and remember them as a child like they were that person. They were innocent and, like you were saying, there were things that happened to them that caused them to be that way. We're not just born that way. It's a lot of times our own hurts and our own traumas.
Speaker 1:I've heard wounded people, wound people, but healing people heal people and that's something that has helped me in my journey toward forgiveness as well. And then I also so much appreciate that you mentioned that forgiveness doesn't mean reconciliation, because there are situations where it would be very dangerous to reconcile or have that person in your life, but it's okay to forgive without ever contacting them or doing that. That's work that we do with the Lord and within ourselves. On that note, what if the person that you have to forgive is someone that you love very much and you actually don't feel animosity towards, but you know that there are things that you do need to forgive? Does forgiveness mean that you don't love them as much as you think you do?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think forgiveness has anything to do with healing. Forgiveness is an act of the will, just like love is an act of the will. We may experience a range of emotions around the event that happened and we can process those emotions. There's a lot of protocols that you can use to process your emotions with Christ and to allow him to heal those parts of you, to go really deep inside you. But emotion really comes from our thoughts.
Speaker 2:We've learned this through cognitive behavior therapy. Right, we have a thought and that thought leads to an emotion, and then that emotion is a fuel for our action. It starts with a decision. So if I have someone in my life who I love very much and we have gone through well, I've been with my husband 34 years. I been married too, so I can tell you that we have had a lot of times in our marriage where we have had to forgive each other for some pretty deep hurts. But it's a decision, right, we work through the emotions, we work through the differences, but eventually it is a decision to allow that person to be who they are and not try to project our own thoughts and emotions onto them and to try to control their reaction to us, then I'm still a work in progress every day.
Speaker 1:It is so freeing and it does like remove obstacles. I've seen it with my clients before just all of a sudden, they didn't even realize that they were holding on to this unforgiveness and that it was creating such a roadblock for them. And then, as soon as they forgive and like, like you said, it's a process. But once they realize like I do need to forgive and I can forgive, and, like you said, forgiveness is a verb, right, it's an action, it's not a feeling, once they take that action, it's like a big boulder being removed or weights off of their shoulders and then they can start to move forward toward healing.
Speaker 2:I think it opens up space for grace to come in. Oh yeah, you know, for the Lord to infuse that grace. If you're a married couple, that you know, your sacrament also allows you to have to receive that grace. If you're a single person, that grace is still available to you. You just have to make yourself available to it.
Speaker 2:And the difficult thing, I think, about forgiveness is people think that there's one way to do it. There's more than 7 billion ways to do it because there's that many people on the planet. Right, we are all uniquely designed, we're all uniquely created and we're all going to go through this process in the unique way that we are designed and created. So for me, maybe, forgiveness means I'm just going to walk up to the person and say I forgive you. For another person, it might mean writing a letter. For another person, it might mean taking years and years, which for me, it took me a couple of decades to forgive.
Speaker 2:Some people Just recently worked through another process after 30 years, and in that case it was a matter for me to decide I don't need to speak to this person, I don't need to hold them accountable at all. I can just say I forgive this person from the bottom of my heart. So help me, god. And then, every time that person pops into my mind, I can pray that same prayer, and then, at some point, that person will pop into my mind and none of those emotions will arise. I won't feel the bond to them and I will experience that interior freedom that I've wanted. And I will experience that interior freedom that I've wanted.
Speaker 1:But we are all different and we're all going to express our forgiveness in a different way. So how do you, thinking back to your story and the oppressive government regime I guess that kind of dictated your life and tore families apart and things like that how do you, how would someone approach forgiveness of something? I'm going to call it kind of abstract or something so big because it is more of a system?
Speaker 1:I mean there's obviously people in that system that are causing you know that are making these rules and laws and whatnot, but it's a system. Is there a way or a technique that you have found helpful for yourself or maybe your clients in doing in like forgiving something like that?
