Julie Hilsen (00:04)
Dear God, Creator, divinity, source, whatever gives us this life that we breathe in this organization of random yet perfectly harmonized synchronicities, I honor this chance. I honor my breath and I call forth my guides, my angels, my Akashic team, my higher self to bring forth a message for the highest good and to collaborate with Katherine and her team.

if they are so inclined to bring forth a message to open the ears that need to hear and the hearts that need to soften to help with the anger on this planet to diffuse and transmute any kind of fear or misunderstanding and release it so that we can be free. And our intention to help humanity in any small way as just part of this whole

container that we’re creating. And I’m so honored to bring forth Katharine’s journey and her knowledge. And I just asked for this message to be transmitted at a high enough frequency for those that need to hear it with a clarity and purpose that’s clear. thank you for every, every entity that’s come forward and our sole purpose and I

honor. I honor this time. And again, I thank you, thank you, thank you. And so it is.

Katharine Giovanni (01:32)
And so it is.

Julie Hilsen (01:33)
Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love, where we gather every week to bring forth a message of love, understanding, caring. And this week is a special opportunity. We get to talk about forgiveness, and it’s very powerful. Katharine Giovanni is my guest, and I’m so happy. We’ve been looking forward to this connection, and it’s finally here. Welcome to Life of Love, Katharine.

Katharine Giovanni (01:58)
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Julie Hilsen (02:00)
That’s my pleasure. you’ve written several books in this last one, the ultimate, the ultimate path to forgiveness, unlocking your power is just a wonderful offering to transform forgiveness and emphasize the impact on personal healing. So I’m just really excited for you to bring forth your unique perspective on forgiveness and then

You were telling me earlier that you have another book in the works about forgiving yourself. So I’m sure we’re going to touch on that too. So yeah, I’m just really excited to pick your brain on this topic.

Katharine Giovanni (02:28)
do.

Well, thank you. Pick away.

Julie Hilsen (02:37)
Well, I mean the word that came forth with the strongest hit to me was anger and I think that might be a great place to start because when people are angry they tend to want to blame or project or Disassociate their role in that anger like they did this and I’m mad and I want to get even or or whatever whatever the anger

Usually anger is something like when you can’t do anything about something, you feel anger and you might want to get retribution. But I would love to start from anger and what’s your view and how can you take that feeling of anger or perhaps frustration or helplessness and go within to figure out is there something to forgive? Like maybe that person doesn’t need to say they’re sorry to me. Maybe there’s something I need to see.

But how would you recommend starting with that anger and just looking at that with a different lens?

Katharine Giovanni (03:37)
Well, first of all, the thing about forgiveness is everybody teaches us that we have to forgive your pastor, your parents, your teachers. Nobody teaches you how. And then what if you don’t want to? What if you are that angry? What if it’s an unforgivable thing? Then what do you do? So on a 10 scale with 10 being an unforgivable dumpster fire horrific, and one being the easiest person in the world to forgive.

Everybody is thinking of their number 10 person. You’re thinking of the person that made you angry the most that hurts you the most that rocked your world. And that’s totally fair. Everybody. That’s why nobody wants to talk about forgiveness because you’re talking about the one person that completely wrecked you. Okay. So in my world, I want my system is designed to go the other way. I want you to start with the easy ones. We’ll get to the unforgivable number tens in a minute, but I want you to start with the easy people.

I want you to start with the people that stole your parking space at the grocery store. Forgive that person. The person who cut you off on I-95 South. Come on now, you can forgive that person. The person who stole your lunch yesterday out of the company refrigerator. They were hungry. Forgive that person. Easy, easy people. Your football team lost last week. Forgive the football team. Come on now, you can do this. These are the people I want you to start with.

And that’s the basis of the system is you start with the easy ones and work your way up. But a few things about forgiveness that trips everybody up, everybody. First of all, just cause I forgive you doesn’t mean I want a relationship with you. Probably don’t. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean repair. And here’s the big one that absolutely trips 10 out of 10 people up. Just because I forgive you doesn’t mean you were correct.

It doesn’t mean I’m all of a sudden giving you a pass. It doesn’t mean I’m coming over to your side and I’m giving in. You’re still wrong. You’re still probably going to have to make amends. You’re still pretty much unforgivable. Forgiveness for me is selfish. I do it for me, not for them. I’m doing it because here’s the formal definition. I want you out of my head. That’s it. I want you out of my head. I want to stop thinking about it.

I want to stop dreaming about it. And if I go into a bakery and I smell chocolate chip cookies, I don’t want to be triggered. I don’t want triggers to happen either. I want it gone. And that’s the basis of it. It doesn’t mean they were correct. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It just means you want to stop thinking about them for a

Julie Hilsen (06:14)
They don’t get to live rent free in your head.

