Love Like You've Never Been Hurt

Leader: Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson, Center for Spiritual Light

Love Like You've Never Been Hurt: relationship can easily shape how we show up in other relationships as well. Ask yourself, "Do the ways I show up in my relationships help or hinder me in having the joy, peace, freedom, and intimacy I really want for my life?" In this workshop, explore how to use both past hurts and forgiveness as resources for creating a life filled with greater happiness and wholeness.

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What Is the Issue?

Unless women develop the knowledge and skills to heal and break free of the emotional hurts they have experienced in their lives, they are more likely to:

• Project their hurt onto others unintentionally and cause emotional wounding in the lives of others, especially within their families, creating generational cycles of pain and dysfunction
• Define themselves based on how they have been treated by others, which allows the hurtful actions and words of others to continue to have power over their lives
• Make life choices shaped by unconscious self-protection that impedes their ability to perceive and create new possibilities for their lives, thus limiting them personally, professionally, spiritually, financially and more

Resources

Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt, Cari Jackson, Xlibris, 2013

United Methodist Women Connection

 “Learning to Forgive,” Cari Jackson, response magazine, January 2014
www.umwmissionresources.org/products/response-november-2013-2-1

Suggestions for Action

Gather women or youth in small groups as intentional safe spaces to talk about:

• The ways that past experiences have been limiting their lives, and explore ways to reclaim a bold, powerful vision for their lives as a critical step for impactful social justice
• How to use past life hurts as resources for developing social justice strategies to empower and transform lives

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Leader

Cari Jackson is the founding director of Center of Spiritual Light, which provides holistic spiritual resources to support individuals and organizations in reenvisioning and reinventing. She serves as leadership coach and consultant to faith-based organizations, community service agencies and academic institutions. An ordained United Church of Christ minister, Jackson has served as pastor of congregations in three different denominations. She holds a Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics, MDiv, JD, and BA in Psychology and Sociology. She is the author four books including Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt and For the Souls of Black Folks.