101 - Marcia and Shannon-Talking About the New F-Word- Forgiveness.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Ruthless Compassion is a podcast about people who've turned their emotional shit into fertilizer for success. It's about seeing our darkest moments and opportunities for growth and transformation.

Shannon Moroney is the author of two best-selling memoirs, through the Glass and out of the Shadows. She is an internationally recognized advocate of "restorative"? Justice, and she travels extensively in person and virtually to lead transformative forgiveness workshops and retreats for people and communities overcoming trauma and to "keynote"? Justice and mental health conferences. She is a registered social worker and trauma therapist specializing in treating survivors of sexual assault and trafficking and "(the family members of people who offend?)” .Shannon is the clinical director of Shannon Moroni and Associates supporting Your Journey to Posttraumatic Growth and the creator of the Heel for Real Foundation. She lives in Toronto with her twin daughters.

Welcome Shannon Moroni to the Ruthless Compassion Podcast.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

"Yeah. I am ruthless in my compassion?".

Good. Well, we're going to talk all about that. So I always like to start the interview with having you introduce yourself and share a little bit about who you are and what you do and why you do it.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to go with what you have as the tagline for your podcast, which this is about people who've turned their emotional shit into fertilizer, so that's me and also the giant big bag of "rotten lemons into lemonade. "So in 2005, after I just turned 30 and had just been married to my true soulmate and best friend, I was away at a counseling conference, and a police officer came to the door of my hotel room to tell me that that beautiful man that I just married was in custody and that he called nine one one the night before to ask for help after he brutally sexually assaulted and kidnapped two women and brought them to our home. And in that moment of hearing that news, everything I mean, my life just shattered into just what felt like a million pieces of very sharp glass. And that began my journey. Instead of having all of my titles that I was proud of in my life, daughter, neighbor, educator, counselor, volunteer. All those things that I was and had worked hard on in my life became almost meaningless as I took on a new title assigned to me as wife of a sex offender.

And the guilt and the shame more of the shame than anything else but the guilt by Association and the questions and the trauma that then led me ultimately on a journey of guilt by Association, a journey of, I think, also profound compassion for the victims, the survivors, of course, and then also ended up being for my husband, who was the offender and coming to understand that the relationship between accountability and compassion and forgiveness and all those things. And I wrote my journey into a book called through the Glass to describe how I came through all those shards of glass, as well as all the conversations that I had through prison glass with my husband at the time, and the justice journey, the healing journey that came from that. And so while I was already a school counselor at that time, my world changed drastically. I then became I did a Masters in social work. I became a speaker and author, ended up writing another book at another point for a human trafficking survivor and then brought me full circle, more recently, back into the role of counselor. And I'm a therapist specializing in trauma, particularly sexual assault trauma, supporting the family members of sex offenders who bear the same shame and blame that I did.

So that's a little bit, I guess, about me. That's why I came to my work. I like to help people. I like to help people overcome the really negative (vs.)“(?)” Of victimhood, which are vulnerable, voiceless violated and help to transform those views into really positive things, validated, (vindicated)“(?)”, vocal, vibrant, victorious, all of those things. And I do a lot of that through this kind of ruthless compassion.

Which is really empowering for sure.

Wow. Well, now that I picked my jaw up from the table.

I'm also like a super regular person who likes, of course, gardens, decorate.

And I'm the mom of nine and a half year old twin girls. So that keeps me pretty humble.

It's a very shocking story for sure. It's like the kind of story that you think happens to somebody else, right? Not to yourself, right. How long were you married when this happened?

Exactly one month.

Oh, wow.

Like, really newly married, really newly wide.

And how long have you known this man?

Yeah. We had lived together for over two years, and we had been together for about three years.

You had no clue that this was something he was capable of.

Obviously, he had a past criminal record from when he was 18 years old, and he had served time in prison for a very serious crime. And I go into all those details in my book. But he had also been living really safely and wonderfully in the community for well over five years and was, quote, Unquote, "the poster boy for rehabilitation(?)". And so I really had already been on forgiveness and acceptance journey early in our relationship when he told me this right away about his past. And I know we're going to get to talk about forgiveness because that's what my newest book is about. But one of the very first concepts of forgiveness that came to me when I first knew Jason when I first met him in this wonderful context, that he was an assistant director and chef at a soup kitchen, doing incredibly good work for the community. The last person that you would think was an "ex Con"?, and it really challenged me. Just meeting him, of course, challenged me to kind of put, I guess, the things that I believe in terms of rehabilitation. Second chances, what I even thought about people who could commit violence just tested everything to the limit.

