How To Forgive Yourself - Recipe
For Poppy's List of Instructions Poetry Challenge Prompt Thing
How to Forgive Yourself Recipe - Serves 1
Ingredients
- Lifetime of shame, sadness, sorrow
- Several tablespoons of mistakes and missteps, to taste
- Stress, anxiety
- Heartful of hope
- Generous measures of love and forgiveness
- Self-esteem, tenderness, and happiness, to taste
Instructions
- Take a lifetime of shame, regret, sadness and sorrow
- Add to a large mixing bowl and set aside for tomorrow
- It will of course ferment, stew and stick to the sides of the pot
- Let the memories fill your mind and mix with others you forgot
- Mix in several tablespoons of mistakes and missteps, to taste
- Add the stress and anxiety caused and experienced, post haste
- Let it sit and rest
- Detox and distress
- Now add a heartful of hope
- Until you feel you can cope
- Then blend in generous measures of love and forgiveness
Serving Suggestion
- Serve with self-esteem, tenderness - welcome happiness
- Sit and dwell positively on how far you've come
- How you've survived and the person you've become
- Understand that the experiences you've had don't make you
- Appreciate that the experiences you've had, do shape you
*
Thanks for reading!
Author's Notes: So, yeah, wanted to do a recipe type thing...and this is what I came up with. Needed to do something nice after my latest Smooth Challenge entry. Also, the crappy people I am writing about for Nano lol. So, hope you enjoyed it!
It is for Poppy's challenge, which you can find out more about here:
Here are a few others you might like:
You can also take a look at my profile for more of my work here.
About the Creator
Paul Stewart
Scottish-Italian poet/writer from Glasgow.
Overflowing in English language torture and word abuse.
"Every man has a sane spot somewhere" R.L Stevenson
The Accidental Poet - Poetry Collection is now available!
https://paulspoeticprints.etsy.com
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Comments (16)
So clever! I love how you allow the pain first, let it ferment, stew, and stick, rather than denying it. Then you go about the healing. Marvellous 🤩
Sorry I missed this one. Brilliantly done and the message is just perfect. X
I need to do at least five different takes on this recipe to get it right. This is beyond gratifying. We all should really bake this cake of life. Beautifully done Paul.
Just reread, delighted in and benefited from this again 😊… everyone should read this… at least weekly. WHY ISN’T IT A TOP STORY?😳😵💫🙄
You are nailing these list challenges, my friend. I daresay they're your wheelhouse, or one of them. I echo Poppy, I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely love this. Definitely one of my favorite of yours. If this doesn't win her challenge, I best be incapacitated by the winning entry, because wow, this would defo win in my book. "...to taste" got me laughing, but it was the only time. The rest of it was very relatable, very serious, but uplifting, which is, in other words, indicative of a truly emotionally complex poem, and a mark of a skilled writer. Instruction 4 was the most relatable for me; it's always in the process of dwelling on the bad things in our past that the ones we forgot come out to play and just compound the present emotions into utter self-loathing. That pretty much describes my self-destructive loop. But, seriously, reading the rest of the poem from that point on, especially the serving suggestion, made me feel so seen, like this is what a therapist would do for me, only better (in my language, lol). Smashing work, Paul, as always, but this one is truly special.
Pretty fricken clever and it reads just like a recipe. This is a strong entry for her challenge!
Sounds tasty! 🥧 I think I need a taste of humble pie. ☺️👏 Brilliant instructions and a few sick rhymes!
Well, it sounds good. I may have to give it a try. An excellent entry and I like the recipe format.
I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely love this!! It might've overtaken 'I Want You to Know' as my favourite of your, I can't decide. Nobody else has specifically done a recipe yet so I was extra excited. I knew from the title alone i was going to adore this one though because I love the concept itself. You completely mastered this though, like i can't think of any way it could be more perfect. I'm going to try and pick my favourite parts but it's almost impossible. 2 and 3 were especially evocative for me though and the last two dotpoints of serving suggestions were just wonderful. Really, really well done Paul.
I'm having trouble with the ingredients. I don't know where to get love and forgiveness, let alone generous amounts of it. I loved your rhyming instructions and serving suggestions! 🍩🥐
Despite how much I dislike cooking…. 😵💫 This is an excellent recipe, the proof will be in the baking & it should become the equivalent of Nana’s (Grandad’s) favourite recipe! Delicious!😆
I absolutely love this! I need to print this out or something. Haha. Well written!
Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate all these ingredients for myself. For others, yes. For myself, they always seem be out when I look.
great recipe that everyone needs to have
This is great, it doesn't try to deny the painful stuff, but move forward with it alongside. Just a note - is there an "a" that should be an "and" in step 5? I'd check on a bigger screen but, frankly, I've flomped.
That is So true, our experience really shaped us for sure. It's a process of forgiving ourselves. This was very creative