Meditation, mindfulness, and the value of giving children a little space to simply be

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about meditation and children, and especially about what simple meditation and mindfulness practices could look like in schools.

My friend C Simone has seen this from inside a school setting. She has seen what it can look like when children are given small, simple practices during an ordinary school day.

Even more than that, she also experienced meditation herself as a student, at an age when life can feel loud, emotional, confusing, and full of pressure.

When C shared her experiences with me, there was so much that stayed with me.

Meditation in the Classroom

The year before C left teaching in schools to move abroad, she worked in a school that opened its doors to mindfulness projects.

One of them was called “The Big Think,” which included meditation in a class she shared with a colleague. They were the pilot class for the school.

The program aimed to help children relax and connect with themselves through meditative practices before a series of group and individual tasks associated with critical thinking and English.

C said it was fantastic for the children. They particularly enjoyed sitting on the carpet with closed eyes, listening to the chime of a triangle or a singing bowl until its echo stopped.

It went so well that a video of the project was developed to encourage other schools to take on the practice.

But this wasn’t C’s first experience with meditation in school. For that, we have to go back to when she was thirteen.

A Loud Stage of Life

When C reflects on where meditation first began for her, she says it honestly came at the right time in her life.

She was thirteen and at a stage of school where students had to make choices about which subjects they would take for their final two years before completing their GCSEs.

There were also family difficulties at the time. Some family members were no longer speaking, and as is often the case for children and teenagers when adults aren’t getting along, it affected her too.

School wasn’t exactly peaceful either.

There was a rivalry with another secondary school, where students came to attack other students. At one point, it resulted in a lockdown for students who were normally allowed to leave the school grounds at lunchtime.

As C put it, it was quite a chaotic time.

Her class had an array of characters: the quiet ones, the loud ones, the fighters, the creatives, the organizers, the leaders, the followers, and more.

There was singing and dancing. There were arguments, jealousy between friends and the usual complications of being a teenager.

And amidst all of that noise, one teacher introduced them to meditation.

The funny thing is, this wasn’t necessarily a beloved teacher.

Years later, C asked some of her old classmates what they remembered about her. Their memories included that she could be harsh, had favorites, was obsessed with Diet Coke and changed her name five times, to the point that most of them couldn’t remember which name they primarily knew her by.

Her lessons were apparently pretty boring too!

Yet beyond all of that, C remembers one thing this teacher gave them.

She opened the door to meditation.

A Moment to Just Be

One day, after the students settled into their seats, the teacher announced that she was going to do something different. They were going to meditate before each main lesson with her.

C had never done group meditation before and doesn’t remember anyone else having done it either.

Before playing soothing music, the teacher told the students to make themselves comfortable.

And I love this part, she gave them permission to choose. They could lie or sit on the floor, remain seated in their chairs, lay their heads on the table, or do whatever felt right to them, as long as they were silent.

C remembers that something changed in the room.

This class full of different personalities learned to honor each other’s space. For a moment, grudges and unsettled arguments were put down. They listened to the music and settled into the quiet together.

C remembers feeling peaceful. She felt relaxed and calm. She didn’t feel as though she was sitting in a classroom filled with rules and learning objectives.

In fact, none of them wanted the meditative moment to end, and they often asked the teacher to do it again at the end of the lesson.

All these years later, that memory is still with her.

I Remember the Pause, Too

Reading C’s reflection also brought back a memory from my own childhood here in the States.

When I was in elementary school, I remember teachers sometimes turning out the lights and having the whole class put our heads down for “rest time.”

We weren’t meditating in any traditional sense. No one called it mindfulness. No one guided us through breathing or asked us to connect with ourselves.

But looking back now, I can see that it was still a pause.

A quiet moment in the middle of the school day. A chance for the room to settle. A chance for our little bodies and minds to stop for a few minutes before moving on to the next thing.

I asked my son Jude, who just finished third grade, if they still do anything like that in school.

He told me they did in first grade, but mostly when the class was having a hard time or getting in trouble.

So in that case, it may have felt more like a time-out than a mindful practice. But even then, underneath it, wasn’t the hope still the same? To bring the room back to calm. To help the children pause. To invite a little peace.

And that is what makes me think there is so much value in bringing meditation and mindfulness into classroom settings with more care and intention.

