With Special Guest Shawne Duperon
of Project Forgive

How does the mother whose husband and daughter
were gunned down by terrorists forgive the men
that slaughtered them?

How do the parents whose teenagers were killed
by a drunk driver embrace the person
whose selfish act robbed them of their children?

And how do we forgive the multitude of wrongs a
nd slights that we will inevitably face
throughout our lives?

Julie Ann's ConsciousSHIFT guest Reverend Mpho Tutu
answers these questions with us - drawing from
The Book of Forgiving: The Four-Fold Path for
Healing Ourselves and Our World - which she wrote
along with her father, Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Desmond Tutu.

Using real examples from their own lives
and those of others around the globe,
the Tutus share very personally:
Desmond Tutu writing about the pain
of witnessing his father’s verbal and
physical abuse towards his mother
as a young boy; and Mpho Tutu sharing
about the trauma of finding her housekeeper,
Angela, brutally murdered in her home.

No one is better placed to offer guidance
and hope in a turbulent world than the former
Archbishop of Cape Town. Archbishop Desmond Tutu
received world-wide recognition (and the Nobel Peace Prize)
for the moral and spiritual leadership he gave
in opposition to South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Then in the post-apartheid era, President Nelson Mandela
asked him to Chair the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission which helped
South Africa address the crimes committed
during that era without bitter recrimination.

The Tutus distill those lessons and the
sequence of forgiveness into The Four-Fold Path:
* the importance of telling the story,
* naming the hurt,
* granting forgiveness, and
* choosing to either renew or release
the relationship that caused you pain.

Mpho also will share what forgiveness is not:
forgiveness is not weakness, it is not a subversion
of justice and it is not forgetting what happened.
And it is not easy.

She also will challenge the notion that the act
of forgiveness is a sign of weakness
or a lofty goal only the saintly can achieve.
Instead, she and her father offer scientific proof
that by pardoning others we help to heal
ourselves physically, emotionally and mentally.

Join Julie Ann and Mpho, as Mpho shares powerful stories,
practices, prayers and journaling that give us the space
and time – be it days, weeks, months or even years –
to arrive at the place where we can forgive others,
seek forgiveness or forgive ourselves.