Katharine Giovanni (06:17)
No, well, that’s the thing, especially

with women, like, especially with our exes, we want them to be as miserable as we are. We’re sitting in a, in a room in a dark room, eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and we’re crying and we want them to be miserable, but they’re not, they’re not thinking about us at all. It’s like the Buddha said, one of my favorite quotes in the world, anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.

Julie Hilsen (06:42)
Mm, that’s moving. And I love, I wanna backtrack this whole idea, forgive the easy things first. And it’s like training wheels. And it makes sense. You don’t go out and try to run a marathon right away. You walk around the block.

Katharine Giovanni (06:57)
think it’s up to

you if you do, but yeah.

Julie Hilsen (07:00)
I’m sorry, what was that?

Katharine Giovanni (07:02)
You might make yourself sick or two, but you you might want to try the Couch to 5K running program, right online, brilliant program. Did it myself. So yeah, don’t, don’t, don’t do that.

Julie Hilsen (07:11)
Nice. Running is such a metaphor for life. There’s so many gems in running and training and one step at a time, keep your head up, suck it up, just go after it. There’s so many gems. I ran all through childhood and my legs gave out in college. I probably should have ran college because I was pretty good, but I think I wanted to…

Have more social time.

Katharine Giovanni (07:41)
There you go. It is a very, very

solitude. So, you know, you, you don’t really, it’s not like golf or tennis or any of the other sports.

Julie Hilsen (07:49)
Yeah, and then that

gave me opportunity to have more forgiveness because the more you interact with people, the more chances you get to forgive.

Katharine Giovanni (07:57)
Humans

irritate humans. It’s part of our species.

Julie Hilsen (08:01)
So yeah, love that idea of starting small and you’re not condoning their behavior. You’re letting them have the consequences. I don’t let you do that again. You don’t have access to me, but I’m not gonna hold it. And I think that it’s sort of like this rite of passage or this…

this idea that somehow is an overlay in our society that you have to get even or that if you hold onto this hurt, somehow you’re going to have an insulation and it won’t happen again because you’ve already experienced that. if you’re still fighting against that situation, it can’t happen again. you’re not going to get dumped. The universe isn’t going to dump on you again, but it’s actually the opposite because you’re in victim mode when you’re in there. So you’re inviting more of this

energy, a victimhood. So it’s, you’re right, it’s something you do for yourself. It’s a self-care activity to forgive.

Katharine Giovanni (09:04)
Let me give you a visual that might help your viewers. And if you’re listening to this broadcast, I’m going to talk you through it. So it’s fine. I’m holding a purple teacup to my side. This teacup represents anger, bitterness, resentment, all this kind of stuff. So when I first get angry, look at my body language. You and I can have a conversation. I can see I’m paying attention to my life. I can manage my anger. It’s easy, easy to hold it off to the side, isn’t it?

But if I don’t let some of the anger out, humans irritate other humans, as I said. So we’re going to keep putting more stuff into that little glass of anger, aren’t we? So at some point, it’s going to start to get a little painful. So now I’m using two hands to hold up this little glass of anger. Okay, it’s not really, I could still keep it off to the side, but it’s starting to get into my conversations. It’s starting to creep in.

It’s starting to kind of affect my relationships because I’m starting to talk about the, you know, the stories. And if I continue to hold onto this, eventually it’s going to take my life over. Now I’m holding the cup right in front of my face. I am missing things. I am not paying attention to life around me. It’s all I can think about. It’s all I can talk about. I’m dreaming about it. I’m even spinning the stories funny, but I’m still telling the stories. So I’m actually starting to get sick now.

And I’m starting to lose friends because who wants to be around me? I’m sick and negative all the time. So when you do, my system is designed and we’ll go through the system step by step. But when my system is designed to start with the easy ones. So when you start with the people you would rate a one, two or three, for example, well now I’m back to the, my side. So I haven’t forgiven the unforgivable yet, but look at my body language. I’ve started to free my brain up and now I can pay attention again.

Julie Hilsen (10:33)
Hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (10:57)
I could see that money-making opportunity. I could see that way to health that I didn’t see before. I could see my dream relationship walk into the room. Why couldn’t I see it before? Because I was so inner focused on my anger, I wasn’t paying attention. And the anger, it acts as a shield. So you can’t even really hear you intuition, your gut feeling that we all have because it acts as a shield. You’re literally paying attention to the anger.

Julie Hilsen (11:13)
So you believe that, yeah.

Katharine Giovanni (11:26)
kind of going inner focused.

Julie Hilsen (11:28)
Wow, so you’re saying it blocks every other area. It’ll block your abundance. It’ll block future relationships. It’s a wild card for no good.

Katharine Giovanni (11:35)
It’s us.

