As Deepak Chopra and Oprah guided me through an online meditation on forgiveness last night, waves of hurt, guilt, anger, and wrath moved through my heart and body.

“Start with patience, understanding, and forgiveness with yourself,” said Deepak in his warm, lilting ghee voice. I wrapped my arms around myself and breathed.

Last night Christopher, my beloved, told me that his friend had asked him to play music at their wedding next month. He paused. I thought about our huge love that at times seems to encompass the  world. I imagined how powerful we might be singing and manifesting love at a wedding.

“I think the best thing will be for me and Constance to sing a few songs,” he said.

Constance and Christopher perform covers together in crowd-pleasing harmonies.

“How do you feel about that?” he asked me.

I felt divided in two, with two minds, two hearts, and two bodies. One felt calm, nonjudgmental, understanding.

The other reeled. I imagined not going to the wedding, or finding a really good looking male musician to perform music with…so there!

The first step toward forgiveness, Deepak said, was to decide NOT to give into the revenge fantasies, but to stay present in the moment.

It wasn’t only Christopher I forgave as I held myself and breathed. Various situations and people came into my mind. As I gently focused on loving and forgiving myself first, blame melted into “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Each way I blamed another, I remembered ways I’d done something similar.

For example, there’s my friend, the wildly intuitive and kind healer, Skye. I don’t judge Skye for having boundary challenges (including the occasional urge to just blow them off), but I need to clarify their importance to me before we work together. Now, after the meditation, I feel I can talk with her about the ways I too, tend to just blow off boundaries. Like they’re un-learnable. Like they’re for other people. I need to say something like, “I don’t judge that this is and has been a blind spot for you—it has been for me too—but because I’m aware of how the lack of good boundaries turns healing work into an instrument of darkness, I need us to be on the same page about their utter significance before moving  moving forward on doing healing work together.”

Last night I dreamed I have a terrible singing voice. I kept hearing myself singing and it sounded terrible, like each time confirmed how bad I was. When Christopher told me about choosing Constance, I felt so betrayed. As I held myself and felt into it, I felt like if he really loved me, he’d love my singing even if the world hated it. I mean: John Lennon and Yoko Ono!

Maybe it’s time for me to love my singing.

I dreamt recently I was with my ex-husband Steve in this old Western town. I told him (with peaceful calm in my heart) how much it used to hurt me how little he loved me. How his not loving me back hurt all the time. In the dream, it was so nice to say it and feel so at peace. I wasn’t upset anymore at all, just describing a fact. But then I started to sing. And when I sang this one song, I could feel it healing all those places in me that had been so hurt. The song filled them all with self-love.

I must gather the amulet in the dirt and wear it. The amulet is my voice.

I remember my father always asking me to be quiet and to stop singing. I find myself at that age and say all the things I wish she’d heard then: It’s beautiful, your singing. It makes me happy. I hope you create songs and music and share that voice with the world. Your voice is a gift.

In my mind’s eye, she crawls up on my lap and cries.

“I feel so ashamed,” she says. “I feel like if my voice was pretty he wouldn’t have asked me to stop.”

My father was in medical school and studying. Like me, he couldn’t read or write if there was music on with lyrics.

“He just couldn’t concentrate, sweetie,” I said. “Look: we’re the same way, so we know it’s true.”

“It’s not about me?

“You are the prize.”

She shakes her head in disbelief.

My full hands hold her 8-year-old body in the white peasant shirt above my head, so I cannot lift her chin with my hand to insist she look at me.

“It’s really true.” My own eyes look haunted.

“Promise?” She smiles and it’s like the sun come out from behind clouds.

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Thank you for rescuing me. It was lonely here. Lonely and sad.”

“I’ve missed us both so much.”

“I’m not a bad singer?”

“No. I don’t think so. I think you’ve a very nice voice and a gift for unusual harmonies. And I love you and your singing voice and I will stand up for them and embrace them even if they sound bad to some. They are you and I love and welcome and embrace and love all of you.”

“Really!?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Let’s find that song, shall we?”

“Which one?”

“The one that loves me whole.”