“Breaking Bread: Songs of Reconciliation” Act 2: Can You Forgive Me Now That I've Blessed You?
“Hurt people, hurt people,” is a well-known and loved expression. Why? Well because if you don’t take care of those damaged and broken bits inside of you, you end up projecting them onto others like little shards of glass. It’s only when you’ve taken the time to heal and create a better you, that you can actually forge healthy relationships with healthy expectations of yourself and others. In other words, we can’t love others the way they need to be loved until we love ourselves. We need to understand our own needs and not look to others to fulfill them.
The act of loving and making peace with yourself, which we explored in Act 1 of “Breaking Bread: Songs of Reconciliation,” helps you understand that the pain and hurt you’ve inflicted on others—or that others have inflicted on you—is just a projection of all that is going on inside of us. Realizing this makes it easier to not fall into unhealthy relationships, as well as forgive those of the past. This brings us to Act 2, addressing relationships that may have been troubled, confusing, left unresolved, or to a point of no return.
Act 2 of “Breaking Bread: Songs of Reconciliation'' is all about starting to make peace with the other people in your life (that is after you’ve already made peace with yourself). The songs in this act— “Cazadero,” “Gift from the Sea,” “In or Out,” “Treat a Woman Better,” “A Memory,” and “Father’s Garden”—represent forgiveness, self-worth, and taking accountability instead of blaming others for our actions.
One of the best ways that I’ve found to resolve relationship conflicts is to sit and break bread (literally and figuratively) with the other party. To talk it out and figure out what went wrong. To hear their side of the story. To communicate and express feelings from your side. To make peace with that person across from you. And to move on. For me, this meant sitting with all the relationships in my life that didn’t have a happy ending: ones where I still felt bitterness and pain, ones where I couldn’t quite understand why they ended the way that they did, or why I got into them in the first place. Through this process of breaking bread, I ultimately had to learn to forgive both myself and others. Sitting across the table from someone who has hurt you is both the most terrifying and liberating act because you no longer let the situation have control over you. Only you can truly free yourself from it and move on.
However, in some cases, physically sitting across from someone who has wronged you and talking it out is not in your best interest. In fact, you can actually put yourself in danger if the person has been physically or verbally abusive to you in the past. In those cases, you can still sit across the proverbial table from them and make peace with the situation. In all cases, the liberation for yourself from the anger, bitterness, shame, rage, and unforgiveness from these encounters is the truest gift. That is where the healing happens.
While I was writing songs for this act, I was knee-deep in a long-distance relationship that was not going to be the best for either of us. I had to ask myself repeatedly, “What were my expectations from this relationship and why was I in it in the first place? Why were either of us in it? If I really loved myself, why would I be putting myself in another toxic relationship and seeking love in such an unhealthy way? Why am I seeking love in this way in the first place? Where did that all stem from? Why did I have these patterns that just never seemed to stop?” A lot of questions as you can imagine. For just as many questions as there were, there were just as many reasons to forgive, let go, and move on.
The period I spent isolating during the pandemic helped me explore all of those areas (especially since I couldn’t travel to see my significant other). I realized that this unhealthy romantic relationship really could not progress with any real substance, which was a blessing in disguise. This blessing helped me not only separate myself from the other person but also did not allow me to get sucked into another bad relationship. That space made it possible to forge a relationship with myself.
Besides this burgeoning, harmful relationship, I also had a failed marriage to look back on. Questions that kept appearing were, “What happened in it? “Could I forgive that version of myself as well as my ex-husband? Could I find the blessings in the lessons that I learned from my marriage and truly move on from that time now that we both were in very different places? And could I be happy should I never get married again?”
And then there was one of my closest relationships, my father. We had a pretty rough start to our relationship, even though at the time of writing music for the album we were in a much better place. Questions I asked myself were, “How could I truly let go and forgive to make room for our new and blossoming relationship? How could I make peace with the frustrated teenager who felt abandoned by her father? And could I let a lot of unresolved questions from the start of our relationship go?”
Each of the songs in this act is a love note to myself and those versions of myself. These songs remind me that I did the best I could at the time with each relationship with the tools that I had. They also remind me that I no longer had to keep walking into the deep abyss of another failed relationship; I could know my value and worth and rise above it. That’s why I love ending this section with “Father’s Garden”—because there is so much beauty that can come from resolving and reconciling conflicts with others. Taking the time to pull up those tremendous emotional weeds that have been sitting there for years, makes way for beautiful flowers to grow. By making peace through breaking bread, we allow ourselves to fully heal and grow. It is the necessary fertilizer to create new life from a barren place.
“Breaking Bread: Songs of Reconciliation” is out July 15. Pre-save the album to your Spotify library and pre-order your copy on Apple Music now.