The Importance of Forgiveness

This is a podcast called Change, where community helpers share wisdom and strategies for personal growth. The host, Rebecca O'Rourke, interviews Adina Johnson, a retired psychology professor and author of the book "Butterfly Blue: The Pain of Infertility and the Power of Forgiveness." Adina discusses the importance of discussing infertility and miscarriage, as well as the need for forgiveness in her own life. She shares her journey of forgiving her absent father and the process she went through to let go of resentment. Adina also talks about the use of anchors and how they can trigger past emotions and behaviors. Welcome to Change, community helpers affecting growth and education. Join us as experts and community helpers come together to share with you wisdom, tools, strategies, and ways that you can evolve into the best version of you. I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, behavioral expert and master hypnotist. I look forward to guiding you through all of these tools and strategies that will assist you to becoming the best version of you. Welcome to Change, a podcast where community helpers are affecting growth and education. I am so grateful for Adina Johnson to be joining us today. She is a retired psychology professor, a published author, a marriage coach, YouTuber, podcaster, wife, and mom. She also was a youth counselor for 14 years and wrote a book called Butterfly Blue, The Pain of Infertility and the Power of Forgiveness. It is on Amazon, and we're going to get more into that. Thank you so much for joining us. So introduce yourself, please. Yes, you did a great job. I am Adina Johnson. Thank you for having me. And I am a retired psychology professor, marriage coach, YouTuber. I have a podcast with my friend of over 45 years, and that is Black Butterfly, Black Pearls, and that's everywhere you get your podcasts. Part of my podcast is I, because I am a retired psychology professor, I bring in a lot of the research. And so part of it is encouraging young women to live their life to the fullest and to not take any wood nickels, any broken records. Don't take any stuff, because if you have one life, live it to your fullest. And so that's part of what we do. And with my podcast, we always ask questions. At the end, we have a research part where we encourage young women to know what gas lighting is, to do self-care, to build your self-esteem. So it's so many different things, questions to ask your partner in different stages of the relationship. So that's part of what we do in our podcast. Amazing. Sounds really great. Thanks. So I would love to know more about your book. So tell us a little bit about how Butterfly Blue is helping assist change and, you know, in this idea of forgiveness. This is Butterfly Blue, The Pain of Infertility and the Power of Forgiveness. I think a lot of people were, like my husband and I, we thought, oh, you just decide you want to have children. There are a lot of children around here. So clearly, you just get off birth control and decide you want to have children, and the babies pile in. And that's not really how it works. Not how it works. I had a science teacher in college tell me, it's hard to get pregnant. And I went, dude, there were 27 girls in the freshman dorm that got pregnant last semester. That's not hard to get pregnant. So he was like, yeah, that was a lot of activity. So, yeah, so I encourage individuals, and part of my book, I realized that a lot of people weren't talking about infertility and miscarriages and loss. And so I felt like there was a conversation that needed to be had. I met with people that I had known for 10, 15 years that had miscarriages, and when they found out about my miscarriage, that opened them up to share about the loss that they had, and I was like, why didn't I know this? You know, we've known each other so long, and I didn't know. So I really felt like it was important to open up the conversation. Amazing. So, you know, a lot of times we bond with people through our challenges, right? And the truth is, is those challenges sometimes bring people closer together and help learn and teach each other. So that's, you know, a hard thing, but I'm so grateful that you were able to learn with somebody and grow closer with them through this. So how do you feel like forgiveness is a part of this whole process? Well, I felt like forgiveness was a part of my journey because I needed to forgive my dad for not being the parent I needed, for pretty much being a playmate. He would come and visit us, you know, every now and again, but there was no responsibility from him. So I really needed to forgive him for the abandonment as a child. Okay. So when you were a child, you felt like your dad wasn't there the way that you needed and wanted him to be? Yeah. My mom, if I did something, my mom would say, well, I'm going to tell your dad. And I'm like, well, whenever he calls. I was a smartie. I was a little smart, but I was horrible as a kid. I was like, yeah, whenever he calls, he may not ever call and you'll forget. Yeah. So there's probably a lot of pain and hurt and disappointment in that attitude, though, right? Yeah. And it probably came across as a really tough, tough exterior where underneath you were feeling that abandonment of, you know, why isn't my dad here when I need him? Yeah. Yeah. The pain of it all, especially during the teenage years when you and your mom are butting heads, you need that buffer. You know, that's why we need two parents because it is important to have pretty much a yin and a yang for one parent to understand when the other parent is being difficult. And, I mean, I do that with my kids. My son has a bad habit of their bedtime is 830. Well, come 1030, he's walking in my room and he wants to tell me about what he wants to shop and tell me about his day. And I'm like, son, you've been home since 3 o'clock. Now you want to tell me at 1030? I don't talk to kids after 1030. So then he runs and talks to his dad on the other side of the bed. Well, dad, let's talk about