Not as punishment, but as a simple, supportive tool they can begin to recognize as their own.

Because if a pause can help a classroom reset, imagine what might happen when children are gently taught how to find that pause inside themselves.

This article was adapted from an original post by Andrea Thorfinson, written in collaboration with writer and former educator C Simone. You can read the original post, including C’s full reflections, here… Meditation for Children, Part Two: What Happens When Children Are Given a Moment to Pause at School

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Want to Explore Meditation for Yourself?

My book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, grew from my own experience with meditation and aphantasia and from realizing just how many ways there are to meditate that don’t require visualization.

It explores simple practices using breath, sound, movement, gratitude, and more. While it was written for adults, many of the practices can also be adapted and shared with the children in your life.

Get your copy of Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.

Some moments change everything.

Not because we planned them. Not because we were ready. But because life asked us to take one more step anyway.

We’re proud to announce the release of Pivotal Moments: Stories of Surviving, Surrendering, and Saying Yes Anyway by Patricia Peck.

Through deeply personal stories of heartbreak, healing, faith, and unexpected courage, Patricia invites readers into the moments that forever altered the course of her life. With honesty and grace, she explores what it means to survive life’s hardest seasons, surrender when control is no longer possible, and discover that saying “yes” to the unknown can become the beginning of something extraordinary.

This is more than a memoir. It’s an invitation to recognize the pivotal moments in our own lives and to find hope, resilience, and purpose on the other side.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your hardest chapter could become the start of a better story, Pivotal Moments is a book you’ll want to read.

Now available from Genius Books.

Order your copy here

The book centers on stories of surviving, surrendering, and embracing life’s unexpected turning points, offering readers encouragement to face their own defining moments with courage and hope.

When my son Jude was about five years old, he had already spent months hearing me announce, “I’m going to meditate.” Then he would watch me disappear behind a closed door, sometimes for ten minutes and sometimes for much longer.

One day, his curiosity finally got the better of him.

“Mom, what is meditate?”

I paused, trying to think of a way to explain meditation to a five-year-old. At the time, Jude was deeply invested in superheroes, so I answered in language I knew he would understand.

“Meditation is Mommy’s superpower.”

That got his attention.

I explained that meditation helped me use my breath to calm down when I was angry, relax when I felt overwhelmed or scared, and find a little comfort when I was sad.

He considered that for a moment, said, “Oh,” and went on with his day.

A few weeks later, I was preparing for my afternoon meditation when he appeared beside me.

“Mom, can I meditate too?”

I will be honest: I was having a difficult day, and I had been looking forward to being alone.

But how do you say no to a request like that?

You don’t.

I invited him into my room.

I had occasionally thought I might introduce meditation to him one day. I simply had not expected that day to arrive when he was five, and I had no carefully planned lesson ready.

So I did what parents often do.

I made it up as I went along.

He sat cross-legged on the floor across from me. Before we began, I told him we were going to sit quietly and pay attention to our breathing. I also told him he could stop whenever he wanted. If he felt finished after three breaths, he could leave after three breaths.

I wanted meditation to feel like an invitation, not another thing an adult was making him do.

I rested my arms on my knees with my palms facing upward and invited him to place his small hands in mine. We kept our eyes open.

“Take a deep breath in,” I said. “Hold it for just a second. Now let it out as though you’re blowing out birthday candles.”

He smiled and giggled, then quickly grew serious again.

“Now let your breath return to normal. Notice the air coming in through your nose.”

I gave him a moment.

“Can you feel it?”

He nodded.

“See whether you can feel the breath moving down into your belly.”

He nodded again.

“Now follow it back out.”

He sat very still, concentrating deeply.

“Do you feel it?”

Another nod.

“That’s meditation.”

He looked surprised.

“But that’s so easy!”

I laughed.

“Yes,” I told him. “It really can be.”

We sat together for a few more breaths. I was not doing much meditating myself. I was watching him and noticing how seriously he followed the movement of his breath.

After a short while, I asked whether he wanted to continue, learn something new, or finish for the day.

He was finished.

He got up, quietly left the room, and I continued my own practice.

That first meditation lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough. Over the next several weeks, he occasionally asked to join me again. Sometimes he stayed for only a few breaths. Other times, he sat beside me until I finished.