Well there’s also another saying that people bandy around that nobody understands. They say anger is toxic. Okay, I’ll bite. How? Well there’s a study called the Japanese Water Study. It’s right online and you can Google Japanese Water Study and it’ll probably come up right in the first place. And I always get his name on it. It’s like Hasumoto or something like that. And what the guy did is he took several containers of water. One container of water. All he did, all he did was talk to it. He spoke

absolutely loving words to it, I love you kind of things. The other container of water he spoke hate, anger, said the most horrific things you could say to anything. Then he froze the water and he put it under a microscope. The water that he spoke love to had these beautiful crystal formations. The water that he spoke hate to had the opposite and a black and brown malformations and they were very ugly. So why am I telling you this? The human body is over 95 % water.

So when your self-talk is bad, when you’re spitting hate and anger, what do you think you’re doing to the water cells within your own body?

Julie Hilsen (12:47)
It’s chaos and ugly. Yeah, the study is amazing. And I’m a dear fan. And I don’t know if you followed Veda Austin. She is out of New Zealand. She might live in the States now. She has a YouTube channel, but she’s actually…

Katharine Giovanni (12:48)
Shut the mic.

It’s an amazing study.

Julie Hilsen (13:03)
photographed water in the crystalline phase and she’s able to show actual holograms, shapes and visual representations of love and harmony. And yeah, so it’s truly transformative and the whole water cleansing. mean, that’s, and I’ve said this before in other episodes where,

That’s part of my clearing my field. get in the shower and I ask the water to take away anything that doesn’t serve me. I clean cleanse my aura intentionally. And you think, well, you’re getting cleansed anyway, you’re just in the shower. But no, your intention of asking is the power. it’s listening.

Katharine Giovanni (13:43)
And you want the water

to have the crystal formations and not the malformation. So I’ll actually often tell the water I love it before I drink a glass of water. But I’m very mindful not to do that in public because they tend to look at you like you’re a nut if you do it out loud. So I might do it in my head, but you but you. Yeah, kind of hold it and whisper, I love you. Yeah, no, people think you’re a nut if you do it. I try and do it just when nobody can see me doing it, but.

Julie Hilsen (13:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the energetics, you know, from your heart to your hand.

Katharine Giovanni (14:09)
And people have replicated that study many, many times and everybody gets the same result. So it’s a little science of, but the thing about forgiveness is there’s in 2020, I discovered the secret sauce, you will, the kind of the magic formula that everybody’s forgetting. Cause they get all these people come up to me and they say, well, I did do the work. I did forgive them. Well, you did a hundred percent. You forgave them. And they say, well, but they don’t stay forgiven. I keep getting triggered.

I see their name and I get mad again and I have to go back and forgive them all over again and I have to do all that work a second time. They didn’t forgive the energy. Einstein correctly proved that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So when you get angry, most people don’t even think about it. But if you did think about it, you’d assume that the energy left your mouth and dissipated into the universe. It does not. It hangs in your energy field until you clear it and will follow you.

And Einstein also proved that everything on our planet has energy around it, including this little silver microphone has an energy field around it. And that’s what needs to be cleared. So my mantra and I’ll go over the, I’ll go over the system, step-by-step in a minute, but the mantra that you’re going to say is very simple. I completely forgive Julie. I forgive the energy around Julie. I completely forgive myself. I forgive the energy around myself.

I now forgive the energy around the entire relationship. And so it is, amen, thank you God, it any way you like. And that’s really the essence of the whole thing. You didn’t forgive the energy and the energy is what’s going to allow people to stay forgiven. So how do you know you’ve actually forgiven people? When you could go out, you can see their name or you run into them a party and you don’t care. You don’t care. You know that saying, forgive and forget.

Okay. I’m from New York. We’re not forgetting anything, but what I can promise you is the emotional charge will be removed. So you can look at that dark spot in your childhood and it’ll be different because you won’t care. You won’t think good. You won’t think bad. You legitimately won’t care. A few years ago, I was on Facebook and I saw the name of my ex business partner. Usually that would cause me to go on the ceiling and my husband would have to peel me off the ceiling and take a couple of days.

And I didn’t care, even wished her a happy birthday. And then I caught myself and I thought, wait a minute, I didn’t care. I didn’t care. That’s freedom. That’s 100 % freedom. And that’s what this system is going to offer you.

Julie Hilsen (16:47)
him.

So how do you make yourself believe that you forgive the whole energy around it? Is it like being heart centered before you say, forgive the energy? Because you can, well, I’m just saying from experience, I can say one thing, but it might not really be something that I believe. How do you make yourself believe that the energy is cleared?

Katharine Giovanni (17:11)
You you kind of don’t have to my friend. It’s the law of forgiveness is like the law of gravity You can call the law of gravity anything you want. I can call it the law of keeping kathryn on the planet Doesn’t care still gonna work. I can call the law. I don’t believe in the law of gravity still doesn’t care still gonna work This stuff works whether you believe it in or not and I get people telling me all the time Well, I did what you said and it didn’t work. I love it when they say that to me

Julie Hilsen (17:14)
Okay.

