When Looking Back Hurts: Healing Regret Through Self-Compassion and GraceWhen Looking Back Hurts: Healing Regret Through Self-Compassion and Grace
Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life
Rev. Rachel Harrison reflects on years of family struggle, addiction and regret, and shares how journalling, self-compassion and spiritual practice help her relate to the past differently. She talks about healing old wounds, breaking cycles of dysfunction and choosing a kinder, more loving perspective on her own story.
27:54•15 Jun 2026
Healing Regret: Rachel Harrison on Self-Compassion, Sobriety and Family Pain
Episode Overview
- You cannot change the past, but you can change how you feel, describe and hold those memories today.
- Meeting old pain with tenderness, compassion and grace helps release regret and soften self-judgment.
- Healing yourself and breaking your own patterns can shift dysfunctional family cycles, even if others don’t change immediately.
- Feeling your emotions fully is important, but repeatedly replaying the past from a wounded place keeps you stuck.
- Seeing your life as a soul journey, rather than a list of mistakes, opens space for gratitude, growth and a kinder story about yourself.
“"We cannot go back and change the past... but you can change how you experience it, how you feel it, how you talk about it, how you remember it now."”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This episode of *Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life* follows Rev. Rachel Harrison as she opens up about regret, family, and healing past pain through self-compassion and grace. As Rachel prepares to send old photo albums and family belongings off with her husband to their sons in California, she finds herself flooded with memories of years marked by alcoholism, codependency and family struggle.
She writes to the part of herself that still hurts and, in her words, chooses to meet those memories "with tenderness, compassion, and grace." She explains that while the past can’t be changed, "you can change how you experience it, how you feel it, how you talk about it, how you remember it now." Drawing on Soul Recovery, 12-step principles, spirituality and positive psychology, Rachel reflects on breaking cycles of dysfunction, getting sober eight years ago, and learning that "the greatest gift that we can give to our families and to the world is to heal ourselves." The episode is especially relevant if you’re carrying regret about parenting, relationships or years lost to addiction and control.
Looking at smiling photos that hide the chaos behind the scenes, she shares how easy it is to wish things had been different and to replay the past with a harsh inner critic. Instead of staying stuck in “why did it have to be so hard?”, Rachel talks through her spiritual practice of journalling from her higher self and shifting into the heart.
You’ll come away with gentle encouragement to feel your feelings fully, soften judgment, and see your story as part of a larger soul journey. Could it be time to look back on your own past with a little more compassion and a lot less blame?
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