And I was in my late 20s at that time, mid to late 20s to go through that process and ultimately ended up in a place of forgiveness, not for, of course, his original crime that had put him in prison for a number of years because it was not mine to forgive, but to have this concept of forgiveness that says, there's a beautiful quote, forgiveness means letting go of all hope for a better path. And that's something that I had to do in order to be able to have the Jason that I met in the present time, who was a wonderfully loving partner, became part of my family, an adored person in all aspects of his life, with the exception. And I say that with gravity and "reverence"? Of the moments in his life when he had acted in violence. And so in our relationship, there was no, absolutely never any concern, worry suspicion that he could ever act in violence again, let alone sexual violence. That was something completely new. And so in a way, there was almost more safety than one might think if that makes any sense, because there was so much assurance, there was so much support for him to never be violent again.

And then what I came to learn in my conversations with him through the glass is that he had things going on inside of him that he didn't have the courage to speak about. And if only he had, I believe that I would have done anything. I know that I would have done anything to keep him safe, to keep him from harming anybody, even if it meant putting him back in prison after he'd been, like, 18 years free from violence. I absolutely would have done that. And I didn't get the chance to do that because he didn't tell me that things were going wrong. And what can I do but forgive that deeply and painfully human mistake of thinking that we're in control of something that we're not really in control of, and that happens to a lot of us. So in my experience with Jason and I wrote a lot about this in my memoir through the class and then have come full circle, I think with my new book, Hill For Real, I Journal about forgiveness to kind of give the space and the support and the format to anybody else out there who might be exploring forgiveness, whether it's for something absolutely huge or it's something seemingly small that happens that still hurts, that is still painful, the opportunity to explore what that forgiveness might mean.

And for me, it meant that forgiveness means that I am no better than my best friend, and I'm no worse than my worst enemy. And I'm no better than my worst enemy. And I'm no worse than my own best friend. And so that is one of the guiding forces for me and forgiveness. And it's not about forgiving what somebody did. I mean, what Jason did is unforgivable, but the human being it's forgivable. And to also then have the experience of being so traumatized that I realized that what trauma does to a person and what the anger part of trauma can do to a person, what it was doing to me could potentially have the potential to ruin my entire life. And it also gave me the potential to hurt other people. And so forgiveness became the way that I could release myself from a lifetime bond to violence, a lifetime bond to anger, a lifetime bond to trauma. And that's what my journey was about. And now I'm in the privileged place of being able to help others who want to explore that, who want to figure out for themselves. What does forgiveness mean? What does it not mean?

It doesn't mean condoning. It doesn't mean saying it was okay. Maybe it's about finding Grace, about moving forward. It's about letting someone off the hook. Yeah. Damn right. The person who offers it. That's a really long answer to your question.

It's funny, because I remember years and years ago when I was in supervision and I was talking to my mentor, and we were talking about people who can't let go of their anger about someone who hurt them. And my mentor said something which I thought was so smart that I never forgot it. And she said, Well, it's because they're angry at themselves for having allowed it to happen, right? They're angry at themselves for either letting themselves be tricked or for ignoring the signals or for being naive or for whatever. But they can't forgive themselves for whatever role they perceive they had and what happened to them. And so it's not that they're angry at the other person. It's that they're angry at themselves. And so when they can forgive themselves, then they're able to let go of the bad things that happened to them. And I thought, wow, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And I think that's part of it. I don't think it's all of it. I work with so many survivors of violent crime, so many trafficking survivors who feel that way like I was naïve or I trusted. And what I say to them is what I said to myself is trust a crime. It's not trust is the very thing we're supposed to do. And if it was a crime, my goodness, haven't we all been more than punished? So in my own situation and I work with all my survivors of everything is to say, I mean, there's nothing to forgive yourself for in terms of letting it happen or wishing that you'd known when you weren't given any signs, all you were supposed to do was trust. I in my own situation. I wasn't part of this.

And you're not like a prosecuting attorney who's looking for faults when you're getting married.

Of course not. I actually did my due diligence. I probably knew more about Jason than a lot of people.

Most people don't get to talk to their fiancé, psychologists about them or read all their records to make light of it.

And I hope that's taken okay. But where "self forgiveness"? Has become so important, and actually the hardest thing is around shame that we did experience something that was so traumatic that took us to a place so far out of our control and on an emotional journey that was so unknown that maybe we even made mistakes along the way or that we do it is forgiveness, like forgiven yourself for something that you never did in that way. I'm relating back to your supervisor because that's what it's about. It's forgiving yourself, for something that you didn't do, but that you wish could have been different. And it's such a powerful thing. And it is the hardest thing for people to do. And in 15 years that I've worked with people on retreats and in workshops, and I had the privilege of working. We led about 17 retreats in the "hierarchy"? With residential school survivors. And I've been in hotel conferences with people with lots of letters after their name in all kinds of situations and time and time again. Self forgiveness is the hardest. Yeah, it's a fascinating thing about the mind and the heart. We hold ourselves.