Eventually, he announced that he was ready to learn something new.

I did not think a five-year-old needed a long explanation about observing thoughts, releasing them, and returning attention to the breath. Instead, I turned meditation into a listening game.

I invited him to close his eyes and notice as many sounds as he could: sounds outside the house, sounds in another room, sounds nearby, and even the sound of his own breathing.

We competed to see who could hear the most.

He won.

His ears were much sharper than mine, and he loved the game.

I did not follow a formal program or a carefully ordered curriculum. I simply responded to his curiosity and tried to keep the practices brief, playful, and understandable.

His interest came and went, as children’s interests often do. Sometimes he joined me frequently. Other times, months passed without him asking. Eventually, sitting silently beside Mom lost some of its novelty.

I assumed meditation had quietly faded into the background of his childhood.

Then he and his best friend had a fight.

Jude was furious and crying with large, full-body sobs. I gently gathered his hands, brought them toward his heart, and held them in mine.

“Let’s breathe,” I said.

Together, we breathed in through our noses and released the air with long sighs through our mouths.

Again and again, we breathed.

Slowly, his sobs eased. His breathing became steadier. His body began to settle. Once the intensity had passed, we continued with softer, more natural breaths until he felt calm enough to talk.

That was one of the first times I saw the practice move beyond our quiet moments together and become something he could use when his emotions felt too large for his body.

Some time later, a close friend of my husband’s died suddenly. Jude had loved him and took the loss hard. Around the same time, he began having nightmares.

One night, I walked past his bedroom and heard him crying and breathing heavily. My first instinct was to rush in, hold him, and make everything better.

Then I noticed something that stopped me in the doorway.

He was sitting with his eyes closed and one hand over his heart. Even through the sobs, I could tell he was deliberately following his breath.

He was using what I had taught him.

I stood there silently for a moment as he slowly brought his breathing under control.

Then I went to him.

The breathing did not erase his grief. It did not make the nightmare disappear or remove his need for comfort.

But it gave him something to reach for inside himself.

It helped him feel his body, slow his breathing, and begin returning to a sense of safety until I could be beside him.

Until that moment, I had not understood how much he had absorbed from those early practices. I had not realized I was giving him something he might one day use when I was not in the room.

Jude is nine now, and he has not formally meditated with me for quite some time. Sitting silently beside Mom is no longer quite as exciting as it was when he was five.

But the practice did not disappear.

When he is grieving, angry, scared, frustrated, or overwhelmed, I can still say, “Let’s breathe,” and he knows exactly what I mean.

He has also come home from school and told me that he became upset during a disagreement but paused and took a few breaths the way I taught him.

To me, that matters far more than whether he develops a regular meditation practice at nine years old.

The goal was never to turn him into a tiny meditator who sat quietly beside me every day.

It was to give him a tool he could carry with him.

As parents, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers, we spend so much time trying to prepare children for life. We teach them to look both ways before crossing the street. We teach them how to ask for help, what to do in an emergency, and how to care for their bodies.

But many of us were never taught what to do when anger surges through us, when grief sits heavily in our chest, or when fear makes it difficult to think.

We learned those lessons while living them—if we learned them at all.

Teaching Jude also made me think about my older son, who struggled for years with intense anger and violent outbursts. At the time, I knew nothing about meditation or nervous-system regulation. I did not understand breathing practices, how to help a child settle an overwhelmed body, or the value of introducing simple tools before emotions became unmanageable.

I wish I had.

I do not believe meditation would have solved everything. Some children need far more support than a breathing exercise can provide, and offering meditation should never become a way of minimizing serious emotional or behavioral needs.

But I do wonder whether having even one small way to pause, settle his body, or feel less overtaken by anger might have helped.

We cannot prevent every argument, nightmare, loss, disappointment, or terrible day at school. We cannot always make the hurt disappear. And we will not always be beside our children at the exact moment life feels too big. What we can do is help them build a small bridge back to themselves.

One breath.

Then another.

A hand resting over the heart.

A moment spent listening to the sounds in the room.

A reminder that feelings can be powerful without being permanent and that they do not have to act from the very center of the storm.

Some children may use these tools only occasionally. Others may need them often. Either way, learning to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the body can become a meaningful part of a child’s emotional toolbox.

