71 : Why Your Anger Is Hurting YOU (Not Them) | Forgive & Let Go

💫Episode 71 : Why Your Anger Is Hurting YOU (Not Them) | Forgive & Let Go

"If we could read the secret histories of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charla Goodnight found that quote the morning after an unexpected encounter — and it landed like a truth she'd been quietly living toward for months without having the words for it.

In Episode 71 of Collective Guidance, Charla returns after a two-week pause filled with life — her middle son's high school graduation, a new baby joining the family, and all the bittersweet beauty that comes with endings and beginnings arriving at the same time. And she brings with her one of the most quietly powerful lessons she's learned: your anger at someone else is not hurting them. It's only hurting you.

An Ending and a Beginning

Before diving into the heart of this episode, Charla takes a moment to share where she's been.

Her middle son — the one who once told her the podcast needed a tarot card segment, the one who edited her episodes and recognized Kari Samuels' voice — just graduated from high school. He told her afterward it was the happiest he had ever been. And Charla, who has cheered him through every challenge of his education with fierce pride, felt it too.

But days after the celebration, something shifted. A quiet sadness arrived. Because for 18 and a half years, this beautiful person has been hers to show up for every single day — and in August, he leaves for college to build a life of his own.

To every parent navigating this season: Charla sees you. The full range of emotions — elation, sadness, pride, worry, grief, joy — all of it is valid. All of it is love in different forms.

She also shares that new life joined the family around the same time — a new baby with her co-parents — a reminder that the universe is always moving in cycles. Out with the old, in with the new. Endings and beginnings, always arriving together.

The Anger You're Carrying Is Not Touching Them

Here's the reframe that anchors this entire episode, and it's one worth sitting with:

When you're angry at someone, that anger lives inside you. It is not affecting them.

Charla has been navigating a relationship with someone she's had significant contrast with — someone she hadn't seen since January, someone toward whom she had felt real frustration and hurt. And in the months of not seeing them, she did the work: moving through the anger, returning again and again to forgiveness, reminding herself that whatever she saw in them was also something alive in her.

Not because she was wrong and they were right. But because holding onto anger, she knows, is not a moral victory. It's a health crisis. It keeps you locked in a version of yourself that is smaller than who you're becoming.

The Moment of Radical Forgiveness

On May 24th, Charla saw this person for the first time in months.

And something unexpected happened. Instead of the tightness she might have expected, instead of rehearsed grievances or defensiveness — she felt radical love for them.

Not because they had changed. Not because the contrast had disappeared. But because in that moment, she saw past the story and into something more real: their humanity. Their fear. Their suffering. The child self underneath the adult behavior. The wounded parts acting out of protection, not malice.

They too are having a human experience. They too have fear. They too are suffering in some manner.

The moment she remembered that, she couldn't stay in victim. She couldn't stay in separation. Because separation, she understands now, is only possible when we forget that the person across from us is carrying the same essential weight we are — the weight of being human.

Look Into Their Eyes

The reading that landed for Charla the very next morning — from A Deep Breath of Life by Alan Cohen — said something she's been turning over ever since:

"When we choose not to look into our enemy's eyes, we keep them our enemies. But when we look into their eyes — the seat of the soul, the window to the heart — we dismantle everything."

This is the practice Charla offers for anyone who is estranged from someone they love, or carrying discord with someone they encounter. Not a grand gesture. Not a difficult conversation (though those have their place). Just this:

Look into their eyes.

If you're with them physically — look. If you only have a photograph — look. Because the eyes don't lie. In the eyes of another person, you will find innocence. You will find the child self, the scared self, the part of them that never got what it needed and learned to cope in ways that hurt the people around them.

You will find yourself.

And from that recognition — even the tiniest crack of it — forgiveness becomes possible. Not because they deserve it. Not because what happened was okay. But because forgiveness is not for them. It's for you.

The Mirror Practice

Charla closes with a morning practice she does every single day — one she returns to again and again as the foundation of everything else:

Look into your own eyes in the mirror. Find your own soul. And tell yourself how much you love yourself.

Forgive yourself for your human moments. For the times you lost it. For the times you held on too long or let go too soon. For the times you were the one causing the contrast.

Because before we can offer radical forgiveness to anyone else, we have to be willing to offer it to ourselves first. The compassion we struggle to extend outward is almost always the compassion we haven't yet given inward.

A Reflection to Carry With You

Is there someone in your life — a family member, a friend, a former partner, a coworker — with whom you feel estranged? Someone who lives in your mind as a source of frustration or hurt?

Try this: find a photo of them. Look into their eyes. Not at their actions, not at the story, not at what they said or did. Just their eyes. And ask yourself: what might they be carrying that I can't see? What fear or wound might be driving this?

You don't have to reconcile. You don't have to agree. You don't even have to speak to them. But if you can find even a single thread of their humanity — their sorrow, their fear, their longing to be loved just like you — the anger will soften. The separation will loosen. And you will have given yourself the gift of being free.

No one is really your enemy. We are all just doing the best we can.

✨ If this message resonates with you, please share this post with a friend, subscribe to the Collective Guidance podcast, and join me on Instagram @charligirl7 or @collectiveguidancepodcast . Let’s create a world where sensitivity is celebrated.

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Sending love, remembrance, faith, and creativity,

Charla ❤️