Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.140 The Surprising Truth About Forgiveness That Changed My Life | Dara McKinley

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 140

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Are you carrying emotional baggage that's weighing you down? This game-changing episode reveals why forgiveness might be the self-care revolution you never knew you needed. Meet Dara McKinley, a spiritual teacher and psychology expert who discovered the transformative power of forgiveness through her own unexpected crisis.

Despite years of professional expertise, Dara found herself stuck – until a breakthrough moment changed everything. Her story will resonate deeply with anyone who's ever thought "I just can't let this go" or "Why should I be the one to forgive?"

You'll discover:

  • Why forgiveness has nothing to do with letting someone off the hook (and everything to do with your own freedom)
  • The surprising link between unresolved resentment and your physical well-being
  • How to handle relationships with people who refuse to acknowledge their impact
  • Practical strategies for setting boundaries while working through forgiveness

Perfect for women navigating complex relationships, career transitions, or family dynamics, this conversation goes beyond surface-level advice to explore how forgiveness can unlock your intuition and reshape your future. If you're ready to release the emotional weight you've been carrying, this episode is your invitation to freedom.

Where to find Dara McKinley:
https://howtoforgive.com/
https://www.instagram.com/daramckinley/


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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling rundown. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
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Michele Folan:

Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. The truth is, we all have someone or something to forgive, perhaps even ourselves. We know it's good to forgive, but we might not know how to do it. In 2012, after facing a personal challenge that her extensive skills in education couldn't resolve, Dara McKinley searched online for forgiveness how-to and was only met by a lot of why one should forgive. When a logical path came to her and after completing it, she felt peaceful and free for the first time in three years, this epiphany led her to dedicate herself to researching and teaching this powerful concept, helping others process stuck emotions and move forward with passion and clarity. Dara McKinley, welcome to Asking for a Friend. Thank you, Michele. Thank you for having me.

Michele Folan:

I was so intrigued when I think of you as a publicist that reached out to me about you being on the podcast and I read maybe a few sentences into your bio and said, ah, this is a topic that we have not really covered on the podcast at length, and I think for my audience, Dara, that now that most of them are probably 50 plus, we all have been in a situation where we have had to forgive or should have forgiven. I should preface that so. But first of all, I want to hear a little bit more about you and kind of how you got to this place where you are right now.

Dara McKinley:

Yes. So I was born a very spiritual little girl and went on to study spirituality and psychology. I have a graduate degree in contemplative psychology, which is essentially Buddhist psychology, and just have always been interested in alternative healing methods and mainstream healing methods and really just always had my eye on what really heals, what really helps a person recover. That was always the filter that I assessed everything with. So, of course, I heard about forgiveness from my earliest days. My mother comes from a Catholic family, so it was definitely the word was used in our household a lot and, as I like examined it more and more as I got older, I could never seem to make it work in a practical way, though I thought the idea was gorgeous. You know that the key to happiness is to be able to love our enemies. So here I am.

Dara McKinley:

It's now the early 2000s. I have an idea for a business. In my naive enthusiasm, I jump in with business partners who I would ultimately be incompatible with, but the business takes off and so we basically just endure each other for as long as we can. And then, in 2009, things fall apart and I am pushed out and lose my share of the business. And when this moment happens. I'm half relieved because it had been so stressful you know navigating these relationships and I'm half heartbroken because the business was my idea and it had brought me a lot of joy. And so I thought to myself wow, Dara, this is a huge blow. But you've been studying psychology and spirituality for two decades. You have the skills to get through this. You're going to focus on your significant relationships, on gratitude. You're going to recreate your life. You're going to process your emotions and you will resurrect. And I did that for three years and definitely I, you know, was able to move forward. But I would notice, when I was washing the dishes or folding laundry, that I still had a negative narrative about what had happened looping through my head and it kind of it had the themes of like that was so wrong. You know, like I deserve justice. You know things like that.

Dara McKinley:

And as this is happening, I begin to slowly slide into a mystery illness that was like insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with me. And I have a three-year-old and a six-year-old and I start to get very concerned and upset, which is making the symptoms worse, and I basically just start spiraling into a hole and I definitely would never describe myself as psychic, but I'm very intuitive and I have always said that when I hit rock bottom moments, I just have the gift of imploring a sign or a message, you know. And so here I was hitting this rock bottom moment and so I, you know, someone might say it's a come to Jesus moment, you know. So I kind of get it down on my knees and I'm like I am freaked out to my core. I need help getting out of this. I need a sign, I need something to. You know, show me how to heal this situation.