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you bring this question up. There's a lot of us expats here in the United States. We just got together on Sunday. There were two colored couples and two white couples in the room and we sat around the table for almost four hours and we started talking about our experiences under apartheid. I stopped the conversation about 20 minutes in because we were starting to tell stories about our experience of being discriminated against, and they held space for us as brown people in that room to be witnessed in our experience. They sat and they listened without any judgment. It was an incredibly beautiful experience to come to that point where we can be in the same room with each other after almost 30 years and for them to receive our pain when we talked about.
Speaker 2:Fortunately for us in south africa, the truth and reconciliation commission was created for that, where people could come forward and just tell their stories on both sides, and so I think it's really important to get to the truth and to accept that we are all human.
Speaker 2:We all have done things that have harmed someone else On a global scale like that. The way that I've dealt with it personally, even when I was in South Africa, I always told myself as a person of faith as a Protestant at the time, told myself as a person of faith as a Protestant at the time, that God sees everything, that there will be justice one day Not the justice that I want in the country, but there will be an eternal justice and those who perpetrated without repenting they will have their day in, quoteunquote, a different kind of court. It starts with an H. I'm okay with that. I stated this at that dining table on Sunday that there is only one just judge and that is Jesus Christ. Whoever perpetrated atrocities against others, even if they claim to have just done their jobs, they will be held accountable. And I don't have to take that responsibility upon myself Now. I can educate people about what happened to us. I can educate people about the unfairness of it so that it's not repeated, but I don't have to hold grudges about it.
Speaker 1:Fairness of it so that it's not repeated, but I don't have to hold grudges about it. That's beautiful. It just goes to show like that. We all have our stories, we all have our hurts. Sometimes we just need to listen. Sometimes we just need someone to listen. We just need someone to hear us and hear our stories and say like I, you in this, or you know.
Speaker 1:What a beautiful experience I'm sure that it was for you and for the other couples there and healing, because you won't ever be able to talk to those people who harmed you or put these things in place or, you know, were so suppressive, but to be heard by the other, because sometimes we well, not sometimes, but often we have our own thoughts or ideas about another group of people or other people and we don't see or really hear from them or their experiences. And it's kind of like what you've talked about before, that zooming out and getting to see everything that happened you know through their experiences and their eyes, and then being able to see your experiences and what happened to you through your eyes and being able to communicate that. What a beautiful gift from the Lord for all of you. Thank you for sharing that and it's really not seeking to solve a problem, right.
Speaker 2:Seeking to understand and be okay with just understanding and I think forgiveness really starts there with seeking to understand what happened, maybe not even getting the answers to why it happened, but knowing how it happened and what happened and then deciding how I want to think about it.
Speaker 1:So, from your perspective as a wholeness coach, how does unforgiveness or forgiving affect our mental and our physical? Well, actually, let's say our mental, physical and spiritual health.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm going to speak from my own experience because I don't want to speak for my clients. In my own experience, you know, I was diagnosed. I came to the United States at age 23 and shortly thereafter, actually, we were going through our marriage prep. This is when everything kind of fell apart. All of my trauma came full force and I went into therapy and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and later on, you know, as I became more aware of the complex nature of some traumas, you know, if we look at myself, the political terror I had sexual abuse. We were beaten by our teachers in school almost every day. You know, just experiencing that and then experiencing the political violence on the streets and seeing, when I was a teacher, my first year as a teacher, some of my students were shot with buckshot, you know. So going and finding my students and making sure that they got medical care and those kinds of things, you know that's a lot of trauma to deal with for one person.
Speaker 1:Now, collectively, that's a lot of trauma.
