Guilt is such a crushing and diminishing emotion. It kills so much that is joyful inside of us. When my daughter was growing up I wasn't the best mother, not having had good mothering myself and therefor no positive role model. My mother had a lot of issues and was sometimes violent and mostly absent emotionally, and in those days women didn't get any support for emotional difficulty.
I felt guilty about my lack of good parenting skills for many, many years. I had a lot of therapy to debrief myself of all the guilt, sadness and shame I felt. Now I don't feel guilt or shame but there is still sometimes sadness that things couldn't have been different.
I have forgiven myself for something I didn't know how to do better!!
I have made amends to my daughter by being there for her now and by way of verbal apologies and have told her she has the right to be angry and I'm here is she wants to talk about anything from her past. Her response is always , 'I always felt loved'. Those words are so soothing to me and she is doing well in life, so I can't have been all bad!
I think we are often so hard on ourselves. Self forgiveness takes many attempts but why keep on punishing ourselves for the past. It's been and gone.
I practice mindfulness and it really helps. I breath into the present moment and see and focus on the love and beauty all around me and don't let the negative thoughts in the mind take hold of, and ruin, my day. I can recommend Thich Nhat Hanh and Tara Bach on Youtube to hear a lot about self compassion.
Recommendations please, for a stopover on the way to Loch Tay