Katharine Giovanni (17:39)
because it did work. Forgiveness is like an onion, which it did is you forgave the first layer and your brain, which is a beautiful, beautiful tool, protects you. And it says, Julie’s ready. You know that back closet on the left in the back with the padlock on it? She’s ready. They’re going to open up that closet and flood you with memories that you have forgotten because we’re all walking around with these movies playing in the back of our minds.

that we don’t even know is there. And they’re affecting what we’re doing and what we’re saying and what we’re eating. And it’s a movie that’s just back there playing. Your brain remembers, but it’s protecting you. And it’s affecting you, but you don’t even realize it. And that’s what this system is going to do. So I’m going to have you sit down with a pen and paper. Okay, young people, I understand you want to use your cell phone. I get you want to use your tablet. I understand. And I’m in my sixties. I can say young.

but there’s been hundreds of studies done that there’s something magical that happens when it goes from your brain down your arm into a pen to a paper. Long time ago, there was a study done at Harvard University and they followed some kids and half the class they said, say your goals out loud to the room. So they did. The other half of the class, they said, write them down. So those, that half did. They followed these kids for the next 10, 15, 20 years. I can’t remember exactly how long.

And they discovered that the kids who wrote their goals down were twice as successful as the kids who did not. So find a pen and paper. And I want you to write down a list of all the people you think you need to forgive. And yes, the unforgivable are going to be the first people on your list. totally, I understand that. And that’s fair. Write down as many as you want and don’t judge yourself. If you write a name that you don’t remember, keep it. Just keep it.

Don’t judge it, just write down whatever comes out. And then I want you to rate it from one to 10. 10 being awful, ugly, one being easy. Now you could have 20 number fives, I really don’t care. You could skip a number, I really don’t care. But what I do care about is that you start with the first person on your list and then you work your way up to the ugly ones. We’ll talk about the ugly ones in a minute and how to forgive yourself. But I want you to put your hand in your heart to remind yourself to speak from the heart.

but at the end of the day, the words are just for us stupid humans. It’s the energy behind the words that is really the beauty of it. And then I want you to imagine in your mind’s eye that the person you’re forgiving is standing in front of you, not the adult. Maybe you’re talking about a kid from school, from the eighth grade. I want you to imagine that that eighth grader is standing in front of you. You’re alone in a room. I want you alone. I want your cell phone turned off.

Yeah, don’t twitch. Don’t get upset. There is an off button on these things. And if you’re visibly twitching, when you’re hearing me say this, mute it. I don’t want you to, to let it vibrate. Cause if it dances on your Jessica to say, Ooh, who’s that? No, want it muted for a few minutes. Just remember to unmute it later. And I don’t, the dog can be with you, but I’m thinking be alone. And then I want you to say whatever you want to say. You’re alone in a room. You don’t have to reach out and call these people. So we can.

Julie Hilsen (20:52)
Right, yeah,

like we think it’s gotta be this big production, but no, it’s something you do in the privacy, yes.

Katharine Giovanni (20:56)
Do

not have to reach out and talk to these people. Nobody has to know you’re forgiving these people. And that being said, that means you can forgive dead people. Because where they are or are not doesn’t matter a lick. Because if they’re alive and well in your head and you never got closure and they’re already dead, well, now here we go. Now we can get it. So if you can’t imagine the person in front of you, because not everybody can, talk to a chair.

Julie Hilsen (21:01)
Love it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (21:22)
You could put their name in the chair. could put their picture on the chair. I don’t care, but you could talk to a chair if that makes you more comfortable and then say whatever you want to say. Yell, scream, cry, laugh. I don’t care. You’re alone in the room. This is your party. You can do whatever you want or don’t say a word. Just glare at them. I don’t care. And then I want you to say the mantra that I just told you. Now, after you say the mantra, there’s worksheets and stuff in the book checking with your body. So is this a number two, two level person? Is it a one?

Is it gone? Great. Cross the name off, go to the next person on the list. Is this person, did it go from a three to a two? Okay, write down two, wait 24 hours, do it again tomorrow. This happened to a friend of mine. Is it a number three person? And now all of a sudden it’s a nine. Ooh.

Julie Hilsen (22:10)
Yeah, because you’re stirring the waters, like something you thought wasn’t a big deal, and then you’re like, well, no, that affected all these other relationships, or I wouldn’t have done this, it hadn’t been, and it does stir the pot. I hear you, and thank you for saying that, because…

Katharine Giovanni (22:13)
Exactly.

She was pissed.

