Forgiveness Is A Loving Choice

— Life isn't limited to the tangible reality we experience on this earth, and that our worst adversaries can become our greatest teachers. It's a story of how forgiveness is the best revenge. Valeria Teles interviews Kirsten Mickelwait — the author of "The Ghost Marriage: A Memoir". Kirsten Mickelwait is a professional copywriter and editor by day and a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction by night. At thirty-one, Kirsten has just returned to San Francisco from a bohemian year in Rome, ready to pursue a serious career as a writer and eventually, she hopes, marriage and family. When she meets Steve Beckwith, a handsome and successful attorney, she begins to see that future materialize more quickly than she'd dared to expect. Twenty-two years later, Steve has become someone quite different from the man Kirsten first met. Unemployed and addicted to opioids, he uses money and their two children to emotionally blackmail her. The couple separates but, just after their divorce is finalized, Steve is diagnosed with colon cancer and dies within the year, leaving Kirsten with $1.5 million in debts from properties that are no longer hers. It's only then that she finally understands: The man she married was a needy, addictive person wrapped in a shiny package. As she fights toward recovery, Kirsten begins to receive communications from Steve in the afterlife—leading her on an unexpected path to forgiveness.  She's also an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Paris Writers' Conference, and the San Francisco Writers' Conference. Her short story, "Parting with Nina," won first prize in The Ledge's 2004 Fiction Awards Competition. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she's at work on a new novel. To learn more about Kirsten Mickelwait and her work, please visit: https://www.kirstenmickelwait.com/   — This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.