life. And so my husband indulges him. But that's the important part of having two parents. Yes. There's, you know, lots of ideas and science around all of that, absolutely. But you were a psychology professor. So you have lots of insights on, you know, family dynamics and acceptance as a child and all of those things. So, you know, with your psychology degree, how did you kind of help yourself with that forgiveness? Or what were some of the things that you did to help yourself? Oh, I did all the therapies. I did them all. I smashed the chair. I talked to the empty chair. I wrote the letter. I burned the letter. I flew the kite. I did it all. I did everything to try to forgive my dad. I would literally be in my house listening to music, cleaning my apartment when I was younger. And I look up and I'm curled up in a fetal position. You know, why don't you want me? Why don't you like me? Why am I not good enough? Those type of things. And it just wasn't healthy for me. I really had to forgive him for me. And, you know, I even, you know, told him, you didn't do everything you were supposed to do. And he said, yes, I did. I was the best parent I could be. And then I'm like, no, you're not. So, I mean, until I literally cornered him or I not cornered him, I pretty much was like, God, I need this guy to apologize. And he did apologize to me as well as his wife when she was on her deathbed. But even when he apologized to me, it just was not enough. So, I had to go through the process to forgive him for me. And whatever that means, I think people should go through the least part of the process. If it's writing the letter and burn it, if that works for you, great. It didn't work for me. Right. Yes. And so, you know, this idea of actually being able to let it go is sometimes not always easy, is it? It's sometimes a process, isn't it? Yeah. It was a process. And for me, there were times where if he would call me, I would get like physically my face and everything would be like, why are you calling me? And what do you want? And then I had to remind myself, wait a minute, you forgave him. So, don't act like that when he calls. Answer the call and be cordial. You know, answer the call. And if it's not a good time to answer the call, then don't. If it's not a good time to answer the call, then don't. Well, we all have our own ideas of what people should or shouldn't do or how they should or shouldn't behave or, you know, what a parent should do for a child. And unfortunately, these ideas and these expectations aren't always matching and jiving. Clearly, your dad had different expectations for what a dad should do than what you had. Yeah. And they weren't coming together. So, it's really this idea of being able to, you know, forgive for you. Like you said, it's we don't forgive to excuse people's behavior. We don't forgive to say that it was OK. We do it to release sort of the energetic hold that it has on us or the feelings that it gives to us. Have you ever heard of anchors before? I don't. I've heard of anchor. Tell me what you're talking about, because not the boat anchor. OK. So, some everyday anchors that you might know are when you hear a song and it brings you back to an experience or when you smell a perfume or cologne and it reminds you of someone that used to wear it. So, the sound is anchored to the experience. The smell is anchored to the person. And we, you know, as a hypnotist and an NLP practitioner, we use a lot of these anchors because people have anchors that fire off that are not useful. And we can set anchors that are useful for different states of mind or, you know, confidence and things like that. So, the reason I'm bringing this up is because we all have these anchors with our parents. It could be a sound that they make or a way that they look at you. Or, you know, it's usually a sight, sound, touch or something in that way that triggers the anchor. But we actually revert back to a younger stage. So, you know, you hear that sound or you see that look and then all of a sudden you're acting like a 14-year-old again because that's when the anchor was set. Yeah. And that's the resources that we have to choose from. And it can be really, really strange to be, you know, this evolved, mature, you know, professional woman that all of a sudden you're acting like a 14-year-old. And you're going, what's going on here? I'm a psychology professor. I'm this, I'm that. What's going on here? So, you know, these anchors sometimes are often not, they're overlooked. And sometimes we need to, like I said, collapse some of those old anchors so that when the look happens or the sound happens, that a new response happens. It's interesting, you know, when we look at, you know, the core subconscious sort of deep underlying things for people. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, and we look at, when we get married to individuals, we look at our spouse and we kind of see those nostalgic events or we call them, in my practice, emotional allergies where someone will say something and it will take you back to that place and you'll get mad about it. So, one of the emotional allergies my husband had with me, we're marriage coaches. So, he would walk in the house, walk in the kitchen, and I would say, did you wash your hands? That would drive him batty because, first of all, his mom would not let them in the kitchen. Second of all, she did want them to wash their hands even if they came in. So, it's like you're taking me back to that moment. It's an emotional allergy. It makes me emotionally go back to that time and you're not my mom. So, stop asking me if I washed my hands. You know, and as married people, we go around the family and we see the little sister doing the thing that used to always annoy the brother because that's what they do. We see, you know, the family dynamics and we wonder, why does that stuff bug you so bad? But, like we're saying, those are anchors. Those are the emotional allergies, the nostalgia that's happening, and they're reacting to it. And many times they overreact because it