She was all of a sudden, she said, why am I so, and I mean, she was pissed. And so she crossed off the number three and put nine. And we put that person at the end. Yeah, she was mad because she unlocked something and the memory started to flutter. And then I want you to keep going. Certain things are going to happen to you as you forgive. When you forgive, most people get tired because you’re clearing a lot of energy. So I want you to do it before bed because

Julie Hilsen (22:33)
See you

Katharine Giovanni (22:54)
You know, your body heals itself when you’re sleeping. Your shoulders might feel lighter. You might get, you’re going to get tired. You might get hungry. Your solar plexus, which is for anybody who doesn’t know, it’s right in the center of your body, above your belly button, below your chest. It’s kind of right in the middle. You might feel energy move there. When I did this, and I only want you to do 10 at a time. And here’s why, do as I say, not as I did. I’m a little bit of an overachiever shocker.

And so when I did this exercise, cause I do my own stuff, I thought this is going to be great. And I wrote a list. I swear to you, there must’ve been 50 people on that, on that list. mean, I, I got it all out and I thought I’m going to do this all tonight. I’m going to, I’m going to forgive everybody and it’s going to be great. And I’m going to be like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. I’m going to wake up tomorrow. I’m going be a brand new person. insert laugh track there. Yeah, no, it didn’t work out the way I thought it would.

I did forgive many people on the list, this is true, but I also ended up flat in my back with what everybody thought was a stomach flu for the next three days.

Julie Hilsen (23:56)
that releasing all the toxicity of emotion manifested as a diagnosable illness.

Katharine Giovanni (24:02)
Yep. And it had to come out. My body just, did too

many at a time and my body literally had to spend three days catching up. Remember those, those water cells, they have to go someplace. So if you are as politely as I can in the bathroom, after you forgive people, you didn’t eat a bad piece of fish. It’s just your body clearing and it’ll be gone, you know, in a couple of hours, you’ll be fine. But that’s why I only want you to do 10 at a time. And if you’re doing a high level person, like somebody rated eight, nine or 10.

Julie Hilsen (24:32)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (24:32)
then I only

want you to do one.

Maybe to put my friend katie we always says do one no more than that because of the high level that you’re dealing with.

Julie Hilsen (24:43)
That’s fair. And honor, honor that it’s hard work. I mean, you’re not lifting weights, but it is spiritual weights. It’s a grind, but it so worth it. I mean, my last guest I interviewed, she was talking about people who aren’t crossing over into the afterlife because they’re angry. they held on to all this. nothing else if you want to go to, I don’t want to like…

Katharine Giovanni (25:04)
Yeah, because their anger is feathering them.

Julie Hilsen (25:12)
don’t want to shame people into doing it, it’ll give you a faster track to heaven, to light.

Katharine Giovanni (25:17)
Well, that life review at the end will make the life review a little bit easier, won’t it?

Julie Hilsen (25:18)
There’s no problem if you don’t.

I would think, I mean, if you’re gonna mess up, it’d be better to mess up overdoing forgiveness than something else. You know what I mean? Like you’re shooting for the moon, but you still end up in the stars type of thing. Like what have you got to lose? the side effects you said, you feel lighter. You can see opportunities in front of you. You build better friendships. You have more abundance. You’re happier.

Katharine Giovanni (25:43)
yeah.

Julie Hilsen (25:51)
you look more youthful. People who forgive have less deep wrinkles because I do believe that stress, just gets stuck in your cells, in your nerve cells, and it just clenches on, it makes some wrinkles.

Katharine Giovanni (25:56)
They do.

Well, also

just to play devil’s advocate, don’t be surprised if people leave your life because it happened to me there. call them Jack rabbits and I think the kids today call it ghosting and they’re really close friends of yours. And then they’re gone. I have a bunch of, female friends who I’ve never heard from again, but we were tight. No, nothing just gone. And then I, then you’re going to have the people that are usually family. And sometimes you live with these people who are going to say,

I like the old Julie. liked the messed up version because it makes me feel better about myself. I don’t want you to, to go on this journey. I don’t want you to live in joy and they’re going to try and sabotage it. But Jim Rohn did very correctly say you were the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So who are you spending time with? And if you’re living with unforgivable, well, let’s talk about how to forgive the unforgivable. I’m the only one that’ll tell you, you don’t have to forgive the unforgivable.

Julie Hilsen (26:35)
Right, right.

Katharine Giovanni (27:00)
You don’t. And the reason you don’t have to forgive the unforgivable is because there’s a lot of people, places and things, and I did say places and things, don’t stay with me, that you can forgive before you even get to that dumpster fire. So let’s take one of my own memories. Let’s take the bully in grammar school. Okay. And I couldn’t forgive the bully. Couldn’t even forgive the energy around the bully. Didn’t want to. So I picked apart the memory.

Remember Einstein said that everything on our planet has energy around it. So let’s take a little example. Let’s say you’re driving in your car and you usually turn left to go to work, but today you turn right. And when you turn right, it takes you by your old grammar school and you see it out of the corner of your eye, but you’re not paying attention. You’re thinking about things you have to do at work that day. By the time you get to work, you’re grumpy and you can start cutting everybody’s head off. Why? Because

Your subconscious saw the school and the energy of the school was a trigger. And that movie that plays in the back of your mind started to play. So what I did is I forgave pieces of that memory. I forgave the school building and the energy around the building. I forgave, I’m actually not kidding. I actually forgave the desk I sat at and the energy around the desk. I forgave the chair I sat in, the energy around the chair. I forgave the playground.