Perhaps Jude will return to meditation more regularly one day. Perhaps he will ask me to teach him something new. Maybe he will eventually create a practice that looks nothing like mine.

For now, I am simply grateful that he knows how to pause.

His breath will always be with him.

And sometimes, years after a small child first asks, “Mom, what is meditate?” we may find ourselves standing quietly in a doorway, realizing they have already begun learning how to find their own way home.

A Note for the Grown-Ups

Although my book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, was written for adults rather than children, it explores many of the same simple practices I first shared with Jude: breath, sound, movement, and other nonvisual ways of finding calm.

If you have ever felt that meditation was not for you because you cannot visualize, cannot quiet your mind, or simply do not know where to begin, this book was written with you in mind.

The tools we teach children often begin with the ones we are learning to use ourselves.

Learn more about Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed here.

After my husband died, I lived on autopilot for a long time.

I went through the motions of life; work, errands, routines without really being there. I was surviving more than living.

One afternoon, during my lunch break, I was walking to the bank. The crosswalk light turned green. I stepped off the curb, ready to cross.

And then I heard it.

A very loud, very clear:

“STOP.”

Startled, I froze.

A car flew through the intersection, followed immediately by a police car. Had I taken one more step, I would not be here writing this.

Shaken, I looked around to thank whoever had just saved my life.

But I was alone.

Completely alone.

At the time, I tried to explain it away. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe the police officer yelled something through a loudspeaker. Maybe there was some logical explanation I simply could not piece together.

But looking back, I know that isn’t what happened.

It all happened too fast. The officer could not have warned me in time. There was no one standing nearby. No obvious source for the voice.

But something stopped me.

For me, I have come to understand that moment as divine intervention. A moment when it simply was not my time, and something unseen stepped in.

That experience is only one of many moments of grace that have shaped my life. Some were dramatic. Others were quiet. Some arrived as warnings, dreams, signs, synchronicities, or encounters that could have been easy to dismiss.

And for a long time, I did dismiss them.

I shrugged them off. Minimized them. Tried to rationalize them away.

Now, I’m looking closer.

I’m currently working on an upcoming book called When the Light Breaks Through, a collection of real-life stories of grace, guidance, protection, signs, synchronicities, visitations, near-death experiences, and moments that seem to defy ordinary explanation.

Some of the stories are mine.

Many are being shared with me by others.

The heart of this book is simple: to gather true stories that remind us we are not as alone as we sometimes feel.

These stories do not have to be big, flashy, or impossible to explain. Some of the most powerful moments are the quiet ones. The whisper. The dream. The stranger who appears at exactly the right time. The sudden knowing. The sign that arrives when you most need it. The moment something shifts, and you know in your bones that there is more happening than coincidence.

Your story might include:

🌟 A sudden voice, warning, or inner knowing
🌟 A dream or visitation that brought comfort or clarity
🌟 A stranger who appeared at exactly the right moment
🌟 A sign from a loved one beyond the veil
🌟 A rescue or intervention that defied logic
🌟 A near-death experience or out-of-body moment
🌟 A medical event where survival itself felt miraculous
🌟 A synchronicity too meaningful to dismiss
🌟 A quiet moment of grace that changed how you see life

Some people call these experiences divine intervention.

Others call them synchronicity, guidance, protection, spirit, grace, or love reaching through.

I have come to think of them as moments when the light breaks through.

Several stories have already been entrusted to me, and I hold that trust with deep gratitude. My hope is that this book becomes a gathering place for these real moments — the ones many of us carry quietly, sometimes for years, wondering what to do with them or whether anyone else would understand.

If you have experienced something like this, or know someone who has, I would be honored to hear your story and possibly include it in When the Light Breaks Through.

You are welcome to message me on Substack or email me directly at:

mouseandmeditation@gmail.com

If this invitation brings someone to mind, please pass it along.

Because even now, even here, the light still breaks through.

When many people hear the word meditation, they picture something very specific.

Someone sitting cross-legged. Eyes closed. Hands resting neatly on their knees. A silent room. A still body. Maybe a peaceful beach, a glowing light, or a mountain stream being visualized in the mind.

That version of meditation can be beautiful for some people. But it is not the only version.