Good people hold themselves to the highest standard, and we're more likely to forgive somebody else the greatest trespass there could possibly be. Then we are to forgive ourselves for gosh losing our keys and being late and all the terrible things we can say to ourselves, let alone actual harms that we may have committed. And so that this compassion component, this ruthless compassion is, I think, fundamentally about first applying it to ourselves.

Absolutely. It's like, see the truth. But don't beat yourself up with the truth. Don't use it against yourself.

Of course, it's looking at yourself that was frightened yourself that was doing her best, his best, their best. And somehow it wasn't enough because you couldn't stop what happened or in your own best moment, you hurt somebody else. That's all that you are capable of doing at the time and embracing that version of yourself that was hurting. That was scared, that didn't know better. That was alone and kind of putting your arms around yourself as the person you are now and saying, let's go together on the street and let's offer that compassion the very word itself. I was raised Catholic and passion, the Latin root of the word passion means to suffer. And the passion of Christ is when he is carrying his own cross to be crucified. And I don't think anyone has to be a religious person to understand this image. And that's not where I'm coming at it from religious, but from a story perspective, and compassion is to have companions in that suffering. It means for someone to walk with you. And so the people or the Apostles, I guess in that particular story that walked with Jesus or said, here, I'm going to carry your cross for a little bit.

I can't carry the whole thing, but I'm going to carry it for a little bit. That's what compassion really means. And that is ruthless. And that is brave and bold. And we need to do that for others. And we also need to do for ourselves. It's putting our arms around our own younger self, our own traumatized self, our own hurting, hurt self and saying, I'm going to walk on this with you, okay? You're not alone. I will walk with you and your suffering.

So what made you decide to write this book? Healed for Real? Your new book?

Yeah.

It's been such a joy to do this. So it's really turned out to be a pandemic project, I guess a pandemic passion project.

It is Healed for Real.

The subtitle is a guided Journal to forgiving others and yourself. And it really is the kind of at home wherever you are, we're in a prison cell or in a prison cell of your own suffering or on a beautiful chair. The curriculum that I developed with my dear friend and fellow forgiver and trauma survivor Katie Hutchison. She's the author of amazing memoir called Walking After Midnight, about the murder of her husband. And Katie and I were match made by folks in the restorative justice world, which we're also a part of. And we came together with our very different stories. But we had the similar themes of forgiveness and wanting to make what you say, turn emotional shit into fertilizer rotten lemon into beautiful lemonade. And all of that. We came together and got to know one another. And she had been working at a camp every summer for violence affected youth called Love Camp. Leave out. Violence is what love stood for and stands for. It's still a wonderful organization. And she'd been asked. She'd spoken there a few summers in a row, and then she was asked to put together a workshop about forgiveness for these young people, all of whom were affected by violence in some way, witnesses, perpetrators, victims, all three and who were wanting to transform their stories of violence into peacemaking work through the arts and through dialogue.

And Katie turned to me right away. She's like, Shannon, will you do this with me? Let's develop a workshop. And we sat down at a table and we called our workshop the F Word, partly because we wanted to be cool.

Because these were super cool urban youth from "five cities"?. We got to make people want to come to this.

So we called it the F Word, exploring forgiveness. And we ended up leading that workshop every summer for many years in a row. We had you've come year after year to take the exact same workshop and be in dialogue about what forgiveness means and doesn't mean we saw the results transform people as it had transformed us in our own experiences. We then led that workshop, as I said before, sometimes alone, each of us, wherever we were traveling to often together from the Arctic to Peru and all kinds of places. And it was just so transformative and beautiful. And then when the pandemic hit, I actually that one of the very last well, the last trip that I was on was up to Air Force Space in Northern Alberta, and they came home and then couldn't travel anymore. And I couldn't give this workshop anymore into the retreat. And so I just decided that it was time to put it into something that people could use at home. And I'd also been feeling like Katie was retiring from our work together in a different phase of life. And I wanted to create something that more people could access because there's absolutely no way in the world that I can reach everybody that I want to reach everyone who needs this by giving individual retreats and working with people one at a time or a group of twelve at a time.

So in what became I guess our pandemic is still going on. So two of the busiest years of my life in my private practice, and we can talk about? That in a second. I got up really early on a lot of days, and I wrote "He'll for real"?, and it's just the at home guided, I think, beautiful, transformative, challenging and comforting curriculum for exploring the new F word forgiveness.