just really takes them back to that place. Yeah, because if the anchor was set when they were four, then all of a sudden they start having a little four-year-old temper tantrum, which is interesting. Yeah, it's your whole husband over here. So, you know, it's one way to keep the marriage fresh, not really. No. So, you know, let's get back to this idea of forgiveness because, you know, the anchors, when these anchors fire off, there's an element sometimes of forgiveness that needs to happen there. You know, and when our spouse is telling us to do the things that our mother used to tell us to do, there's an element of forgiveness that's useful there. So, it's amazing that sometimes it's not just like the big things that we need to forgive. It's, you know, having these rituals and practices or tools or resources that we're using regularly in our life all the time that make it so that we are freeing ourselves from all of the sort of, what did you call it, emotional allergies? Yeah. Sounds good. All the pain. Yeah. So, as a marriage counselor, you can really touch on this idea that forgiveness probably needs to happen every day, doesn't it? Daily. Yeah, daily. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it has to happen daily. Sometimes it's a look. And sometimes this is the one thing I had to do going back to my dad. I had to realize when I had to forgive him, he just did not have it to give. He did not have the emotional capacity to give me what I needed as a child, so he did do the best that he could with what he had. So, I had to pull it back and understand that from my training and from my psychology background, but we all don't have psychology backgrounds. And so, there are a lot of wounded people around who don't have the tools to deal with the pain that we've suffered as children. So, that's why I encourage therapy for people. That's why I encourage marriage coaching. When my husband and I first got married in 2000, we immediately went to marriage coaching, which is Monday Night Solution. And every Monday night, we learned about our relationship and our marriage and the family of origin. And we did our genealogy, and we learned about some of the generational patterns that had happened in our families. Because if you don't know about those things, they will happen again. And so, as I continued to devour everything the clinical director gave me, he was a teacher at the time, but he eventually became my clinical director. Because he was like, I have nothing else for you. Why don't you just get trained with your background and drag your husband along, and let's do this thing. And so, we worked with him for 16 years, helping families and other people to grow their marriages and build legacy. Amazing. That's so great. I really believe that our marriage and our connection, whether it's a marriage or just a partnership, is a true foundation for our happiness overall. If our relationship is off, so is our health, so is our career. But it really is such an important building block of that support and foundation to be successful. There's lots of ways for forgiveness, and I do encourage therapy. And I know there's all kinds of different approaches out there and different ways of helping. So, I, myself, am not a therapist. So, one of the ways that I'm helping people in the office is something called Hopo Ono Pono. So, I know it's hard to say, but it's actually a Hawaiian traditional practice of forgiveness and letting go. And in ancient Hawaii, they used to have a kahuna for everything. So, there was like a kahuna for fishing, and all the fishermen would go talk to that kahuna for fishing advice, right? So, there was actually a kahuna for the mind. And the kahuna for the mind recognized that when people were coming to them for advice, that there was an element that they needed this way of forgiving and letting go because it was hurting them. So, he created this sort of, or she, or I'm not sure, the kahuna. The big kahuna. Yeah, that's right. Created a sort of a practice or a ritual that is this idea of being able to sort of forgive the person that person was born. The idea that everybody is born good, like you were saying that, you know, your dad was only doing what he knew how to do. And we want to sort of give that mature perspective to everyone and everything that, you know, we're all born good. And throughout life, things taint us and change us and they make us scared and hurt. And all from that pain really derives a lot of the actions that we might regret or a lot of things that we need to, you know, have forgiveness around. So, Hoko Ono Pono is just like something simple that people can do that they can incorporate into their day, daily, hourly, depending on your lifestyle. Right. And it's just sort of giving them something to do that aligns with letting go and forgiving. So, there's lots of different ways to do that. Lots of different practitioners and therapies and tools and resources. And I think the most important thing is that you're using them. Doesn't matter. Right. And I encourage people to use the least of those. The least of the things that help you to get past it. I mean, you don't have to exhaust all the things that I did, but do the least of things to help you get to that forgiveness so you don't have to carry that pain and continue to carry that pain. You know, the thing that gets me when I talk about us doing Monday Night Solutions every Monday, we get training on our job constantly. Why not in life? Why not? The most important thing, our job, they will replace us tomorrow, but your kids can't replace you. So, why not get training in life? I mean, and you think about it, with our kids, I have a 27-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 10-year-old, and I really have to deal with them all differently. So, and same thing with my husband. The way I interact with my husband is not the way you would interact with your husband. You might like that four-year-old when I'm like, dude, no, we're not doing that. So, I think it's so important that we continue to grow and