Dara McKinley:

And the message I got back was to forgive. And, like a lot of people when they hear that message, I did not like it. I, um, I, like the inner teenager in me, kind of rolled her eyes and thought like oh, did you know, though, right away that who you were supposed to forgive?

Michele Folan:

You did yeah. Crystal clear? You did Okay.

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, that was probably. My first thought was yeah, I do have something to forgive. And then my next thought was but I don't want this to be the answer to my problems. And so one thing to really illuminate right now is that so many people have that reaction to the suggestion of forgiveness, and I was defining forgiveness as pardoning. So when I heard that word forgive, immediately it was like let these people off the hook and you will get better, and that anyway. So I'll go a little deeper into the story because so, anyway, I reject the message. But then it was so clear that within an hour I said okay, dara, get online. It's now 2012, october 2012.

Dara McKinley:

And I was like get online, find whoever wrote some how to forgive a five-step thing and follow it and see what happens. You're an open person who likes to research new ideas and new modalities. You've nothing to lose, check it out. So I typed in how to forgive and 99.9% of what came up was why a person should forgive. And then the teeny bit I could find on some forum here and there where someone like me was going but how do you do it? The message they were getting back was you just do it. So I was like, wow, I closed my computer and I was like, but how do you do it? The message they were getting back was you just do it. So I was like, wow, I closed my computer and I was like, oh, my goodness, like I can't just do this, like I really need directions and I'm on my own right now, like there's no one who's going to give them to me. And then I thought, okay, you, you know, you have studied a lot of things like think about this, you can do this.

Dara McKinley:

And the question I asked myself, which was the question that would step me onto the forgiveness path, was okay, dara, you've been running a negative narrative for three years. It's getting you nowhere, it's potentially making you sick. What is the opposite of that narrative? And my answer to that question was oh, I would bless this whole situation with the highest love. And upon answering that question, I took my first step. There's a lot more that came after it, but three weeks later I felt an inner peace I hadn't felt in three years. I was completely clear of resentment and emotional burden and I was completely wowed. And I remember thinking like, wow, forgiveness is legitimate, like it's for real, like it works. And my second thought was and that wasn't pardoning. Why does everyone say forgiveness is pardoning? And that was that. I had that thought and then I just thought I'd had my own little personal win and I moved forward with my life, just grateful that I had figured it out.

Michele Folan:

So, first of all, what you experienced is not unlike what other people experience in the realm of. I got dissed or hurt by someone or a group of people or whatever, and we let it eat at us, and so I totally see why after three years, you spiraled and it started to affect your health. I really believe that we can carry those burdens with us and they can eat us from the inside out, no doubt, and the fact that you recognize that was such a gift because it allowed you to pull yourself out. But I have to ask this question because you said that forgiveness is not necessarily pardoning, and I think, looking at it that way, it seems that it that would be easier, because then it doesn't put so much onus on us. Does that make sense?

Dara McKinley:

Yes, and so first, I invite people to rethink forgiveness. That's one of the big pieces of my work. And let's just say forgiveness is pardoning, right? That definition is deeply embedded in the Western mind, correct, and you know, if anyone shows up five minutes late or 10 minutes late to a meeting, we're going to say oh, you know, please forgive me. And so forgiveness is pardoning is a definition that's not going anywhere. However, I invite people to think, rethink that definition when a rupture or betrayal is huge.

Dara McKinley:

And I'm adding a new definition. I'm inviting people to consider the definition that forgiveness is actually one's ability to apply unconditional love. And when I say unconditional love, that can be God's love, Jesus's love, love of Allah, love of the Buddha, love of the goddess, divine love. However you want to define this, every benevolent spiritual tradition and religion has core teachings of unconditional love. It is a very real thing that I could talk to you for five minutes about and say more about how that is real.

Dara McKinley:

And the second part of my definition is one's ability to identify exactly what needs it. Second part of my definition is one's ability to identify exactly what needs it and once those two plates spin, restoration and healing occur, and then pardoning, having compassion, ceasing anger, letting go of the past all become these organic outcomes. So I feel like mainstream forgiveness definitions are putting the cart before the horse and when someone's experiencing as you just described like a lot of strong emotions because of a huge diss that happened to them, having compassion and just letting go and just don't be angry, those are tall orders when someone's just trying to survive a strong emotional swell from something big that just happened. So when we look at forgiveness as not our ability to unconditionally love, but our ability to enlist unconditional love, just as you said, it's not our responsibility to be a miraculous person in an extremely difficult time, but we can enlist something that will help us navigate and restore ourselves after an extremely difficult time. So I teach people that forgiveness is a delegation.