You mentioned earlier things that forgiveness is and things that forgiveness isn't. So I thought it would be a good time now to ask you. So what in your mind does forgiveness mean? And what are the misconceptions that people have about it?

Absolutely. And this is like a big part. The whole several first chapters of this guided Journal are all questions that get Journal or readers to explore what they already think about forgiveness. Words they associate to forgiveness. What bothers them about it, what intrigues them about it? And I think one of us let's start with the kind of negative concepts of forgiveness. Sometimes people think that it's weak, you're letting them off the hook, you're condoning. You're saying it's okay that you're setting yourself up to be used again, you're setting yourself up or others to just be victims all over again. You're too nice. And what I know about forgiveness is actually the hardest thing for most people to do. It is about accountability. It is about self respect. It's about respecting others. It's about taking the "reins"? Of life back into your own hands. And it is about choosing how you're going to respond to the thing that you didn't have any choice about, and whether that is childhood sexual abuse or that is a dispute with your neighbor, whether that is big tea trauma, like a natural disaster that destroys your town. And you don't even have a person to blame.

What do you do with your blame and your anger and your upset? A war, a system, a residential school system, all kinds of things that take control of our lives. Forgiveness is one way that you can take control over how you respond to something and respond within your values and not from a place that trauma can take us, which is often fear and hurt. So I know that folks are really going to love this Journal because it's really practical. I can talk about it and we can philosophize about it. And sometimes people think that forgiveness is for "monks in a monastery"?, you know, who have the peace and quiet and time and space to forgive in a spiritual way, in a philosophical way. And there is a part of thinking and reflecting. Absolutely. But then there's this practical piece and this is really, like, kind of gets into the second part of the Journal, which is, how do you actually do it? Okay, once you decide what it means and doesn't mean for you, how do you actually do it? Like, how do you actually forgive someone? How do you actually forgive yourself? And that's where it gets really hands on and really gritty and really pretty and all the things.

And it's about real people living in a real world where you're coping with grief at the same time as your parenting. You're coping with a criminal trial while you're an elementary school teacher. How does that all happen? And the big goal for me? And I hope that this is what people who pick this Journal up will see. And I want all the feedback if I didn't do this right, or I guess if I did. I'd also like that feedback that it is accessible. It's practical, it's real, it's supportive, and it is inclusive.

So your husband of one month committed these horrible crimes. What was your journey of forgiveness like with him?

Well, I didn't call it forgiveness right away, but looking back, I think it happened earlier than I actually sort of offered him forgiveness. The very first time I went to see him in the jail cell. I didn't know who I was going to see. There was the newspaper headline was Monster Appears in Court. And I remember looking at him thinking, That's my monster. I'd seen him in court. He had all the features of the person that knew married, but it looked like a dead body standing up, leg irons, handcuffs, Orange jumpsuit. And I didn't know if he would see me. I didn't know if he still existed, but I had a lot of questions and questions that only he could answer. Why did you do this? What was going through your mind? What happened? Those are the questions I needed to ask. And those are the questions that everybody needs to ask the person that hurt them terribly, that hurt others terribly. And so I went to the jail where he was being held. You get a 20 minutes visit. You can't book it ahead of time. You don't know if you're going to be seen.

You don't know if there's going to be a lockdown. There's no welcome committee, that's for sure. I went into that little room that had a glass wall and a phone on one side, and he came in on the other side. We just looked at each other and we both just started crying. And I just said, what happened, what happened? And he said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know. And the thought that came to my mind and it was unbidden, I don't know where it came from. I looked at him first. I saw the exact face and eyes of the photo that I have of him when he was six years old, which is the year that his dad died, the same eyes looking at me, and I thought to myself, It could be me. It could be me on the other side. What's the difference? What if it was me? What if I'd done this? What if I had a different life story? And I guess that's the ruthless compassion piece. Maybe that's just the thought that just came to my mind. And then I mean, I'm incredibly fortunate to have an apology, to have remorse and to have accountability.

We had many more visits because I had so many questions. And I write about all those questions and the answers and sometimes lack of answer in my memoir. But the experience of being able to be in dialogue, the experience of seeing that there was a human being there. But there was no monster. What he did was monstrous. But he wasn't a monster that I think is where the forgiveness was born. And he ended up like I supported him to plead guilty, which was always his plan. It still took two and a half years of a criminal process and moved like a pace of a glacier. It was awful for him to actually be able to plead guilty. And then he became the first person in Canada ever accept the dangerous offender designation, which is the highest sentence we have. And he is spending the rest of his natural life in prison. And I supported him to do that, because that's what accountability means. And for me, accountability is a really big part of forgiveness. And I'm lucky that I had it. "It"? Would have been a different story, a harder story when you don't have an accountability.