Speaker 2:There's unforgiveness woven into the trauma, because we resent the people who did those things to us, even if it's maybe it's not something that they've done to us, but something that they've spoken or said to us. Right, and being called a baboon on the street which is what happened to me I was called a baboon once and being teased for looking like one and all of those kinds of things. And so those instances where your heart is hardened, it stays with you for a long time and that turns to rumination, and I always like to say that rumination is the playground of the devil because that's where he enters. So forgiveness is really a spiritual battle, and if we slow things way down and we really look at what's happening in our minds and how mental illness can creep in. They're twins. Unforgiveness and rumination they are twins. They will wreak havoc on your mental health, which then affects your physical health, and I have had to deal with physical health issues for the last 25 years. At one point I was almost completely bedridden and I realized that they have now proven that trauma can manifest itself physically in the body. And then, if you don't have a fake light, can you imagine how lonely that is, how isolating that is how isolating that is, how sad that is.
Speaker 2:Fortunately for me, I've had a lot of detours, but I've always come back to my Christian faith and becoming Catholic. It was like coming home for me and I wrestled with Mary for a while but really just, and I did a podcast episode on this the spiritual bypassing, how you can use your religion like a drug. I did that for a while. My religion became my drug. You know, the rosary was like my alcohol. You know, I was just like constantly praying the rosary all day long and I didn't really even believe in mary at the time, like I didn't even believe in marion doctrine. But somebody told me it works and I was like, okay, I'll try it, you know. And yes, I received the graces. In spite of what I believed, I received those graces of healing and so, over time, the Lord started showing me a different way to look at my situation and, like I said, he started showing me the context and what I realized was that I was doing the same thing that the South African government was doing to us. I was dehumanizing them by only looking at what they did to me and not seeing them as human beings created in the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 2:Just like me, my first perpetrator was a male relative who sexually assaulted me. I called him a monster for almost 30 years and it wasn't until I started looking into his story. He was in my family. He was just a little kiddo when the government first declared his area where he was growing up white and they had to sell off everything and move and the family was split apart and he was the 12th of 14 children. Then the government declared the next area white and so they had to move again and so he never had safety in his life and alcohol was his number one drug and when he was drunk he became this monster. And I feel so much empathy for him now and I pray that the Lord will have granted him the grace to go into heaven. I hope to see him there someday. I don't know if he ever repented, but I hope to see him there someday.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. It reminds me of St Maria Goretti. Right, she prayed for the man that murdered her on her deathbed and it changed his life. And I know that our prayers we can give our prayers now and hope that God knows that we're going to pray for that person.
Speaker 2:So I just always think, if I pray for that person now, then maybe when that time happened they have those graces from our prayers because everything present time for the last present time for him and also, you know, I have cousins he was a father and the thought that that I could think of their father in this way was just appalling to me. It made me think about how I was sinning in my unforgiveness, the judgments that I was passing on someone's soul. It made me really take a step back and go, wow, this is not who I want to be. I don't want to be that person.
Speaker 1:this is not who I want to be I don't want to be that person Right but also having compassion for yourself and knowing why you did for so long too.
Speaker 1:I think it's full circle the way that you explained it all to us, because, yeah, it's, it's not just we can't just kind of focus in on one thing. I just love how you just keep saying like, zoom out and see the whole picture, and then we can be nonjudgmental and very compassionate with ourselves but also have empathy for the other, and I think that's where that we're able to have that strength to take that action of forgiveness Plus, obviously, all of God's graces pouring into us, just enabling us to do just that. And so many times we try to self-medicate instead of forgiving. We want to hold on to that so hard that then we try to self-medicate with like substances or things or food or you know whatever it is. It out into the light. Looking at it it's not pleasant in the beginning, but once you shine that light on it, it's a lot easier to forgive or to deal with it, because it's lost some of its power. It's lost some of its hold over you, yes.
