Roots of the Rise | Authentic Alignment and Transformation
Please note: Roots of the Rise is taking a summer sabbatical and will return in September with brand-new episodes. Throughout the summer, I'll be re-releasing some of the most-loved episodes from the archive while creating new resources and materials for listeners and members. I hope you'll enjoy this opportunity to revisit old favorites, catch up on episodes you may have missed, and deepen into what you already know.
Short episodes with grounded wisdom for healing, growth, and reconnecting to your true self.
Roots of the Rise is for the spiritually curious soul who’s already begun their inner work — but still feels like something deeper is calling. Maybe you’ve read the books, tried therapy, or dabbled in meditation, yet the same patterns keep circling back. You know there’s more to life than constant self-improvement, but you’re not sure how to live from that deeper truth you keep glimpsing.
Hosted by Sarah Hope — Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual mentor, meditation teacher, biodynamic craniosacral therapist, and energy healer — this podcast offers grounded wisdom for authentic alignment and the courage to rise into your truest self. Drawing from thousands of hours of client work, group facilitation, and her own journey through childhood trauma, grief, and the profound rediscovery of love and joy, Sarah offers a grounded, heart-led space for inner transformation.
Each short episode (10–20 minutes) offers honest reflections, spiritual insight, and simple practices to help you bridge the gap between knowing about growth and actually living it. You’ll leave feeling more centered, hopeful, and self-trusting — reminded that the path isn’t about striving to become someone new, but remembering who you’ve always been.
This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Sarah is not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, she hopes it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.
Roots of the Rise | Authentic Alignment and Transformation
Episode 93 - The Connection between Forgiveness, Judgment, and Reclaiming Your Power
•Sarah Hope•Season 1•Episode 93
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Forgiveness is often misunderstood as waiting for an apology or demanding someone admit wrongdoing, but true forgiveness is about reclaiming your own power and freeing yourself from judgment. We explore how real forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with your own liberation.
• Forgiveness is 100% internal and about reclaiming your energy and power • Judgment creates emotional bindings that keep us attached to what we're judging • What we resist persists—the more energy we pour into something, the more it grows • True power comes from being free of others' influence on our inner state • Forgiveness is not obligation, spiritual bypassing, forgetting, or making excuses • You can forgive without reconciling or allowing harmful people back into your life • Forgiveness is a process that unfolds over time, not an instantaneous switch • Letting go of judgment releases us from the past and allows us to live in the present
If you have questions or thoughts about forgiveness, please email me at rootsoftherise@gmail.com. I would love to answer them and continue this conversation.
When you hear the word forgiveness , what comes to mind ? Is it apologizing , making things right , waiting for someone else to change ? Today we're flipping that around , because real forgiveness isn't about them . It's about you , your power and how you choose to free yourself . About you , your power and how you choose to free yourself . Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me , sarah Hope .
Speaker 1
This week I gave a talk about forgiveness , which feels fitting because it's been very present for me . Last Friday I shared about my birthday and how it's not always an easy day . In the past there have been various levels of anger and sadness connected to my adoption and childhood , and those emotions are almost always indicators that forgiveness is somehow called for . Side note this year was actually pretty amazing . The only difficult emotion I felt was a little sadness over missing all four of my parents and honestly , that feels like a real win . But today I really want to talk about forgiveness , what it is and what it's not . So here's the first thing I really want you to understand Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person .