I forgave the table, the desk, the chair, the grass, the swing set, the kids that stood around and didn’t help me. And the energy around all of these things. I still haven’t forgiven the bully or the energy around the bully, but I’ve picked apart the other pieces of the memory. So now my number 10 is probably down to a nine. Still haven’t forgiven the bully, but I’ve forgiven other things. And I forgave myself as well and the energy around myself.

Julie Hilsen (28:29)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (28:49)
So now maybe it’s a nine, so I’m gonna wait 24 hours and I’m gonna pick at it again or I’m gonna pick another memory and I’m gonna go at it again. I actually did this, I was able to forgive the bully but it was still bugging me. So I forgave 1974. I did, I forgave the whole year and the energy around the year because that’s the year my alcoholic parents decided to get a divorce and I was horribly bullied in school.

Julie Hilsen (29:05)
the whole year.

Katharine Giovanni (29:15)
And I tried to commit suicide because of all the stress. So I turned into one of those teenagers. And so I forgave the whole year. You can forgive anything. You can forgive politicians, dare I say. You can forgive the war in the Middle East. It’s not going to do much for the war in the Middle East, but it’s going to do an awful lot for you. If it’s on CNN, you can forgive it. And if you’re sitting there thinking, I’m going to anticipate two questions. I have nobody to forgive. I’m good. Okay.

Repeat after me, say this three times a night for the next five days. I completely forgive myself for not being able to forgive and the energy around this thought. Say that every night before you go to bed for five days. And that closet that we’re talking about in the back of your head, it’s gonna open. And then I had a man come up to me and he said,

I don’t agree with you. Okay. And he said, here’s why. I have a great amount of success and I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve helped a lot of people and I’ve done it on my anger. I did it because I was anger and I use that as the gasoline for my car. And that’s why I am where I am today. Okay. Let’s talk about that. There are two trains. You could take the express or you could take the local.

Both trains will get you to your destination. It’s like going into an elevator in a hotel. You’re going up to the 70th floor and some punk kid has pressed every single button between one and 74. We’ve all been in elevators like that. And by the time you get to your destination, you’re like a shadow of your former self. You really are. So, you know, you’re bloody, you know, just you’re, you can get there on that local train, but it’s going to be painful.

Julie Hilsen (30:49)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (31:01)
You’re going to find every pothole and it’s going to be painful and you’re going to get bloodied. You’re going to be brought to your knees or you can get in the express train. And I’ve been on the local train. Trust me. It’s not pretty, but you, or you can take the express, which is filled with happiness and joy and love and get there twice as far and twice as fast. You can get there on the local train, lock yourself out. Literally you will knock yourself out, but I think it’s easier to take the express.

Julie Hilsen (31:28)
Yeah.

And I feel like humanity has learned better. Like, here’s an example. Like, we used to train dogs by beating and intimidating them, but now we know that if you train a dog with love and positive reinforcement, that dog will do anything for you and it would be such a better relationship. So why would you bully yourself with hate?

Katharine Giovanni (31:34)
You would think.

Yeah, give them treats.

was right.

Julie Hilsen (31:55)
Why would you whip yourself? It’s like whipping your soul to fuel your dreams. And you’re right, you’re hitting potholes, you’re riding bloody. it’s one way, I mean, it’s…

Katharine Giovanni (31:56)
I don’t know.

Exactly.

He did achieve a lot of success and he was actually a really nice guy. I liked him a lot, but he did it the hard way. There’s an easier way to get to where he was. And you know, the unforgivable might be you. I can’t tell you how many people write their own name and write a 10 next to it because something in their past has done. This is the first, as I said to you before, before we…

Julie Hilsen (32:12)
Yeah.

in its free will.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (32:34)
Recorded this is the first book of three the second book this topic of forgiving yourself is so important I’m actually devoting a whole book to it, but forgiving yourself My answer is pretty much the same as forgiving the unforgivable I want you to instead of writing down a list of all the people you want to forgive I want you to write down a list of memories and people you think you need forgiveness for

And then I want you to pick apart each one of those memories and I want you to rate them from one to 10, obviously 10 being whatever unforgivable thing you’ve done. And I did that and I forgave that kid in the eighth grade. I forgave myself for trying to commit suicide. You know, she did the best that she could with the tools she had at the time. And she survived. In fact, that’s how I forgave my parents. I’m not a particularly religious person, but there is one.

passage in the Bible that gets me that last little bit of forgiveness every time. It’s how I forgive my father. Forgive them father, they know not what they do. So it’s hard to get mad at a kid in fifth grade if they don’t know calculus. They haven’t learned it yet. So my father did the best he could with the tools he had. Was it good enough? No, of course not. But he did his best. And at the end of the day, once I unpack all those memories, once I forgive all that energy,

and forgive that last little bit.

