I am sorry for being so harsh. I am sorry for hating my own confusion. I am sorry that my own pain and confusion meant I couldn't see your love. I'm sorry that my hurt and anger hurt you.

I felt guilty this morning reading Ondrea's poem about Stephen's passing: "please pray for him". Since hearing of his death, I've mostly been feeling my own loss and wanting to renew my connection with him in his vastly expanded state. I'm sorry for hanging on, Stephen. I just walked the labyrinth for you, praying for you the best I know how. As you have taught me, may the Heart of my efforts be enough. May I be forgiven for my selfish ways and awaken to Compassion. May you be at peace, may you be happy, may you know the Love that you are and always have been. May all your prayers for others return to you manifold, benefiting all beings.Thank you!

Oh my dear sister. I love you so much. How did we get into this mess? I hope we will see each other on the other side and discuss this lifetime. We will have such fun discussing how well we each played our role. We will have a huge laugh. Please please please forgive me for the 8 billion things that you obviously perceive that I did to you. Hopefully I'm only guilty of half that many trespasses. Thank you I love you I forgive you Please forgive me

Dad, this is the first stab at many apologies that I can make. It's too much to get down to what really needs to be felt and grieved but I can start with a little bit today. I am sorry that the last time I saw you I let others influence my relationship with you. I am sorry that I let resentment in between us. I am sorry that I cannot see the way to best honor you today. I am sorry my pain and anger is still here hanging over our last goodbye. I am sorry that I never told you how much you influenced my sense of self and gave me the real gifts of my humanness. I am sorry about my impatience with you when you were hungry and scattered and wishy washy. I am sorry I never reciprocated your efforts to heal. May you have finally reached the answers you were always seeking in this life. May have found that peace and contentment you knew existed beyond. May we all be One in our own hearts and minds very soon. I love you and please help me find a path to those who may love me someday in such a way that you loved me in my life.

I am sorry that I focused on your weaknesses instead of accepting you. I miss you.

I'd like to begin by offering my deepest appreciation to Stephen and Ondrea. I just learned last night of Stephen's death and I will pray for them both. Stephen has had a profound role in my healing. Yet, my heart rejects full mercy for myself. I am deeply sorry for all of the ways I have harmed myself. For allowing others to touch me when I was beginning to bloom as a teen, not knowing that I could control the boundaries of my body. For not knowing I could branch out own my own as a young woman and take care of myself. For marrying an alcoholic, and crying myself to sleep on my honeymoon night with the recognition that I was repeating a family pattern yet feeling helpless to do anything about it. For not trusting that I could care for myself financially and emotionally, and entering an emotionally abusive relationship without time to heal from my divorce. For staying in that relationship for decades, until I mustered the courage to name it for what it was and leave it. For not having the courage to protect myself or my children from living with someone steeped in rage and his own pain during those decades. For not respecting the messages my physical pain was bringing to me, and instead pushing my body as if I were a machine. For striving for perfection, believing that if I could accomplish that, I would finally be worthy of love. For being disappointed and at times angry that others didn't follow this self-imposed mandate of perfectionism, and as a result I judged them as not trying hard enough. For doing the "hard work" of therapy for over 20 years, and still discovering pockets of shame hidden deep within my core. For not having the energy to push myself as hard as I once did, yet feeling the desire to change be as strong as it has always been. For all the times I have been too self-centered to really see "the other". And finally, for having the arrogance that convinces me that I "should" rise above my human-ness and have no needs or feelings. I am sorry and I tenderly ask myself for full forgiveness.

