What We Can Learn About Forgiveness from Paula Deen

So, unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard about celebrity chef Paula Deen’s public dethroning.

 It seems Deen is being sued by a former employee and during a deposition, the chef admitted she used the racial epithet referred to as the “N” word. Deen said it was some 30 years ago, but still information in the deposition also describes a work environment that allowed bigoted behavior and most probably caused many people pain.

A tearful Deen apologized publicly, but still a parade of noted sponsors have dropped her and her products. So now it looks like Deen’s life is surrounded by chaos: The earnings of her multi-million dollar empire are threatened and her TV contract was not renewed. Deen, who appears stunned, hired a well known PR firm.

There’s so much we can learn about forgiveness from watching and reading about this whole incident in the media.

Consider the following:

When you ask for forgiveness what follows may look like chaos but it’s actually healing.

In Deen’s case, she may not have known she was asking for forgiveness when she answered honestly the question of whether she had ever used a racial epithet.  But in fact, in her heart she was telling the universe that she is not who she used to be. Saying this, she was also acknowledging that she preferred the new—and we might say better—Deen.

 So Spirit acted accordingly, re-aligning the composition of her life. It was as if she was basically proclaiming, “I am not who I used to be!”—and therefore, the universe responded by beginning to erase everything that did not support the new Paula Deen.

Of course, the sponsors had to be among the first to go. They had supported a lie, the picture of a perfect Southern mama who cooked comfort food and cared for everyone. This was not totally true. She, by her own admittance, allowed certain conditions in her business that caused a good number of people pain. At the very least, it did not allow them to work in peace; these conditions were not created from love.

Be aware: When you ask the universe for forgiveness, you will get it. And we don’t get to say what that looks like. In fact, it seldom looks the way we think it should. We may lose people and circumstances we think we need or that we think have been helpful to us, not considering they really didn’t know who we are. 

Meanwhile, of course, God has forgiven Paula Deen. But she has to consider that she lives in a physical world where it takes more than an instant to work through layers of matter created at a lower vibration by the less loving Paula Deen.

 The forgiveness she seeks will come when her healing is more complete, when she has done enough of the self work that people know and accept she is a different woman, the person she has desired to be for some time.

Her new sponsors will not support a lie. They will support a woman who made mistakes, asked for forgiveness—and was forgiven. And they will be the type of sponsors a person with a new, higher consciousness would want and deserve.

 After all, forgiveness raises our consciousness and allows us to attract something greater into our lives. 

--Patrice Gaines for Unity of Charlotte