Michele Folan:

Okay, In some of the reading that I did, you have two definitions interpersonal and intrapersonal forgiveness. What is the difference?

Dara McKinley:

So interpersonal forgiveness is definitely like the mainstream definitions that we're fed and so and then here's the ideal scenario that those definitions are kind of speaking to Two people have a conflict, they have an honest conversation about how they were affected. Let's say there's one person who was more careless. They own it and take responsibility for it and they apologize, and then that person forgives. This is this beautiful, perfect little feedback loop. You know that where forgiveness is, this beautiful thing that people can do? So that's interpersonal forgiveness. Intrapersonal forgiveness is between a person, their connection to divine love however they define it and their personal truth about what happened. Because and intrapersonal forgiveness is so important, because those healing conversations often don't happen for a lot of people A lot of people don't get the apology they deserve. Sometimes the person is no longer living Right, like. Sometimes the external environment is not going to treat us how we deserve to be treated or give us what we need in order to heal and move forward right, and so does that leave us out of the forgiveness game.

Michele Folan:

No, right, okay, I've got gosh. My brain is going 100 miles an hour here, so as I'm seeing this. So the forgiveness piece or the unconditional love? Are we having unconditional love for the situation, for ourselves or for the other person?

Dara McKinley:

All of it.

Michele Folan:

Okay, all right.

Dara McKinley:

All of it? Yeah, and there's. So when I teach people though, like every situation has unique facets, right, every story is different. And when I say the second part of my definition is a person's ability to identify what needs unconditional love, so I teach people how to examine their, what happened to them and how it's continued to be stuck in their body and playing out in their present moment, and identifying exactly what that is so that that can be connected with unconditional love.

Michele Folan:

Okay, what do you see as the biggest obstacles in people's ability for forgiveness? So you work with clients.

Dara McKinley:

Right.

Michele Folan:

What do you see as the biggest obstacle that people run into?

Dara McKinley:

Well, I think that people thinking that forgiveness is letting others off the hook. I think the pardoning definition is actually one of the biggest obstacles. That's one of if I, if someone takes my course and I just get them for six weeks to deeply reconsider the definition of forgiveness, to me that's like successful, because it's so deep inside all of us. And then I also think that for a lot of people and I came up against this that night in October 2012, is that I was right, yeah, was right, yeah. And so you know I say to people you are right, what happened, what happened, should not have happened, but forgive anyway, meaning like clear it out of your body anyway.

Dara McKinley:

When I stepped forward, so I had that answer like, oh, I will bless this situation with divine love. And so I said, okay, let me, let me try to do that right now, let me check out how to make that happen. And as I went deeper into what that would look like, a voice inside my head kind of came forth and said, no, no, no, you're completely, you know, you've been wronged, like you can't bless them with the highest love. And it was so interesting to me because in this moment, I saw that voice so clearly and I said oh wow.

Dara McKinley:

I said, hey, I've been listening to you for three years and I need to try something different right now. So can you please just step aside and if what I'm about to try doesn't work, you and I can talk again, but right now I don't. To try doesn't work. You and I can talk again, but right now I don't think you're getting me anywhere. So I had this whole kind of like inner dialogue. But I think a lot of people struggle with the fact that what they really were wronged and then they really think again that forgiveness is letting someone who wronged them off the hook. And so once I went through this whole process, I just started observing mainstream narratives and people who really had a negative view of forgiveness and I started to see like, oh wow, all these definitions are actually creating an obstacle.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, so, first of all, I think forgiveness is really about healing, right, and now I'm starting to see it as a form of self-care. Right? Because the more we carry this stuff around with us, it can really take you downhill. My other call out in this, as you were speaking, was do you ever have to ask people I'm hearing you and I'm hearing the situation and how you were wronged but does that person ever have to take some onus for the situation if they too are part of the problem?