But it's still not impossible to find that forgiveness. And so I remember that I at one point said, I forgive you. But those aren't words that he was able to accept in his own self loathing and disgust. And I don't know if he ever will be able to. But I know that it was the greatest gift I ever could have given myself because it was in offering that that I made a commitment to release myself from the agony, from the shame, from the blame. I mean, I lost my job because of this. My public school board took my job away from me. Shannon, you represent something terrible. Shannon, how could you be a good counselor when you were married to this guy? Don't come into school. You represent something terrible. We'll relocate you outside of town when your doctor says you're ready to come back to work, it's a modern day shunning thing could happen anymore. And that's a different story around forgiveness. Did my school board ever apologize to me? My Superintendent, my principal? No. I tried to engage them in dialogue. No, my forgiveness for them is abstract. I didn't get to be in dialogue with them like I got to be in dialogue with Jason.

But I had to forgive them, too, because when it came to forgiveness for me really means like releasing yourself from resentment, from anger, from all the things that robbed me further, of joy, of trust, of fulfilling my own dreams. And although I'd forgiven Jason, it's been a dream. I mean, I've had forgiveness relapses.

Don't get me wrong.

Oh, boy. But with my school board where I didn't have a remorseful, accountable person that hurt me or system that hurt me, I still had to find forgiveness. Because every time when I started teaching again, I became a supply teacher. I taught while I was writing my book to make ends meet. And every time I walked into a school, I was confronted with my own resentment and anger because I felt like I was reminded of what was taken away from me. And I would go in, and I'd walk by the guidance office. And I think that was my job. That's supposed to be my job. They took it away, and I was so angry and resentful. And then I just at some point, realized I can't keep feeling like this. I don't want to feel like this every day. I don't want to feel like this every day. This isn't fair to me. What if it bleeds into the students that I'm teaching? And so in that way, it's kind of an abstract forgiveness, which is the decision that. No, you don't get to take away my joy anymore than you already did. And you don't get to make me into a bitter person.

You don't get to make me be resentful.

It's like a letting go, right?

Yeah. Absolutely. The image that I always think of is that letting go or it is the beam let off the hook. I mean, I didn't let Jason off the hook. I held him accountable. It's me that I let off the hook and just like a fish. If you get hooked and you're a fish, like who's got the power? It's the angler with dangling you on a hook and a string and you're flailing around trying to get air and forgiveness is the word that I apply to the process of gracefully and gently unhooking yourself. You have a cut, you have a scarf, you can swim, you get back in the water and you swim forward on your own path with reverence for what happened. But you don't let everything get taken from you.

Yeah. For me, the ruthless compassion piece is I used to talk to my patients who were victims of some type of trauma, lots of different types of trauma. And I would tell them when you hold on to your anger toward the other person, you stay glued to the other person. And so your whole life is lived with that person who has hurt you. So you're living with the hurt. So you need to unglue yourself. You need to let go of that person so that you can be on your own again and be free to live your own independent existence. And that was an important part of the healing and just detaching from the source of their pain.

Because as long as they stayed angry.

They stayed connected to it.

100%. What wonderful and Sage advice you're giving your patients. And I do the same with the folks that I work with right now. I am providing therapy and advocacy for over 40 survivors of sex, trafficker and predator and rapist. Peter Nygard, and he's currently in a jail cell awaiting trial. And when you get into a justice system, I mean, the temptation is to get focused on the punishment of that offender and their justice system and their process, which then you have no control over. And in the end, the punishment of the offender actually does very little for the victim.

I hear you.

I totally agree.

Yeah. Most people just need to know that they're never going to do it again. And that's what jail can offer. But pondering or luxuriating in the suffering of another person is a really yucky place to hang out. And most people quickly realize that they don't want to be there, but they're putting themselves in jail with that person. If they keep up that bond.

And who do you become when you take pleasure in someone else's suffering? Even if it's a person who hurt you, what does that do to your soul?

Exactly. One of the stories that I share in Hill for real, because it's filled with lots of it. You don't have to do all the work yourself.

You get to read little stories and there's quotes and you get to circle things and fill in the blanks and all stuff.

And one of the stories that I share in there is the story of my friend Bud Welch, who lost his daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing when she was just 23 or 24 years old. And in the first year after she was killed, he just drowned himself, tried to drown his pain and alcohol. He was "vengeful"?. He wanted nothing more than to see Timothy McVeigh and the other bomber put to death or punished soon after one point, there's a moment where he comes to and he's like, what am I doing? This is the legacy of my daughter's life. This is what I'm doing. This is wrong. And he actually went to meet Timothy McVeigh's father. And in that meeting, he saw someone who was just like him, a father who also lost his child. But his father couldn't be proud about his son. He couldn't openly grieve for the loss of his child as well as what his child had done. And they shared a connection and an embrace that he said completely transformed him. And he ended up starting an organization called Murder Victims Families for Human Rights. And it was made up of the family members of murdered people who are against the death penalty.