And when it comes to children, it is often not the most realistic place to begin.

Children are not usually designed for long stretches of stillness and silence. Many of them wiggle. They hum. They ask questions. They get distracted. They need movement, touch, rhythm, play, and connection. That does not mean they cannot benefit from meditation. It simply means we may need to expand what we think meditation is supposed to look like.

I was reminded of this recently on a flight home from Mexico.

I sat next to a young woman who was on her way to work as a camp counselor for the summer. We started talking, and somehow the subject of meditation came up. I told her I had written a book about meditation and that I had been teaching my 9-year-old some simple breathing techniques for stress, overwhelm, and fear.

That led her to tell me about a little girl she had once cared for at camp.

The child was timid and withdrawn. She did not voluntarily join activities or play easily with the other children. At night, she was often scared. Her stomach hurt. She had nightmares. At the time, the counselor simply tried to soothe her fear and help with the physical symptoms. Looking back, though, she wondered if the little girl may have been struggling with anxiety.

Then she said something that stayed with me.

Even if she had recognized it as anxiety at the time, she would not have known what to do.

That conversation made me think about how often adults want to help children through big emotions, but do not always have simple tools to offer them. We may comfort them, distract them, reassure them, or try to reason with them. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it does not.

But what if children were also taught how to return to their own breath?

Not in a heavy, formal, overly serious way, but as something gentle, playful, and always available. Because children already have natural meditative moments.

They watch bugs.

They pet animals.

They listen to rain.

They color.

They sway.

They hum.

They collect rocks.

They notice clouds.

They feel grass under their feet.

They cuddle a stuffed animal.

Meditation for children is not about teaching them something completely new. Sometimes it is about helping them recognize the quiet, grounding moments they are already drawn to.

A child lying on the floor with a stuffed animal on their belly, watching it rise and fall with each breath, is practicing awareness.

A child slowly tracing their fingers along the edge of a leaf is practicing presence.

A child listening to rain at bedtime is experiencing a mindful moment.

A child taking one deep breath before answering, crying, yelling, or shutting down is learning that there can be a pause between feeling and reacting.

That pause matters.

Children, like adults, experience stress, frustration, sadness, fear, embarrassment, overstimulation, disappointment, and anger. They do not always have the words for those feelings. They do not always understand what is happening inside their bodies. Big emotions can feel frightening when no one has taught them how to sit with what they feel.

Simple breathing practices can give children a calm place to land. Not as a way to shut emotions down, and not as a way to force them to be quiet.

Not as a replacement for comfort, connection, therapy, medical care, or adult support when those things are needed.

But as one small tool in their emotional toolbox.

And the breath is a particularly powerful tool because it is always with them.

A parent, grandparent, teacher, counselor, or caregiver cannot be beside a child every moment of the day. But the child’s breath is there before a test, after a nightmare, during conflict, in a new environment, or when the world simply feels too loud.

A simple practice to try: Stuffed Animal Breathing

Have the child lie down and place a favorite stuffed animal on their belly. Instead of making it serious, make it playful.

You might say, “Let’s give Teddy a ride on your belly,” and then invite the child to breathe slowly enough that the stuffed animal gently rises and falls.

That is it.

No perfect posture.

No forced silence.

No need to visualize anything.

No pressure to meditate for twenty minutes.

Even one or two minutes can help a child begin to notice their body, their breath, and the possibility of softening when they feel tense or overwhelmed.

Different children will connect with different practices, just like adults do. Some need quiet. Some need movement. Some need sound. Some need touch. Some need imagination. Some need a candle, a blanket, a stuffed animal, a song, a walk, or a hand to hold.

And some simply need a calm adult sitting nearby, showing them through presence that they are safe.

That presence can be its own kind of meditation. Meditation does not have to look one specific way to be meaningful. For a child, it might look like breathing with a teddy bear.

And sometimes, that is enough.

And for the adults, if meditation has ever felt difficult, awkward, or inaccessible to you, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed offers a gentle, practical approach for busy minds, non-visualizers, and anyone who needs meditation to feel a little more human.

It is available now from Genius Book Publishing.

I think a lot of people are not actually looking for meditation. Not at first, anyway.

I don’t believe most people come to meditation because they dream of becoming perfectly calm, spiritually enlightened, or capable of sitting cross-legged in silence for an hour while thinking absolutely nothing.