Speaker 1
It's not about waiting for them to apologize , trying to get them to admit fault or to see your perspective . Forgiveness is 100% internal the moment you start waiting for someone else to do anything , you've already given away your power . The truth is that some people are never going to agree with you . They might never admit wrongdoing and in their eyes , you might be the one who did wrong . Everyone is the villain in someone else's story . Part of practicing forgiveness is accepting . That is , accepting the fact that , no matter how good you try to be , no matter how kind , how considerate , how compassionate , there is someone out there who thinks you did the bad thing , that you are wrong , out there , who thinks you did the bad thing , that you are wrong , and so part of what we need to do when we talk about forgiveness is accepting that and choosing to free ourselves anyway . Forgiveness is about reclaiming your energy , letting go of the past and stepping fully into your own present . Doesn't matter what anyone else is doing or thinking or saying . It's about you . It's about being free from judgment , free from the power others have over your inner state , and being free to live from your own heart . As Aaron I believe the last name is Abka says , forgiveness is not the approval of someone's actions toward you . Forgiveness is not the approval of someone's actions toward you . Forgiveness is the refusal to suffer on behalf of someone else's actions . Forgiveness is the knowledge that by offering freedom , you are set free . Forgiveness is a total commitment to living from your heart .
We can't really talk about forgiveness without talking about judgment At its core . Forgiveness often starts from the belief I'm right , they're wrong , I'm good , they did bad . But that's an illusion that it's ours to judge . Judgment creates an emotional energy that binds us to whatever we're judging . Why ? Because consciousness is creative . What we resist persists . We end up reinforcing it . The more energy and attention we pour into something , the more it grows . Someone says something rude to you and then you obsess over it . But who suffers ? You do , not the person who said it .
Speaker 1
Aggression and hostility are born of pain . You know it's deep wounds that drive people to try to control their environment , to control other people . The more suppressed the awareness of their pain , the more self-centered and controlling their behavior becomes . You know , and the thing is , we all want to be in control . Behavior becomes , and the thing is , we all want to be in control . We all want power and freedom . We want to be able to feel the way we feel , to be in control of our lives , to experience profound inner freedom . But the reality is we can't control life and yet we give our power away all the time , to circumstances , to people , even to our subconscious .
Speaker 1
Anytime we say that person made me feel this way . We've handed over our power and nothing gives away our power more than judgment . You know , judgment in some ways is fear . It says I'm going to look upon you as different or defective because I fear being like that and I believe that being like that is wrong . So I'm going to judge you and punish you , or at least hope someone else does , and at a minimum I'm going to not be around you . And if that doesn't resonate , think of it this way when you judge someone , you allow them to determine your thoughts by what they did or how they acted . Now your energy and attention are all bound up in them . All your energy is taken over by thinking about them and what they did .
Speaker 1
And that judgment crystallizes into a concept you carry in your consciousness , even if you don't recognize the fear underneath it , the negativity of that judgment . It drains you , it triggers your emotional body , it steals your power because you've given someone else the ability to affect your vibration , to take you out of a place of light and love and bring you into a place of anger and resentment . The association you've created in your mind keeps you bound to the very person you likely don't want to have anything to do with . Whenever we allow others to determine what we feel , we lose power , and the more we judge , the more power we give away . We resist situations , we spend energy resisting and we lose . True power comes from being free of others' influence , free from circumstances . That's when we can consciously choose our reactions , create a different reality and align with our true nature . Then energy flows freely . No one else has power over us .
Speaker 1
Someone said forgiveness is freedom from waiting on your perpetrator to close the gap on your emotional health . At its root , judgment isn't bad . It's a survival mechanism . You know , we have it , so we know okay , this is safe , that's unsafe . Judging situations correctly will protect me , but this programming often starts in childhood and it can be faulty . This programming often starts in childhood and it can be faulty . If you grew up with an alcoholic parent , for instance , you might decide that all substance use is bad . You might decide that even casual drinking is a gateway to having a drinking problem and therefore you might refuse to associate with people who choose to drink . Now that might seem extreme to some , but if you grew up with a parent that hurt you repeatedly physically , emotionally because of their alcoholism , well , you're going to have a knee-jerk reaction . You're going to have a deep-rooted need to distance yourself from the thing that hurt you repeatedly . It's understandable . However , as an adult it might not actually be useful , right ? Because we know there's plenty of people out there who can go out and have a casual beer at a bar and have it , not be a problem . So we can get this faulty programming . Our judgment can get skewed . You know , sometimes we misjudge .