Dara McKinley:

So I actually think what you're speaking to is what I call radical self-responsibility, and I actually think it's an incredibly liberating, uber healthy thing to do to take 100% responsibility for our experience and how we contributed to the creation of some difficult situation. With that said, you don't need to do that in order to forgive, and first of all, because if you step onto the forgiveness path to heal and restore, you kind of are doing that. You're taking responsibility for your emotional health, even though you might not be a person who is drawn to really, you know, scrutinizing all the ways that you may have contributed to the situation. So it's not it's not necessary in order to forgive, but I think it is a very worthwhile pursuit. Just personally and like in terms of like all the things that heal us, I think it's one of the most beautiful things that also heal us, but forgiveness is not dependent on that.

Michele Folan:

Okay, and then we all know that one person who it's never their fault, they would never apologize because they for some reason don't think it's ever their issue, it's always somebody else's issue. And so I think that this is really important when you have someone like that in your life, because you will just go in circles with someone who just continually will never take responsibility for their actions, just continually will never take responsibility for their actions, so for you to have that ability to forgive or bless the situation with unconditional love, as you say, then it really can take that monkey off your back.

Dara McKinley:

Right, like if you're in a marriage or something with someone who just never owns their part of the equation. Is that what you're saying?

Michele Folan:

Yeah, now, that's not my situation, so I just want to be very clear.

Dara McKinley:

I'm just trying to illuminate the details a little bit more.

Michele Folan:

Oh God, no, but yeah, we make that clear. That's not. I'm not talking ill of my wonderful spouse. No, when I said you, I meant a person.

Dara McKinley:

But I have had a lot of women interested not, you know, whatever women, men who are in marriages or relationships that are challenging and what I mean and it's kind of the nature of marriage and relationships, quite honestly, long-term ones that you know they hit very challenging points who have done my work and have been able to create a lot of openness and space and let go of a lot of resentment that was accruing towards their partner. Again, I don't know if their partner had the exact character that you're describing right now, but I know that these people felt very stuck at the time and just felt like they were living in a household that was just had a lot of resentment circulating.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, we, you know, we've addressed that resentment piece on different podcast episodes.

Dara McKinley:

Yeah.

Michele Folan:

And it really until you can have that conversation or be able to let go of some of that. It can be daunting right in a relationship.

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, and set boundaries, like so much of a healthy relationship, is the courage to set a boundary, and that's not an easy task.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, hey, Dara, we're going to take a quick break, okay, and we'll be right back. And when we come back, I want to talk about if it's okay not to forgive. Yes, it is 2025 and I think I'm just about recovered from the crazy holiday festivities. I also have a wonderful coaching group up and going. You know, every year seems to put people on the starting line of a weight loss journey. We've all been there.

Michele Folan:

What if, when you begin 2026, you aren't feeling compelled to start over or recommit to last year's resolutions? Can we adopt a truly healthy lifestyle that is not only effective but sustainable? If you are open to pushing aside the quick fix mentality for slow, steady and long-term, would you be interested? You get to eat all the food groups with your own custom nutrition plan and start to move your body to ensure you are building lean muscle, stability and longevity? Let's get that metabolism fired up, because it is not too late to feel great and be confident and strong. I have another group coaching round starting soon. Are you ready? Reach out via my email in the show notes or DM me on social media. All right, everybody, we're back, okay. So back to my question before we took the break Is it okay to not forgive?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, I don't. It's really a personal choice. It's a matter of it's really a personal choice. It's a matter of deciding like, oh wow, I am carrying around an emotional burden or a lot of negative thoughts and I don't want to do it anymore, and that's up to the individual to see that and decide that for themselves. So I don't, if someone doesn't want to forgive, that's, in my view, that's up to them.

Dara McKinley:

You know, we all have to make our decisions and for some, I think it's one of the most valuable things that a person can do. I know that. I want to. I think that when we have a lot of emotional burdens and negative narratives, I think it blocks, like our truest, most authentic, most beautiful self. You know, it's like why, when we're on our, you know, taking our last breaths and on our deathbed, I think when we say like, oh, wow, I lived in alignment with my truest, most beautiful, authentic self, that's what we're going to feel really proud of, and so I think forgiveness helps make sure that happens. So, but if a person doesn't want to forgive and again, I'm not defining it as pardoning, so I'm defining it as healing, as you said so perfectly in the beginning of the conversation. So if a person doesn't want to heal, that's their choice.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I guess there's, you know, is there some kind of a choice? Yeah, I guess there's. You know, is there some kind of a unforgivable barometer out there that I guess people have to make that decision for themselves if they do want to carry something with them for their whole life. I mean, that just seems awful to me. You know, now that we've had this conversation, I think about carrying something until I'm 80 or 90 years old. I just don't think I want that in my life, right.