I think most of us come to it because we’re overwhelmed. Because our minds won’t stop racing. Because we’re exhausted.

Because we’re anxious, angry, grieving, burned out, disconnected, emotionally reactive, or quietly falling apart inside while trying to look functional on the outside.

That’s certainly what brought me to it.

When I first started trying to meditate, I thought I was terrible at it. Every guided meditation seemed to involve “visualizing the light” or “seeing the peaceful garden,” and I couldn’t do any of it.

I didn’t yet know I had aphantasia, the inability to mentally visualize images, so I genuinely thought I was failing at something everyone else seemed to naturally understand.

On top of that, I was carrying around a tremendous amount of anxiety, anger, and emotional overwhelm. Sitting quietly with my thoughts didn’t feel peaceful. It felt impossible.

So for a while, I resisted. I assumed meditation just wasn’t for people like me.

But something in me kept nudging me back toward it. And slowly, I began realizing that meditation wasn’t actually about “clearing my mind” at all.

It was about noticing. Noticing when my thoughts started spiraling, when my body tightened. Noticing when I was about to react instead of respond. Noticing that I didn’t have to follow every fearful, angry, or anxious thought that appeared.

That changed everything for me.

One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that the goal is to stop thinking.

It isn’t.

Thoughts will come. The mind will wander. You’ll remember your grocery list halfway through breathing. You’ll replay an awkward conversation from six years ago. You’ll wonder if you’re doing it wrong.

That’s normal.

Meditation is simply the practice of noticing when your attention drifts and gently bringing it back.

That’s it.

That moment of returning? That is the practice.

And strangely enough, once I stopped trying to become “good” at meditation, it actually started helping me.

I remember one moment very clearly. I could feel myself building toward one of those emotional explosions where your heart pounds, your jaw clenches, and you can already feel the regret forming before the words even leave your mouth.

But this time, something different happened.

Instead of reacting immediately, I paused.

I stepped away. I breathed. I gave myself a moment.

Nothing magical happened in that moment. My problems didn’t disappear. I didn’t suddenly become enlightened. But I was able to return calmer, kinder, and more grounded.

And for the first time, I realized meditation wasn’t changing me into someone else. It was helping me become more like myself underneath all the noise.

That’s why I continue to meditate now. Not because I’m trying to become perfectly peaceful all the time. Not because I never struggle. Not because my mind suddenly became quiet.

I meditate because life is loud, it can feel heavy at times, and sometimes we need a place to set things down for a few minutes.

Sometimes we need one small pause between ourselves and the chaos. One breath before reacting. One moment where we stop feeling like we’re failing at being human.

That’s what meditation really is.

Not escaping life. Just learning how to return to ourselves inside of it.

I actually wrote an entire chapter in my book Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed about this idea. What meditation really is, why so many people think they’re “bad” at it, and why it may matter far more than we realize.

And if you’ve ever thought:

“I can’t meditate.”

“My brain is too busy.”

“I’m doing it wrong.”

You may be exactly the kind of person meditation was made for.

Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed was written for the people who think meditation isn’t meant for them. For the anxious minds and the restless thinkers. For the people carrying grief, overwhelm, anger, exhaustion, or self-doubt.

It offers practical approaches to meditation for non-visual thinkers, busy minds, and anyone searching for a little more peace inside the noise of everyday life.

I’ve been working on a new book recently, and this one surprised me a little. It is a book about forgiveness.

Forgiveness did not come easily for me. For much of my life, I was not a particularly forgiving person. I could hold onto a grudge with both hands, and I often believed I was justified in doing so. Sometimes I was. The hurt was real. The betrayal was real. The anger made sense.

But eventually, I began to understand that my anger was not hurting the person who had hurt me. Most of the time, they were going on with their life while I was the one still carrying it. I was the one replaying the conversation, remembering the betrayal, bracing myself against old pain, and letting something from the past take up space in my present.

That does not mean the anger was wrong. It simply means it was heavy. And over time, I began to see that forgiveness was not about excusing what someone had done, or pretending it had not mattered. It was not something I gave to the person who hurt me so they could feel better. It was something I eventually chose for myself, because I was tired of letting the wound keep taking from me.