Speaker 1
I tell this story often about the farmer who keeps saying we'll see . You know where , you know , there's a farmer . A horse runs away . Everybody in the village says , oh , that's awful . And he says we'll see . And then the horse comes back with two others . Everybody in the village says , oh , that's amazing . And he says , oh , we'll see . And then the next day his son goes out on one of the new horses and the horse throws him and he breaks a leg and everybody in the village says , oh , that's awful . And he goes , we'll see . And then the next day the soldiers come and they say they're going to take every able-bodied young man off to this war where they will almost certainly die , and the son can't go because he's got the broken leg . So everybody in the village says that's great , and the old man says we'll see . I mean , this could keep going on and on , right .
Speaker 1
The thing is so often we label situations incorrectly . We're in the moment , we make a split second judgment , but we don't know , because we're not omniscient . We don't know what the future holds , and that's why there's this big difference between observation and judgment . Observation simply notices . It just says , oh , the horse came back with two other horses , that's it . Observation says that person raised their voice to me , but judgment adds a story . It says they raised their voice because they don't respect me . Observation describes what is judgment , makes it personal .
Speaker 1
And when you catch yourself judging because we all do it that is the moment to practice self-forgiveness , because the habit of judgment often says more about our own unhealed places than it does about the other person . And having the expectation that you are going to be able to forgive anything and everything right away , you're setting yourself up for a lot of self-recrimination and self-judgment . You know , we can say I am in the process of learning how to forgive this person . I am in the process of learning how to forgive this person . I have not forgiven them yet . That yet is such an important word when it comes to inner healing and self-development . This is something I'm working on that I have not achieved
So let's pause here for a moment to actually define forgiveness . So when I looked this up in the dictionary , it said forgiveness is the action or process of forgiving or being forgiven , which is not useful . It's a little circular . So I did some more digging . And forgive the definition is to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense , flaw or mistake . Okay , that feels a little bit closer . And then I came across this definition Forgiveness is the decision or choice to give up the right for vengeance , retribution and negative thoughts toward an offender in order to be free from anger and resentment .
Speaker 1
And that's the one I like . That's the one that feels complete to me , especially because it highlights the things that I think are most difficult for us when we think about forgiveness . Giving up vengeance or retribution , I mean , so often . Isn't that what you want when it comes to forgiveness ? You want to either get back at them , you know , or the negative thoughts we carry around all these , this negative energy and negative thinking towards the people who we view have wronged us , right .
Speaker 1
But I think it's equally important to explore what forgiveness is not . So one of the things it's not is forgiving out of a sense of obligation of I'm supposed to forgive . I see this a lot with people who are on the spiritual path . There's this sense of I know I'm supposed to be able to forgive anyone for anything . So that's what I'm going to say I'm doing . The problem is that it's almost never real . It's spiritual bypass , it's pretending , it's denial of what the person is actually feeling , which is unfortunate because really all that's doing is self-invalidation . It's letting people mistreat you and calling it forgiveness , and usually that stems out of fear . It stems out of fear of being abandoned or the belief that anger is unacceptable . Another thing that forgiveness is not is righteousness Forgiving because you feel superior , like I forgive you because I'm right and you're wrong . I forgive you because I know better and you don't . You poor thing . You know that's just arrogance . It's not .
Speaker 1
Forgiveness is not bestowing a pardon . We don't get to grant forgiveness . That's playing God or whatever you want to call it a higher power . It's not something we control . Forgiveness is not something we control . It happens when we are willing . Forgiveness is also not forgetting that whole forgive and forget thing . Forgiveness is never simply erasure of something . Wise people forgive but they don't forget . They hold onto the lessons . Instead , they strive to appreciate the gift inherent in the situation . You know there's a difference between forgiving and trusting . You can forgive a rattlesnake for biting you because it's in their nature , but you don't have to trust that the rattlesnake will never bite you again . I mean that's ridiculous . We also don't want to make excuses for people . That's not forgiveness .