Dara McKinley:

Right, it affects everything. It affects our bodies, it affects our relationships, it affects our ability to access our intuition, which is another. Like, one of the best things about being alive is having a good, strong you know strong connection to our intuition. So there's so many. Ultimately, it creates a sense of inner peace in the body, but there's so many secondary benefits.

Michele Folan:

Are we all wired to forgive? Do you think that humanity is wired?

Dara McKinley:

Yes, we are. We have two hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere, which is the one that's cultivated in Western society, is about navigating the external part of being human, and the right hemisphere of the brain, which unfortunately is relegated to weekends and holidays in Western culture, is about navigating our inner realm, and so when I say that, what I mean by that it's about processing emotions, it's about our spiritual connection, it's about how to use imagination in a restorative way, it's about our creative process, and so that hemisphere of the brain is very atrophied in Western culture, to the point where people don't understand that they actually have all the skills they need. They just need someone to teach them how to bring them together to form this winning team that creates forgiveness. So you know again, I teach a course, and that's one of the things I teach people is that they we are anatomically designed to heal, restore and regenerate, and like considering that we all have very strong rites of passage like thank goodness we have this.

Michele Folan:

Right, oh, no kidding, no kidding. And then I wrote this down because I wanted to ask you about this after we first spoke Forgiveness in families versus, say, friends or coworkers. Is there a different process that people go through when it's like a family member, whether it's a spouse or, say, a sibling or parent God forbid or if it's something an issue that you have with friends or say, coworkers.

Dara McKinley:

An issue that you have with friends or, say, coworkers. Well, I think what you're speaking to right now is that there are three timeframes that a person can forgive. And the first one is called episodic, and that's just an incident that happened in the past, that's no longer in your present life. And then the next one is enduring, and enduring is something that you wake up to, that you have to deal with every day, and that can be an illness or a family member, or co-parenting with a difficult ex, you know an addiction. There's so many. You know problems that a person can wake up to and have to face. And then epic is when something went on for a really long period of time. It's in the past, but it went on for so long that it can feel daunting to forgive. But people who have an epic time frame behind them, like a childhood for example, they very much want to forgive, but then they can get very overwhelmed and think, oh, too much has happened. You know I can't do it but, speaking to your question, when we have, you know, friends and co-workers like we can, it's easier to create the boundaries around people that we have, you know, friends and coworkers like we can, it's easier to create the boundaries around people that we have like proximity with and even end those relationships and switch jobs right. But with family that's a little trickier. Family is more likely than any of the others to end up in the enduring timeframe Like we're not going to abandon our children ever. Or you know, like I mean maybe we would. You know, like there's I'm sure there's some scenarios where that could happen, but that's not. We really we're really devoted to that relationship no matter what. So that's like that would land in the enduring timeframe. And in the enduring timeframe I tell people to see forgiveness as an ongoing process that is going to give them a lifeboat, a life jacket, supplies, is going to fortify them to navigate this difficult thing that's in their lives.

Dara McKinley:

Forgiveness sometimes I get people coming to me saying can I just forgive? This horrible thing just happened to me? Can I just just you know, forgive this horrible thing just happened to me. Can I just forgive it away? You know they want to just have some like magic snap of the fingers that will make this difficult thing disappear, and that's not how it works.

Dara McKinley:

And I definitely think forgiveness creates really beautiful, what some might call miracles, but really beautiful situations that we could not have orchestrated, you know, with our own will and control. However, we all have a curriculum in this life and it's unique to every person, and it's really a matter of navigating those difficult points of that curriculum in a way that we, when it's all said and done, we can feel really good about and that we know we did our best. And that we, when it's all said and done, we can feel really good about and that we know we did our best. And it doesn't mean it's not going to be messy, because it is, and it's not. It's going to be challenging, you know, but we want to know that we made the highest, that we connected with the highest outcome and we operated from our highest minds and our highest selves. Right, yes, and that's what forgiveness empowers us to do.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, can you share, like a client, success story?

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, one of the ones that was most poignant to me was a woman who grew up with a mentally ill mother and, you know, ended up in and out of foster situations and just really had a tumultuous childhood and she ended up going into the healing arts herself and becoming a trauma therapist and was trying everything to make peace with her mom and, you know, I think in her early thirties came across my work and tried it and was very successful with it and was able to make peace with her mother and then ended up and this is what I was just saying ended up having this beautiful encounter with her mom.