Julie Hilsen (33:56)
beautiful. I’m going I’m like getting a list in my head of you know, everybody’s felt antagonized and bullied. And, you know, you you want to go back to your younger self and say, Well, why didn’t I stand up for myself? Why didn’t I say this? And, and I’m going to forgive the coat closet that the nuns yelled at me for, you know, you know what I mean?

Katharine Giovanni (34:15)
There you go. That’s what we’re talking about.

Yeah. I was on a podcast the other day and somebody said, I’m going to forgive that belt. He didn’t explain, but you know, I’m six, I’m 63 and I know exactly what he talking about.

Julie Hilsen (34:20)
Mm.

You can.

Yep. It’s so beautiful. It’s so freeing. And yeah, that stupid coat closet where they took me and told me that I, you know, who am I to be upset? You know, I have all these things, you know, I should feel shame and guilt because I didn’t deal with it better. You know, it’s like, no, I mean, I was attacked and beat up at the bus stop and I was supposed to just get over it because…

Katharine Giovanni (34:34)
I gave the call out fit.

Julie Hilsen (34:55)
she didn’t come from a supportive family. Like she could just treat me however she wanted. you know, I’ve like, crazy.

Katharine Giovanni (35:00)
That’s the thing. don’t forget to,

while we’re on it, just as a little personal thing, don’t forget to forgive the bus stop and the bus. But that’s where I think it stems from. It stems from our childhood when the teacher looks at two people and maybe you just got punched in the eye or whatever it was. And the teacher’s like, well, you got to forgive each other and go play together and go over there.

some dots that were connected back then that should never have been connected. Cause in my head or in your head, you’re thinking, well, I just got punched in the eye. What do I, what do I have to say? I’m sorry for I didn’t do anything, but it’s the teacher and you live some respectfully to your teachers and that’s what you do. So you grow up thinking, well, if I, if I forgive you, means you were right. We don’t want you. They probably weren’t right.

Julie Hilsen (35:36)
Right.

Right.

Katharine Giovanni (35:48)
So that’s one of those memories that’s absolutely wrong. You forgive for yourself. You forgive because you want them out of your head. Bottom line.

Julie Hilsen (35:53)
Mm-hmm.

So good. I love it. I’m holding space for everyone who’s gonna dig into this. mean, we go through, know, spring cleaning, cleaning out your closet and organizing your outfits and get rid of dresses or slacks that you can’t zip up, but you used to wear that size. They’re beautiful wool pants, but you just don’t need them anymore. And we have self care for our closet and our wardrobe, but this is…

This is a spring cleaning that is so much more important, but also symbolic of your worth.

Katharine Giovanni (36:33)
I’ll throw the

pants out. You know, I’m a big fan of that. But if you’re really spring cleaning, think the nice place to start would be with anger and regret because that’s going to change your life. It’s and it’s going to make you feel better. And because you don’t have to tell anybody, you’re going to start to look differently. Your energy is going to make you look better. You know, your face is going to get softer. Coffee is going to smell sweeter and people are going to come up to you and say, did you get a haircut? You look so good today. What are you doing differently?

Julie Hilsen (36:40)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (37:02)
and you can either tell them or not. Remember, forgiveness is selfish. You don’t have to tell a darned soul anything you did if you don’t want to. It’s completely up to you.

Just say it’s magic if you want to.

Julie Hilsen (37:12)
One of my favorite quotes is, every day’s a chance to live the life of your dreams. And this is a hurdle for your dream life. If you’re not facing your anger, regrets, and shame, then you can’t get to that dream life. Like you said, it’s like a bad pair of sunglasses. They’re scratched, they’re damaged, and you deserve polarized lenses. You deserve the best lenses.

Katharine Giovanni (37:36)
If you’re listening to this broadcast, there’s one thing I don’t believe in. do not believe in coincidences. I never did. So there’s a reason you’re listening to this broadcast and it’s because you’re ready to forgive some part of your life that’s been holding you back. But just don’t start with whatever has been holding your back. Start in the other end of the spectrum. Start with the easy ones and work your way up. And what if you never can forgive that bully or whatever it was?

That’s fine forgive what you can from the memory and keep going forgive yourself forgive the energy for give the energy around the boy forgive everything else and keep going you mean you can circle back later and try again or never circle back. But at least it let you know. I can they say forgive and forget and i don’t believe that you can ever forget but i have to tell you i come from a pretty rough background and. I.

I’ve been sober for 35 years, so I’m also a breast cancer survivor. So my past has a lot of water under the bridge. And I can look at my childhood now, and I could probably regurgitate those awful memories. I said that word purposely, by the way. I can probably come up with them if you want me to. But what I remember now is I remember the love. I remember the adults that were trying to help that kid.