Speaker 1
Forgiveness isn't pretending that a harm didn't happen simply because you understand why the person acted they did . That can help build empathy , but it doesn't erase the wrong . I think about that one all the time when I think about my mother and how she treated me going up . My mother and how she treated me going up . I've talked about this , you know before , and I can link the episodes about . You know parents doing the best that they can . You know you're not making an excuse for your parent when you acknowledge the fact that they tried as hard as they could but the way that they tried wasn't helpful , the way that they loved you , the way that they raised you was dysfunctional . That is an observation , that's fact . It doesn't mean that it wasn't harmful . It doesn't mean that they get to say , hey , I did the best I can and never take accountability and never own up to how they acted . It doesn't erase their actions , you know .
Speaker 1
Same thing , kind of along the same lines as condoning , you know , saying I forgive them but I don't condone the behavior . I mean often that remains . That is judgmental , you know . It separates the person from the act in a way that can keep you stuck . We also don't want to allow harm to continue . You know , forgiveness does not mean staying in a harmful situation . It does not mean that you continuously stay with the person who abuses you , or with the partner who cheats on you , or with the boss who sexually harasses you . Forgiving them does not mean that you continue to put yourself in a position of harm . And I think we all know that forgiveness is very rarely quick . Very rarely is it an instantaneous , you know , light switch that flicks where all of a sudden we're okay with what the person did . It is usually a process and I think maybe one of the most important points when it comes to forgiveness is also that it does not mean necessarily that there's reconciliation .
Speaker 1
Forgiving someone does not always mean that you let them fully back into your life . I mean with the rattlesnake example forgiving the rattlesnake for doing the thing , for biting you because it's in his nature , does not mean that you then allow that rattlesnake in your house . No , you put up boundaries , you put that rattlesnake back outside and you leave it out there where it's supposed to be . And this is why forgiveness matters , not because it erases what happened , but because it frees us from the chains of judgment . To get beyond judgment , we have to go through forgiveness , and that's how we release the bindings we've created and step back into our own power .
Speaker 1
When we hold on to judgment , we're really holding on to the past . They never should have done that . They betrayed me . They're not actually my friend . The judgment ties us to the past , drains our energy and makes us afraid of the future . Forgiveness , on the other hand , is a letting go , not forgetting , and it's not something you can force , but it is a release . When we forgive even ourselves , we reclaim our energy . We take back our power to determine our own inner experience . We let go of fear of the future , the pain of the past and we become free . And that freedom is powerful because when we're no longer consumed by the past or judgment or worry about the future , we can live in the present . We can live in love . Forgiveness is a quality of love . It brings us back into the bliss of our own hearts .
So here are some questions I want you to sit with as you think about forgiveness . One where in my life am I holding onto judgment and how is it affecting my energy , my peace or my relationships ? Two is there someone , even myself , that I'm ready to forgive , am ready to forgive , not to excuse , but to free my own heart and take back my power ? Three did anything today stir a reaction Anger , discomfort , resistance ? I don't agree with that . If so , what might that be pointing to ? What judgment about forgiveness do you have ? So today we've looked at judgment and forgiveness , how judgment keeps us tied to the past and forgiveness is the doorway to reclaiming our energy , our freedom and our peace . It's not about forgetting , excusing or condoning . It's about letting go of what no longer serves us so we can be present , centered and open to love .
Speaker 1
Forgiveness isn't something you do for someone else . It's something you do for yourself . You've got to let go of judgment , reclaim your energy and step fully into the freedom of your own heart . Take a moment with those questions , see what comes up and remember . This is a practice , it is a journey . There's no rush , just an unfolding of your own relationship with forgiveness . That is all for today . If you have questions or thoughts about forgiveness , please email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom . I would love to answer them and continue this conversation . I am sure this will not be the last episode on this topic . I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and remember , know who you are , love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be . Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only . I am not a licensed therapist and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician , therapist or any other qualified provider . That said , I hope it inspires you to grow , heal and seek the support you need to thrive .