Speaker 2:First thing I say is you take yourself where you go. You can't run away from yourself, right. You can't run away from your experience. So the more you try to run, the more you catch up with yourself, right? The second thing that I say is it has to go somewhere. If you don't deal with it, you are inevitably going to pass it on to someone else, and do you really desire to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in a system like south africa, we had a lot of oppression from the government on the adult right, the adults in our families. And then where did their frustrations go? Their frustrations went into us as children. And then, if we're the oldest child, then where did it go? It went to the younger siblings. And so you have this cycle of oppression, cycle of violence, cycle of violence. It has to go somewhere. We can stop it if we go, turn toward it and not away from it, if we face it with courage, with conviction, adoration and for the sacrament of reconciliation and I try to go to daily math as often as I can. But receive Jesus, you know, allow him to strengthen you.
Speaker 1:I think that it's so telling that your whole mission of forgiveness started with being in adoration, talking to Jesus about this talk that you were asked to give and it just springboarded from there, and the fact that you continually make time to hear his voice, because I think sometimes we're so busy running from things trying to numb out that we don't take those actions to just be still and listen for what he wants us to do next, because I always say like if all Christians were on fire for Jesus, we would change this world, we would change it, we would heal it and it would be so beautiful. So we have to start somewhere and that's what we're doing here today. So one last question before I have you tell people where they can find you and everything, but are there any strategies You've already listed these beautiful Catholic devotions that we can do of, like adoration, prayer, daily mass, going to reconciliation, receiving the sacraments, any other daily practices that you would recommend that might help people with that process of forgiving for the long term?
Speaker 2:Yes, I actually created a self-guided mini audio retreat with a workbook that someone can do in five days, five weeks, five months, five years, but it's just a kind of a guide to journal. My book is actually based on like 30 years of journaling. I had a big box of journals that I've kept and I just went through my journals and I brought out those times when I was really struggling and God was just there for me and just that daily conversations with Jesus in your journal. I think it's so helpful to get it out. If you don't have anybody around that you can trust, that you can talk to. You can talk to Jesus through a journal and it's important to journaling is so it was like my number one thing. I had journals.
Speaker 2:When I was growing up in South Africa, I was like one of the rare people who actually put my thoughts on paper. I was able to release a lot of tension that I held inside myself, a lot of judgments. Even when I was going through therapy, it was recommended that I use my non-dominant hand for some of my journaling and so then the wounded child had a voice. So I have some funky looking journal pages when my children were little and we would sit around the table and I would actually pass my journal to them and give them a pen. So I have like journals where I have little scribbles from my children. They were little and so just those. Now when I look back I think about those moments of the Lord giving me that love through my children. Journaling, I would say, is really, really important. Also identifying in those journals, like going back and looking at how did God answer my prayers, To recognize where those footprints, those Jesus sightings. Someone said to me you got to look for those Jesus sightings, Look for those footprints of the Lord in your story. I would highly recommend journaling if you have not yet found someone safe. Find a therapist, find a coach, find a good friend who will keep your story and not go spread it everywhere. I've experienced that where I've told someone in confidence and then I find out someone else knows. So, just like watching for those traps of having someone solid in your life who you can trust, Prayer, daily prayer for sure.
Speaker 2:But for me the number one thing that helped me was to be able to keep a journal and to just get it out. And then I've been in so many different therapeutic modalities I could probably write a book about each of them. Back before I was like super Catholic, I went veered off into all kinds. I was so desperate, you know, I was so desperate and I had to work through a process of forgiveness for going into some modalities that were, like you know, opening the door to more influence. I had to work through that as well, you know, just allowing myself to be drawn into healing modalities that were not of God and that I had to discern were actually more damaging than healing. So just be aware that once you go down this path of healing to discern, is this in alignment with God's will? For me that's really, really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so important because I know I did that too. What I've learned through some of my schooling that I've been doing through Encounter School of Ministries is that I did open the door to the occult by some of the new age practices that I was doing and what I was doing when I was doing. That is like saying, yeah, god, I believe in you, but I don't think you're powerful enough to do this, so I'm just going to do these other things over here just in case, like, you won't come through for me on this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it. But, like you said, we are just so wounded and hurting that we're seeking healing anywhere that we can find it Like oh that sounds good, I'll try that. Oh, that sounds good, I'll try that. But really where I found true sustained healing was when I finally came back to the Catholic church and was able to receive Jesus worthily and take the sacrament. You know, partake in the sacraments and sit in front of Jesus and gaze upon him and allow him to gaze upon me. And that's where the true healing from our divine physician came.
