Healing Through Forgiveness: Letting Go Before the New Year

As this year comes to a close, many people will be thinking back on what they can do better in the new year: earning more money, traveling more, being healthier or even just learning something new. But no one talks about the reset. The emotional reset that makes those things possible: forgiveness. It’s like tying stones to your feet and attempting to march into the new year. You may “move” but are not yourself and not moving fast at all!

Forgiveness is not excusing what happened. It’s a reclamation of your peace from those who have taken it hostage, including places or memories tying you there. Most spiritual teachings teach that real manifestation and intention can only work once the emotional charge has been released, which is why forgiveness is explained as spiritual rather than emotional process. 

The Importance of Forgiveness in Personal and Spiritual Growth

Anger keeps you trapped in your physical body or your mind, which imprisons your clarity, intuition and emotional energy. Those who ruminate on grudges tend to feel mentally drained without any apparent reason, the mind continues replaying unhealed scenes in the background.

Spiritually, forgiveness:

• Raises your vibration, resentment is heavy energy; letting go attracts lighter experiences
• Unblocks blessings and opportunities, bitterness creates internal resistance
• Heals the nervous system, without constant emotional tension, the body relaxes
• Reconnects you to your highest self, not the wounded self, but the evolved one
• Serves the energetic cords to the past, you do not have to take it all into next year with you.

This is why most spiritual workers, healers and ritualists will tell you to end the year by unloading emotional baggage before setting intentions.

Rituals for Forgiveness Before the New Year

Forgiveness is easiest when it is not only thought, but ritualized. Rituals create a physical act that supports the emotional decision. Two gentle and powerful forgiveness rituals practiced in spiritual traditions include:

1) Forgiveness Letters with an Anointing Ritual

Writing a forgiveness letter, to the person who wronged you, or to yourself, assists in putting the emotions that have been revolving in your mind into order. Do not mail the letter. The purpose is emotional release.

To make this ritual spiritually stronger, practitioners recommend using sacred oils that support power, courage, and inner victory.

After writing the letter, anoint the paper with High John the Conqueror Spiritual Oil from Luckshop.com

High John oil is generally used for transcending challenges, becoming strong, and reclaiming control over your life. In a forgiveness ritual, it represents that you are now no longer conquered by the pain, you transcend it.

How to do it:

• Find a quiet place and write your letter, to someone or yourself, as raw and honest as possible.
• Anoint the corners of your paper with a few drops of High John the Conqueror Oil.
• While you are doing it, say in tongues or silent:

“I let go of this pain and what it has power over me.”

• Ultimately, you have the option to keep the letter, bury it with some flowers or even burn it to conclude the ritual.

The flowers used in burial or kept near the letter act as a symbol of growth, pain is being composted into wisdom.

2) Nature Walks and a Forgiveness Bath

Another ritual is taking your body into nature, flowers, trees, silence, where the mind softens naturally.

During a slow walk, reflect gently on the person or the situation and say:

 “I will not carry this into my future.”

Forgiveness becomes easier when your nervous system is calm and supported by nature.

To complete the ritual at home, take a cleansing bath and use a spiritual soap designed for release and overcoming.

Use the Rev. Moses XXX High Conquering Soap Bar from Luckshop.com

This soap is known in spiritual practice for washing away negativity, influence of enemies, and emotional residue.

How to do it:

• Run warm bath water or take a bucket bath.
• Close your eyes and think of the person or situation to be forgiven prior to the application of the soap.
• As you rub the High Conquering Soap Bar on your body, say:

 
“I release the hold this memory has on me.”

• Imagine that the anger is melting and flowing away with the water.
• You are not washing away the memory, you are washing away the emotional hold of it.

Why Ritual is Important

Most people try to forgive, by thinking about it, which often fails because the body still remembers the hurt; Rituals give the body, spirit and subconscious a physical signal that release is happening. That is why spiritual stores and traditions use oils, baths, herbs, and letters, they engage more than the mind.

The combination of:

• Writing and anointing (mental + symbolic release)
• Nature and bathing (physical + emotional cleansing)
• Creates a complete cycle of letting go, mind, body, and spirit together.

Welcoming the New Year with a Forgiven Heart

You don’t forgive because they deserve it. You forgive because you deserve freedom. Before you plan your resolutions, vision boards or goals for the new year, clear the emotional shelf.  

• Create space for what you actually want.
• Forgiveness, or choosing to let go, is not weakness, it’s preparation for what comes next. 
• It’s not taking what’s been done to you, but it is letting go of all the pain and resentment.

This year, before the clock resets, give yourself the cleanest gift, a soul not dragged by yesterday.

If you want to turn this into a spiritual habit, explore traditional anointing oils, cleansing soaps, or other ritual tools commonly used in release and manifestation practices before new beginnings. These tools are often used to support emotional letting-go and to spiritually prepare for what is ahead.

You do not begin a new year by adding more, you begin by letting go.