They didn't want more murder, like they knew that the murder becoming murderers are being put on the stand to actually fight for the death of another person was not the way that they were going to live out the honor of their lost loved ones life. And these are the stories. And we have to think that gosh, if that person, if Bud Welch could do that, and there's other stories of regular people that are faced with extraordinary circumstances that can choose that path of radical compassion, ruthless compassion of the big, amazing F word forgiveness, then everyone can. There's no difference between me and you and anyone who's listening. It's just a decision to not become what we hate, that's all and trying to live that out as much as we can.

I like that not become what we hate. That's a trap we can fall into if we're not careful when we're in grief and shock.

Yeah, absolutely. And even in the smaller resentment because I know there might be people listening right now that are like, oh, my gosh. Okay, well, nothing like I haven't had big teeth trauma, but it's small slides. I mean, let's start with the small stuff, the sibling relationships that around things like the holidays or people coming together, that things emerge. Or you've got this relationship that with a friend or a sibling or your parents. That just isn't right, because we hold resentments, and we hold resentments and misconceptions and beliefs from the past from long ago. Someone does something to us, and we believe it's intentional that they intended to harm us when, oh, my goodness. The people that I've hurt without even knowing, without knowing it just makes me cringe. But it means that we sometimes have to tell people that they hurt us or that we hurt them and engage in dialogue and get to that place of compassion or understanding. Near the end of "Hill"? For Real, there's a big piece on apology and how to apologize and how to apologize to yourself. What makes a good apology? How to ask for an apology. Someone doesn't even know that they hurt you.

And it's an art. It's an art. And most of us are taught from a very early age. Things like, say, you're sorry, say you're sorry to your sister.

So then we say.

Like, sorry, and it's totally meaningless. And we somehow miss out on one of the greatest teachings, which is how is it really to be humble to apologize, to see ourselves, another person, to recognize that either we intentionally or unintentionally hurt somebody else, and also to be responsible for our own feelings of hurt? Because sometimes we do take things the wrong way. We take things as we have experienced them in the past. And so there's a lot of unintentional hurt that's going on. And so there's a brave component that we all need to kind of take up, which is being brave to say, hey, I'm hurting because of something that you said or did or hearing the words you hurt me because of something that you said or did that's part of our responsibility. And then the pieces, like, how do we respond to an apology? How do we offer one? And there's a lot of options there, too, because we need a little bit of time.

Yeah, these are very important things I think that are kind of emotional intelligent tools that a lot of us need to learn. And somehow maybe we used to know them, but we've forgotten. But we all need to learn those tools very much right now.

Yeah, we all do. And myself included.

Actually, it's funny.

I received the shipment in my book.

It's so exciting.

I mean, it's like having a baby born with less pain, longer pregnancy, less pain arrive at the door.

And actually, it's really funny because folks can check this out on my website or my social media. But I took a video of my books all arrived.

It was pouring rain, and all the boxes of my books were left on my front porch in the rain.

And I was like, oh, okay.

I'm just going to start forgiveness right now.

Like, that delivery person, that delivery person who must have been on their way home to a new baby.

And that's why they just left all this stuff in the rain.

But anyway, my book arrived.

And I opened it up. And that night I read the entire thing.

And I was like.

Oh, my God, I need this. I got to work through this.

I feel really well in my big forgiveness journey with Jason, for sure.

But, I mean, life goes on. It's a dynamic force. I need to ask for forgiveness from people. I need to forgive others. I need to forgive myself. This is like, just because I'm the author of this.

And I do have a lot of expertise.

And it does get easier over time. I just don't want anyone to think that I.

Sort of.

I don't know,

("Nirvana")????.

Unfortunately, no. But it does get easier.

It does get easier with practice. It does get easier with education about forgiveness. A big, big thing that people who use this Journal will come away with is their own definition of what forgiveness means to them. There's a wonderful activity with a whole bunch of quotations about forgiveness, other people's thoughts, other people's ideas. Some are famous Nelson Mandela's words about forgiveness, and others are folks that have been in retreats with me. Some of them are my own words and coming soon to be marketing and plugging. But I made a beautiful box of forgiveness cards, like the kind that sit on your desk and they've all got a quote on them. They're absolutely beautiful, but they won't be here until the fall because of covid shipping, printing stuff, whatever. That's okay. But it's like in "pondering"? Sometimes what other people think, what other people say, that we get to understand what it really really means for us. And then one of the activities that Katie and I always did on retreat, which is in this book for you to do at home, is once you've really worked through a few chapters about what does forgiveness really mean? You either copy of your favorite quote from somebody else or you make your own, and then you frame it.