I'm so sorry to my youngest daughter. You got the brunt of your fathers anger and ignorance at a very young age. I'm so sorry that I didn't hear him verbally abuse you. I wish I saw what was going on. I'm your mother and I am suppose to protect you, but I did not know. It pains me so profoundly that you, now 28, aren't living your life, are seriously depressed, when you are the golden heart and most beautiful person I know. I am yearning, pleading really, that you feel deserving of the love you didn't get from him. I am yearning for you to honor your feelings..please let them out and shout it to the rooftops that you are worth it! And that the crap he laid on you was his and is not who you are. I am distraught. I don't know how to get through. I beg that grace will enter and let you see some light to hold on to. I am so very, very sorry.

dear dad, you've been dead now for a couple of years. i want to apologize for something. you tried for so many years to ask for forgiveness and to repair the damage you did when i was young. you reached out over and over again. i am sure it was incredibly painful for you to feel that you couldn't reach me. and we never, on this planet could reconcile fully. that was because something in me felt so hard. i was open and vulnerable to you when i was young. i so needed your love and i tried a hundred different ways to find that love and when it finally tried to come (when i was in my early 30's i couldn't receive it. i was too hard. i felt protective and i had shut you out. i had given up. OF COURSE I had given up and I give myself so much mercy and care for that part of me that just wanted to protect myself from being hurt. and now i know how painful it must have been for you to try and get my love back and forgiveness. i know that hurt because i felt it when i was shut out over and over by you when i was young. so i get it now. hurts hard. and i want to move forward in my life. i want to be able to receive love now more fully than i ever have. i haven't been able to by my spouse or kids or friends because i had put up a protective wall inside me hiding what i thought was a part of me that was so unlovable. so disgusting. so shame-filled. so lifeless and undeserving. and now i am touch with that part of me. that young part of me that didn't feel your love or respect. and now i am reaching out to that part with care, mercy and presence. and it requires, i believe my reaching out to you...your soul to say, bless you. i want to forgive you. i want to believe you were doing the best you could. and i will keep mostly reaching out to that young part of me to hold her and give her the respect and love she needs. i am guessing you felt a lot of shame for who you were too. and guilt for your behavior. god help me to forgive dad more fully and myself. i also want to ask forgiveness to anyone i've hurt. to my friends i haven't let in as much. to my hubby for not letting him love me more. to myself for keeping busy so that i don't have time to let people in. amen.

Dear Ondrea, I am only writing to send you so much love, a reflection of the love and honesty you share with us. I feel you in your loss of Stephen as I too feel the loss of my dearest beloved. Our hearts are torn open to receive Grace. I am very comforted to know that you gain comfort from all of us. Thank you so much for continuing to share yourself from time to time. All together we treasure ourselves and each other. x

Friends, I have read that some,because they left their dying ,loved ones, before the death and felt that they should have stayed and if ,maby it would have somehow been better or they may feel rejected. Most of those dying,need to be left alone, for periods of time,so they can leave their bodies easily.We need remember that they are as attached to you,as you are to them,so it is difficult to let go. Everyone is different,but this is something to observe. Treasure Ourselves love O

Dear Mom, on the day you died, December 5, 2015, I drove from the airport singing the song that I used to sing for you - Laura. I wanted to sing it to you in your hospital bed one last time. My voice cracked and struggled. I arrived at the hospital. You were surrounded by family and friends. I hung back and waited for them to leave so I could sing to you, alone. My voice cracked and struggled. You were trying so hard, I thought, as I watched your labored breathing. I wondered if you were trying so hard to be present because you always tried so hard to be present. I felt, maybe, if I left, you could die in peace. So I left. You died 30 minutes later. Now I am not so sure I should have left and more than anything I want to tell you how sorry I am for the way I behaved while you were ill. I want to tell you that I love you so very much and I want to tell you that I am sorry for allowing my fears (of you dying, of you leaving, of losing you) to dictate my actions. I will see you again. Love, Lisa

Dear Souls, forgive me. I want to meet you freely, without the social anxiety and self-doubt that plague me whenever I leave the house. And yet when you scan my groceries, when you pass me in the street, I am guarded and unable to share my heart or to witness yours. I come home and cry about this, and each time I can only hope that my tears contribute to the river that will carry more and more into my own felt sense of belonging in this world and my ability to connect unplagued by the reverberations of old fear and trauma. I sense my struggle is but one of many, many thousands who are also struggling similarly. May we find ways to come out of our isolation, to brave the necessary task of sharing ourselves, to allow ourselves to be fully met as we are. <3