Speaker 2:Yes, he can take it all, yeah, exactly, he can take.
Speaker 1:Yes, the other thing I forgot and I wanted to mention this too is that within your story, you've also worked through forgiveness, through like poetry and songwriting and some other artistic endeavors my book has poetry in it.
Speaker 2:It has stories in it. It's just I love to sing, so my book is sort of a compilation of story, scripture, poetry, and so I love photography, so I just my phone has more pictures on it than anything. I love to take pictures, so, yes, I do write a little bit. I like to my journaling. A lot of my journaling in adoration comes out as poetry. So I'll take my journal and I'll sit there and I'll just, you know, the Lord gives me a poem here and there, so I love doing that, and so when I do my retreats I'll share some of my poetry or I'll just break out in song or try to keep it. I'm a sanguine so I try to keep it fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I am too. It's a heavy topic.
Speaker 2:It is fun. Yeah, I am too so it's a heavy topic. You know it is a topic and then you don't want to depress people or traumatize them, so I try to keep things light. Yeah, be no need to be sad all the time oh, absolutely, I know that's it.
Speaker 1:I kind of feel that way sometimes, talking about sobriety or not drinking or drinking less or whatever. It's like I'm not the most popular person at a party, but I try to keep things fun Actually can.
Speaker 2:I read you the yes that I wrote that I received in adoration. Oh, that would be such an honor. I think this was in 2021. It's called Undoing Eve. Undoing Eve. Give me a moment to grieve. I'm undoing Eve, the woman that was me. I write an elegy. The death of a memory of me lost in concupiscence, gone is my innocence. Give me a lifetime to celebrate Mary, the one I desire, the one who inspires to reach higher and higher. Inward, outward and upward, my light shining brighter and brighter. Nightmare in Eden, undone by the queen of heaven Striving for humility, I increase my ability to rewire my mind. Undoing past binds jumping off point to impossible dreams. I'm undoing Eve until I am free.
Speaker 1:Ah, that is so beautiful. The imagery that was coming to my mind when you were saying that was just remarkable. That was beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with all of us. I appreciate it. You're welcome. So if you don't like journaling like I, have some clients. When I recommend journaling to them they're like that sounds like the most horrible thing ever. But we all have some clients. When I recommend journaling to them, they're like that sounds like the most horrible thing ever. But we all have some sort of creative outlet. So if you can put it into writing, or taking beautiful photos of God's creation or things you love, or expressing it in art or crafts or whatever it is, I think God just takes it all and if it's meaningful to you, it'll be meaningful to him.
Speaker 2:So my latest thing is baking sourdough bread.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do too. I just got into that too. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Any form of creative expression. You know I advocate for all of that.
Speaker 1:Yes, Dr Karen, thank you so much for being here. So I know that people are going to want to know more about where they can find you. Probably I will put a link to, or it's on your website. I think that retreat that you were talking about the five day, yes Retreat OK, so I'll put a link to your website and anything else. But yeah, if you just want to share with the people anything that you have going where they can find you and all of those good things.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you so much. I will be speaking at the Catholic Women's Conference on July 27th in San Antonio, so they could just look that up online and register. It's really reasonably priced. There's also a virtual option and they can find me at my website, wwwdrkarencom.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Thank you again so much, Dr Karen. It has been such an enormous blessing to have you here with me today. Thank you so much. I Karen. It has been such an enormous blessing to have you here with me today. Thank you so much. I appreciate the invitation. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well, and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, thecatholicsobrietycoachcom. Follow me on Instagram at the Catholic sobriety coach. I look forward to speaking to you next time and remember I am here for you. I am praying for you.