Dara McKinley:

And her mom really is like severely mentally ill. Where it's you can't even really like talk to her, you know, cause she's not present. But she ended up having this like beautiful chance encounter with her mom after she forgave, where they really were able to look each other in the eyes and like have a heart connection and it was very, you know, fleeting but it was undeniable and she was said that she absolutely knew that forgiveness cleared the path for her to have that experience. So that's one of my favorite stories, yeah.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, oh, that's really nice, that's heartwarming. Really you would hate for, you know, a vibrant 30 year old woman to have to go through that but to be able to move on in life and have all those years ahead of her where she can be free of that anger and sometimes hate.

Dara McKinley:

Yeah, and that's an example of the epic timeframe as well, and that forgiveness. People who have a huge experience behind them, like a childhood or a mentally ill mother, for example, you can forgive those things, like. I want to kind of say that clearly because I know it feels unforgivable to a lot of people because so many little things happened, but once you learn how to use the right hemisphere of the brain, it really leads you through, you know, and it really wants things to be resolved, and so it's really just about learning how to use those muscles, which is, you know, the industry you're in yeah Well, yeah, we, I work in different muscles for sure.

Michele Folan:

So what kind of training do you offer clients? Do you have different programs available?

Dara McKinley:

Right.

Dara McKinley:

So I have a six week course that anyone can purchase at any time and that basically gives you this very clear, step by step, and I want people to graduate the course like really feeling like they had a lasting, transformational experience that is going to be with them for the rest of their lives and that, should they hit those low points, that they have this incredible resource that they can call upon and use and apply.

Dara McKinley:

And I also do bi-weekly energy meditations because I attract a lot of people who are in a crisis you know who and I always think to myself like, yes, forgiveness can help you, but when you're in a crisis, it's you really just need to focus on calming yourself down. It's not about learning some skill, even though once you have that skill, it'll always help you. You know it's just when you're, when you're emotionally in an acute period. You just need to figure out how to decompress it. So these energy meditations, I offer them biweekly and they're great for anyone who is really in a difficult moment. And then I also teach people. I have a small PDF that's about when you're struggling with a lot of negative thinking or intrusive thoughts. It know teaching people how to just three basic skills for having an emotionally healthy system, because emotions are just an anatomical system that needs to move and a lot of people clamp down on them, right and or feel fear, fearful of them.

Dara McKinley:

So it's just like three very friendly ways to just tend to your emotional system, the way someone would brush their teeth every morning.

Michele Folan:

Okay, and you know it's nice if it can be that simple for us to work through these things, if you have a process or a framework that you can do this yourself, because I guess you just never know when something like that is going to come up in your life.

Dara McKinley:

Right, I have yet to meet someone who hasn't, especially, as you said, in 40s and 50s. At that stage of the game, something huge has happened, and it's just the human experience.

Michele Folan:

Right, I do have kind of a personal question for you. What is one of your core pillars of self-care? What do you do for yourself?

Dara McKinley:

Well, I take really good care of my emotional realm. I'm very body aware, so I stay very present to whether I'm feeling congested. That's how I describe it. It's like I don't want to get emotionally congested. The last thing the world needs is another emotionally congested person. The last thing the world needs is another emotionally congested person. So I pay very close attention and I make sure that my emotional realm is circulating and, in terms of your realm, I very much eat healthy, because that very much affects emotions and so I prioritize that.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, and you know, I've just read oh gosh, it's a doctor on Instagram. He's very well thought of, he's out of Cleveland Clinic, but he was talking about the gut brain connection and what a strong connection there is between your gut health and your brain and it's really fascinating. So I love the fact that you like to eat healthy, because you know that that does help with not just how your body is feeling but also your brain, so just really cool. Yes, Dara McKinley, where can the listeners find you?

Dara McKinley:

Howtoforgive. com and how to forgive is what I typed in that fateful night in October 2012. And then, in 2014, I looked up the domain and there it was, sitting there waiting for me. So, um, I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and uh yeah, all right, it was meant to happen.

Michele Folan:

If it was two years and that that domain was there, it was yours to take. That's awesome. That's a great story. Dara McKinley, I really appreciate you being here.

Dara McKinley:

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Michele Folan:

Hey, thanks for tuning in. Please rate and review the show where you listen to the podcast. And did you know that Asking for a Friend is available now to listen on YouTube? You can subscribe to the podcast there as well. Your support is appreciated and it helps others find the show. Thank you.