Forgiveness, when it finally became real for me, released a weight I had not fully realized I was carrying. It did not erase what happened, and it did not always restore the relationship. But it did give me back pieces of myself I had been tying to the hurt.

Part of what moved me toward writing this book was a conversation with someone close to me.

They shared a deeply personal story about someone they love, someone who had endured severe abuse as a child and, after many years, had eventually found a way to forgive and even begin rebuilding a relationship with the parent connected to that pain.

The person telling me this story was proud of their loved one. They could see how much healing it must have taken to reach that place. But they were also struggling, because they could not understand how forgiveness had become possible.

At one point, with so much heartbreak in their voice, they asked me, “If she can forgive her mother, why can’t I?”

And the answer came to me almost immediately.

“She had forty years to grieve, process, and eventually forgive. For you, this is still fresh. You deserve the same grace.”

The sob she uttered in response was not one of guilt, shame, or anger, but one of gratitude and relief.

Because I think so many of us do this. We compare our healing to someone else’s. We look at someone who seems peaceful, forgiving, or farther along, and we wonder why we are not there yet. We start to believe that if someone else has released something, we should be able to release it too.

But forgiveness does not work on someone else’s timeline.

Pain does not expire just because enough time has passed. And sometimes pain that looks old from the outside is still fresh inside us, because we are only just beginning to understand it, feel it, or tell the truth about what it meant.

That is part of what I want this book to explore. Not forgiveness as something forced. Not forgiveness as a spiritual performance. Not forgiveness as pretending something did not hurt, or allowing someone back into your life who should no longer have access to you.

But forgiveness as something honest. Something deeply personal. Something that may take time. Something that cannot be demanded, rushed, or measured against anyone else’s process.

As I begin writing this book, I would love to hear from you.

When you think about forgiveness, what feels hardest? What questions come up for you? What would you want from a book on forgiveness?

Would journal prompts be helpful? Gentle reflections? Personal stories? Guided meditations? Practical exercises? A spiritual perspective? Something else entirely?

I’m still shaping this book, and I would be grateful to know what might actually support you, not in a perfect, polished, “just let it go” kind of way, but in a real human way.

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If you’re new to my work, I’m also the author of Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, a meditation book written especially for people who have struggled with traditional meditation. It’s for busy minds, wandering thoughts, ADHD brains, aphants, and anyone who has ever thought, “I must be doing this wrong.”

The kind of day when your mind feels crowded, your shoulders are tight, your breath is shallow, and you need a few minutes to come back to yourself.

This short meditation is for those moments.

You don’t need to be “good” at meditation. You don’t need to clear your mind. You don’t need to visualize anything or force yourself into perfect calm.

Just pause.

Breathe.

Let yourself be supported for a few minutes.

You can read along below, or simply press play and listen.

5-Minute Reset Meditation

Let’s settle in…

Close your eyes if that feels comfortable…
or simply soften your gaze.

Notice the surface beneath you…
allowing yourself to be supported for this moment.

Take a slow breath in…

…and let the exhale be a little longer.

Another breath in…

…and out.

Let your shoulders soften.

Take another breath here…
In…

And out…

You don’t need to clear your mind.
You don’t need to change anything right now.

Just notice what’s here.

Notice where your body feels tight…
without trying to fix it.

Just noticing.

Take a slow breath in…

…and out.

Whatever today has felt like…
you don’t have to carry it all right now.

And now, for the next few breaths…
we’ll add a few simple phrases.

You can repeat them quietly to yourself…
or simply listen.

“I am steady.”

“I am here.”

“I am okay.”

Now let the phrases go…
and simply follow the breath.

No need to control it.
Allow it to find its own natural rhythm.

If your mind wanders, that’s okay.
Gently bring it back to the breath.

Nothing to fix.
Nothing to force.

Just this breath…

And when you’re ready…
you can stay here a little longer…

or gently open your eyes.

Maybe place a hand over your heart…
and thank yourself for taking this moment.

One breath at a time.

Five minutes won’t fix everything. But it might change just enough to shift how the rest of your day unfolds.

And sometimes… that’s everything.

If this helped, this is exactly the kind of approach I teach in Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed. Simple, accessible meditation for real life, especially if your mind doesn’t work the way traditional practices expect it to.

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