Friends, its been 7 months since Stephen died.This is more difficult, than i imagined,to not have his touch,kindness,hugs,humor,wisdom has been a slow process of awakening. Once the mirror, of our humanness is gone, we need to rebuild,to stay in the heart of the matter You all mean a great deal, as you have sent huge love and spiritual support and this keeps me going He is in my heart&cells; please know i am fine and staying quiet on my mt top treasure ourselves drea

dear friend, i am writing to apologize for being such a bad man. i also wanted to be your hero and i never wanted to harm you. but now i did. i feel deeply sorry for pushing everything that far and now all i can do is to pray, go to the tables and talk to my sponsor. i keep on writing and working. i am thankful for being sober and for my ability to see what i have done. may god give me what i need and not what i want. i will keep on training myself in meditation. everything will be good at the end.

Sweetheart, I am writing to apologize for an indiscretion. I didn't have an affair, physical or emotional did I did something which I subsequently feel a lot of guilt about. At the wedding I went to, I was dancing with old friends and outside walked some other people (women) and in the moment I gestured for them to come in and dance. They did not and I didn't pursue it any further. I knew even if they did come in, which I am glad they didn't because it would have been awkward as I would have retreated from my initial gesture, I know I would not have been unfaithful. Yet, some part of me feels unfaithful for even doing what I did. It was not premeditated. I was caught up in the moment and made a bad decision. I am sorry. I haven't told you yet because I feel so much anxiety around the issue. Regardless, I love you, I am sorry, and I will work harder in the future to be more clear with my actions and intentions. I hope I can also forgive myself for the judgement I feel shame and self-hate around the fear I am experiencing when I think about telling you. I notice I am telling myself I am weak and lame. May I be kind to myself, true and loving to you, and brave.

I want to apologise to myself for having to measure up to such high standards of how I should be and where I should be in my life. For not forgiving the things I can not manage like facing my ex with a loving and independent heart which I would like very much but I seem to be more scared and insecure about myself than I care to know. I want to forgive him and let him go, but every time I find myself resenting him again, angry and ashamed for having been so naive and craving for love and security and hoping against hope we would connect through the years. Ashamed of hurting him and the kids while trying to do the right thing and giving up that hope. So ashamed of being just a vulnarable human being in need of love that I do not trust myself at all anymore with any man. I want to forgive myself to be what I am and love that.

I'm sorry. I know you told me to not try to kiss you and I kissed you. I know you told me not to fall in love with you and I fell in love with you and then some. I know we vowed each other we'd be in each others lives for the rest of our lives and I made it impossible. I'm sorry I made it impossible. I'm sorry I went nutty and manic and waved that red flag shaped like my self. I'm sorry I couldn't be the friend you needed cause I needed more. I'm not sorry we met even though it hurt more than I knew hurt could hurt to know I would never get to hold you again. I apologize for misleading and holding on too long and tight and losing sight of everything else. I honestly wish you the best of life even if it hurts still when I think of your perfect silly chortle and shoulders. This isn't goodbye, it's smell you later and I'm sorry. Miss you still.

Dear mother: This is my last day with you. You are choosing the time of your own death with dignity. I am afraid of losing you. But I thank you with all my heart for everything you have given to me; your love, support and respect; your encouragement and teachings; your silliness and sense of humor; your honesty and willingness to talk about anything in an open-hearted and loving manner. You have taught me the true meaning of love and acceptance and I don't feel ready to lose that, but I will try my best to let you go. You are my hero and closest confidant. Please be well and free in your next journey. I hope with all my heart to connect with you again somewhere, somehow. I apologize for not being free of fear and suffering at the thought of losing you. Yours always, me

Dear Daddy: I think about you every day. I'm sorry I kept my heart closed to you for so long. I thank you from the depths of my heart for becoming my friend, talking with me, going on walks with me, being silly with me. I came to see your brilliance and wonder. I came to love you. I'm sorry I had trouble helping you at the end, but I still love you with all my heart. I miss you every day and send my love wherever you are. I'm so sorry I was playing with my computer the moment you died. I wish I had been holding your hand and communing with you. Your only daughter.

Please, I want to apologize for everything I have ever done. I want to be forgiven for it all, please, thank you.