You get a frame from somewhere else in your house or the dollar store, whatever, and you frame it and you put on your desk so that it becomes part of your practice of how you live. And when we have forgiveness literacy, and we have apology literacy and compassion literacy, we are a lot more equipped to deal with what comes our way. And so even though I'm still always on a journey, I hope that that's not the "depriving"?.

folks, but it's just how life is. I mean, just as soon as we think great. I dealt with that.

Here's the next thing coming along.

Well, I'm going to ask you another question now because you've told me that you work with people who've been sex abused, sex trafficked, people who've been traumatized in all sorts of different ways. And you see a lot of people because there's such a need. So I'm wondering, how do you take care of yourself when you're faced with so much "vicarious"? Trauma? How do you then process all of it so that you're still okay?

I have a wonderful therapist.

I always say good therapists have therapists.

For one thing, absolutely. Therapy and mental health care is something that I absolutely believe should be just as much a part of all of our regular lives as eating an Apple and getting vaccinations and going to the doctor once a year, more than once a year. So there are a lot of things that I do to keep myself clear from "vicarious"? Trauma. The pillars of trauma healing really are four. And this isn't I'm quoting somebody else from the little book of Trauma Healing. I don't want to take credit for something that's not mine. But the four pillars of trauma healing are people, places, routines and rituals, because that's what gets cracked and all messed up in trauma. So right on my desk, I'm looking at it right now. I've got a circle like a print out of a circle of chairs. And I've got a name written in each chair. And those are all the people that are around me just in the work that I'm doing, and the people that I know I can lean on to for support that I can. Some are professionals, someone's like my best friend. So having your people having the places that are places of beauty and respect, those are really important.

So I don't know things like keeping a tidy house. That's an important thing to me, making sure my space is inviting a healing routines and rituals are also incredibly important. So one of the things that I do very frequently is at the end of the day, at the end of the week, and I'm doing it right after this call because this is the end of my work just before the holidays, and I'm happy to be taking a few days off is I will write out just the first names of each person that I saw that day. I light a candle, I read the names aloud to myself. I offer up to the universe, or if you believe in God or whatever you want to do, I offer it up for safety and protection until I see them again. And then I blow up the candle. And that tells me that I'm over the day. I've done everything that I can, and the best thing I can do next is rest, because rest is best. And then the other thing that I do is I'm very Mr. Rogers, like in how I dress and where she is.

And this is probably good for a lot of people are working at home right now a lot, and I've always worked from home. So I do get dressed pretty much every day as if I'm going to work. I wear shoes. And most Canadians don't wear shoes in the house, but I wear shoes when I'm working and then I take them off when I'm done. And it's just this little thing that tells me that I'm changing roles because we are as therapists, as helping professionals, as healers, as doctors, as in many other jobs. We are humans first and skilled professionals second, but we have to also make a separation for our own. Wellbeing, so I just use a lot of those visual symbols and personal reminders to myself that I'm making a shift into being mum or being Shannon cooking in my kitchen with no shoes on, and when I've got my shoes on, it's when I'm working and I'm there for others. So it's kind of simple, but it's the little things that make the big thing happen.

Oh, that's a great answer. I appreciate that. That makes it very clear for the listeners. So I wanted to ask you now that we're getting to the end of our conversation, you have these cars coming out. Are there any other things coming from the book or this launch of your book coming in the near future?

Yeah. Well, thank you for asking. Yes. The book comes out January 4 in English, and it's right across North America, and then it will be in the UK and Australia and English speaking world in February. In the fall, it will come out in Spanish. I'm also a Spanish Speaker. So that was a personal passion to get it out in Spanish in the fall, as well as the contemplative cards. I also have some fantastic T shirts that say Forgiveness is the new F word and sweatshirts and mugs, and the proceeds from all of that swag stuff all goes towards my programs to help survivors of trafficking and sexual assault. And then I also have this line of greeting cards that I'm really proud of called Find the Words. And these are empathy building cards for difficult times. So most people who've been through something really hard know what it feels like when people say the wrong thing or they say nothing at all. So I kind of took a lot of the things that were said to me in my own time of trauma that were probably well intended but had the adverse effect. So, for example, people say everything happens for a reason.