Julie Hilsen (38:49)
Recurses me.

Katharine Giovanni (39:00)
I remember the love that was around me through the years when I was so angry. I don’t really remember the dysfunction as much anymore. I just don’t. And it’s not that it’s not back there. I just don’t remember it. So my perspective of the past has gone from hate and anger to love that was always there. And even if the times of my life where love legitimately wasn’t there,

There was love for myself. was love from, there was always love around me. There’s always love from nature. There’s love from your best friend. There’s love when I was alone in my room, reading Little House on the Prairie. The book gave me love. There’s always something you can pick out, but I don’t remember this much the hate or the anger anymore. So I have shifted and that’s freedom. So I know a lot of people don’t want to go back to their past and I, I don’t blame you. It was awful.

Julie Hilsen (39:38)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (39:54)
But I’m only asking you to go back a few more times to clear it forever. And if all the people are dead, it doesn’t matter a lick because they’re alive and well and playing out in your head.

Julie Hilsen (39:58)
And maybe.

Right, and maybe this thing should be forgiven, neutralize. Just neutralize it.

Katharine Giovanni (40:09)
That’s it!

Like you’re taking a Star Wars lightsaber and just going zzzz to the whole thing.

Julie Hilsen (40:16)
Do you,

cancel, delete, it’s neutralized. And then I believe you can change timelines. So to me, this is a form of timeline jumping. you choose to see the love and you rewrite with a new perspective because your younger self, the self that was going through the trauma or the toxicity didn’t have the wherewithal to see the whole picture. And now you can see maybe, you know, it was,

they were scared or there’s a protective lens, like you can introduce a perspective that your younger self just wasn’t privy to, because you’re your younger self.

Katharine Giovanni (40:54)
That’s Timeline jumping is a real thing. Don’t believe me. Google it. Yeah, I am really, really wildly intuitive, clairvoyant, all that kind of stuff, which is why I was bullied in school, you know, and I kept it to myself really quiet because I didn’t want to stuff me in a locker. And, you know, back in the 1970s, if you even remotely exhibited a little smidgen of intuition, they’d slap it. You’re crazy as a

Julie Hilsen (41:06)
Mm-hmm.

Katharine Giovanni (41:19)
bed bug sticker on your forehead, give you medicine and throw you in the loony bin. So I didn’t tell anybody for like 30, 40 years. I just kept it to myself. But that little bird in your shoulder, everybody has it. It’s not just me. Everybody has it. And the more you release your anger, the louder you’re going to be able to hear it. You’re going to hear it, feel it, see it or know it. And of course that’s another book I wrote because of course I did. But everybody, everybody has this little bird in their shoulder and we all hear it in different ways.

And it’s just a question of connecting with which way you actually hear it and then listening to it. Saved my life three times, not that I’m counting particularly, but it did.

Julie Hilsen (41:57)
Well, I can tell you have a depth of wisdom to this. And I was gonna say, well, why did you learn to forgive? And then you just shared it, because intuitively you knew what I was wondering. So just beautiful. And I do agree, there’s no coincidences. So I’m honored. I’m honored to bring forth and hold this container for this message. And please, if people wanna comment, you can comment on my website on Spotify.

This is going to be up on YouTube. cherish every subscriber, every listener. so sharing this is helping us raise the grid of light around the earth because this is the work. This is it. It’s not glamorous, but it’s powerful.

Katharine Giovanni (42:33)
And then.

Our world is broken our world is filled with hatred and anger i mean if it’s on cnn you can forgive it and it’s this this method is good goes a long way to start. People on the path of losing their anger which is at the end of the day is gonna help everybody.

Julie Hilsen (42:59)
and it starts with you, with your.

Katharine Giovanni (43:01)
At the least,

it’s gonna make you feel better. you know, the change starts with us. It’s like an oxygen mask in an airplane. What do they say to do? Put your own oxygen mask on and then everybody around you. This is your oxygen, can’t speak today. This is your oxygen mask. There you go.

Julie Hilsen (43:04)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

So everyone just breathe. It’s going to be okay. We can do this. Thank you so much, Katharine. I’m so excited. I’ll put a link to your book on the show notes and is your website a great place for people to connect with you too?

Katharine Giovanni (43:30)
It is just go to Katherine Giovanni.com and Katherine thanks to my mother is spelled a little odd. Thanks mom. it’s K H H A R I N G Giovanni.com.

Julie Hilsen (43:39)
Is that an Italian spelling?

Katharine Giovanni (43:42)
Italian is

choice. My husband is Italian. Some of us marry for money, some of us marry for food. We’ll never starve. The man is a brilliant cook.

Julie Hilsen (43:45)
Gotcha.

I love

it. Well, thank you so much. This has been a delight.

Katharine Giovanni (43:56)
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Julie Hilsen (43:59)
My pleasure.