learn and do different things, the trainings, like we do on our job. Amazing, yes. Tell us a little bit more about your podcast, Black Butterflies, Black Pearls, and how that is incorporating into our conversation today. Black Butterflies, Black Pearls is a podcast with my friend of over 45 years. We've been friends since she was five and I was six. And literally, we've done life together, 45 years, and so over 45 years now. And we try to encourage the young women to live life to the fullest and not to accept less than. I see so many times women, for whatever reasons, they don't feel like they're worthy and they're not enough. And so, we encourage them to ask the right questions. So, one of the things we do at the end of each podcast, we bring in research. And the research could be self-care. It could be to know if someone's gaslighting you, to know if a relationship needs to go into therapy, to know if a relationship needs to end. You know, some of the things to look out for in relationships, some of the questions to ask, because a lot of times young people don't know that. And so, we're learning that a lot of people our age are listening to us because we talk about the pop culture and the things that are happening. But we also try to bring a psychology twist to try to learn from the mistakes of others. Because one thing is I don't have to go through everything to know that that's not the right thing. You know, I don't need to have to go through that. I don't need, you know, to be swindled to know that's not what I want. Absolutely. There's, you know, the oldest version or the oldest way of learning is through storytelling. Yeah. And we do a lot of that. It's powerful. Yes. Yes. And all those things that you talked about, they're all incorporating change. They're all about change in some way, how to navigate that change, how to, you know, be resilient in that change of whether it be changing relationships or all the other things that you mentioned. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So is there anything else that you feel like you could share with our listeners today in this idea of forgiveness or change or anything else you want to share about your book or, yeah, any wisdom? I think if you can think it, you can achieve it. We went through a lot trying to have our children. And that was a long journey for us. And so I think it's part of what my book talks about is being your best self, being your best self and not taking, that way you don't have to ask for forgiveness later if you do the right thing the first time. So that's one of the things I encourage individuals to do. And it won't be 100%, but I think you can build up equity where individuals will know whereas you did what you thought was right at the time. So and don't, don't, you know, judge your life by someone's highlight reel on Instagram because we all have struggles. We all have troubles. We all have things that happen to us. But it's important that we get the help and that we live our best life. And it really brings up a very valuable point because we've been talking a lot today about forgiving others. But there's also this element of forgiveness for ourselves. And, and, you know, we have older versions of ourselves that just didn't know then what we know now. Yeah. And we sometimes learn by making those mistakes, which, you know, hey, first podcast, got to press record. So, you know, being this sort of humbleness with yourself and having this idea of assuming that you're going to make mistakes as you're learning something. There's something and maybe, you know, the logical learning levels. But I think it's really useful for people to kind of keep in mind that there are levels to learning. And the first level is what's called unconscious incompetence. So that's where you just don't know you don't know. Right. And then there's conscious competence, which really sucks because you know you don't know. And then there's conscious competence. So that's where you can do it. But you've got to be conscious of it and you've got to practice it. And then you make it to unconscious competence where it's just sort of happening. So that's true for anything we're learning, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's how to deal with relationships better, whether it's, you know, writing a book or being on a podcast or being, you know, kind and gentle with yourself as you're as you're, you know, striving for better in life. So there's so many elements that is really useful of this podcast today of, you know, how to live your best life has this element of forgiveness of self-forgiveness of old versions, forgiveness of others. And really, that's where we can thrive from is this place of even ground, let's call it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So would you mind sharing with our listeners where they can find you and your book and your podcast or any socials or websites? Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on anywhere you get your podcast. I love to walk in my house and say, Alexa, play Black Butterfly, Black Pearl's podcast. And then there's my voice. So anywhere you get your podcast, you can get our podcast. We are on, my husband and I, we are Nick, N-I-K, and Adina, A-D-I-N-A-H on YouTube. And also you can find me on Instagram. I'm not that great at Instagram, but it's AdinaJ25 on Instagram. And on Facebook, it's Adina Johnson. And my book is, my book is in Amazon. You can go to Amazon and get my book and yeah, all the things. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us and all the wisdom and all the experiences. Wow, you've done a lot between, you know, psychology and marriage counseling and podcasting and YouTubing and a real, real delight to have you today. And I'm really grateful for you to be part of my first episode. Yay. Thanks for having me. We are so grateful that you joined us today. Tune in again next week where we have another amazing professional giving you tools and strategies for change. I am your host, Rebecca O'Rourke, and you can find me at coorthypnosis.com.