"It's just like vomit become a paraplegic for a reason"?. Thank you so much. That's really helpful. Or my child died and went to a better place. I don't think so.

Like, no, we're not saying that anymore.

We are on the same wavelength.

"That's right"?.

My card says not everything happens for a reason. And then on the inside, it just says, I'm here to support you through this time and all of those cards. Again, all the proceeds from those cards go toward my programs for survivors, but they're really good because I think that they really do help people exactly what they say. Find the words to express that you're there for somebody in a way that doesn't end up accidentally making that person feel more isolated. And with regard to that, everything happens for a reason, I will say in healing work, as you well know, finding purpose is an excellent component of healing, but we never want to say it in the way that it sometimes comes off as kind of flighty, like, oh, everything happens for a reason. But really finding purpose in something or, as you say, like turning your emotional shit into fertilizer. That's purpose. And that is what we do want to try to get to is what sense can we make of a sense listing to happen? It doesn't mean that everybody needs to become advocates for a cause, but it often means that other times it's the way that we choose to interact with others in our own life and find some sort of purpose.

And often it is helping others.

And sometimes it's becoming more creative. It's like taking all that terrible stuff and turning it into fodder for something beautiful. So becoming a writer or an artist or a speaker, absolutely. Transformation, right? It is.

And that is so it just is the most wonderful thing. I created a lot of really ugly, amazing artists.

I had a family doctor.

I'm going to shout out to her, Dr. Sue Gleeson, and she offered me two prescriptions when this all first happened. And when she diagnosed me with PTSD, and she was like, okay, so I could give you some drugs that are going to maybe, like, numb out some of your pain for a bit. And that's something we can do. Or that's an option. I can also prescribe you some art. And Jason was an artist. He just graduated from art school. There's all kinds of half done projects and art supplies in our house and art room. And my doctor had actually come for a home visit, which I completely love.

And we're actually back to home visits, aren't we now with Zoom calls it's a new fashion to home visit.

She looked around at all stuff.

And she's like, Well.

Shannon, the other thing you can do is you can make something from this. And I was like, Well, I'm not an artist. Art therapy, no one's an artist. It's just about the process, not the product. And she assigned me the idea of doing a collage that would try to express everything that I had gone through. In the first month of the trauma. I ended up creating a piece that is so painful and raw, but so true in such an expression of who I am and what it felt like that it's one of the things I'm most proud of, and it actually became part of my victim impact statement. I had the right. As a side note, I was a victim of Jason's in a criminal way, and that he had committed acts of "voyeurism"? On me. That's what gave me a voice in the justice system at all. But it's not the way in which I was most impacted by what he had done. But when I had that opportunity to give a victim impact statement, which also allowed me the only time to address the assault victims and the pain that I had for what they had gone through, it also allowed me to put onto the record what my experience was.

And the judge not only accepted my statement, my written and read statement, but also this art piece was labeled Exhibit 13 B, but I call it the shattering. And so out of that ugly rawness can be something beautiful that others can connect to. And that's what we get to be in charge of.

Right? You can't control what happens, but you can make choices about how you respond exactly. Well, how can people find you if they're interested in exploring all the amazing things that you're doing?

I'm the most findable person. I'm shannonmoroney.Com. So that's Shannon in the standard way with two NS and M-O-R-O-N-E-Y. You can also just Google a lot of different things to get me. Like Shannon husband, sex offender. You'll find a lot. I'm on all the social media stuff. Shannon Ronnie Author. Yeah, I hope people do find me. I get back to everybody and I think it's great to join in the dialogue. I have a website just simply devoted to my new books. The website is called healforreal. Org. I would love to meet folks there and connect and get this whole revolution going about forgiveness being a new F word. I think we're done telling everyone and everything in ourselves to F off, and this doesn't actually matter. And stuff like maybe in 2022, I just embrace a new F word. Forgiveness.

I like it.

That's what he should say. Goodness has been awkward

new effort before we go.

How about a call to action for the listener?

Effort up. Explore it. My book itself is the call to Action. That's what I am offering up is an invitation to engage in the forgiveness process and the journey to treat yourself to it. You won't be alone on it. And so I think that really is my call to action is my book itself is let yourself be guided on a journey to heal. For real.

That's wonderful. Listen, thank you so much for coming on the Ruthless Compassion Podcast. It was really special talking with you today and I know that this is going to be a very moving and important podcast for people to listen to.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks for everything that you do.

That was the inspiring.

Shannon Maroney and I'm Dr. Marcia Cirrhoda, if you like this podcast.

Please review it wherever you listen.

And you can sign up for my free by week weekly Wellness newsletter at "(marcisroda. Md. Com?)" Where you'll learn about my online courses and my YouTube video series.