One of my favorite books as a child was Edward Eager’s Seven Day Magic, which I used to reread so often I practically knew it by heart. In a chapter I loved most, one of the children (with whom I identified, because he wanted to be a writer) enters through a portal that says “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” and gets drawn into a terrible fog. As he goes deeper, he suffers more than he ever has before: he experiences remorse. Even the word itself echoes through the boy’s abysmal despair in a great resonant booming. He remembers every single thing he did or said that he wishes he could undo or unsay. (Before he completely loses his mind to his stricken conscience, he of course is rescued by his friends.) Remorse is a terrible feeling. It combines intense guilt, bitter conscience, painful regret, self-condemnation. When I wake at night remembering something I’m remorseful for, the dread and sadness I feel is unspeakable. What can we do at those times? The word remorse stems from Latin remordere, which means to “vex, torment, disturb.” Middle English also had a verb, remord, which combined remorse with “touch with compassion.” I think compassion is at the heart of all healing. One remedy for the relentless sting of remorse we all feel at one time or another is self-compassion. 
Self-compassion is hard to practice, especially when we feel unworthy. But if we could see ourselves with the eyes of a Great Parent who loves us no matter what, we would forgive ourselves. There is nothing we can do or say that alters their love in any way. We always did the best we could at the time, and of course at a different time, when we were older and wiser, we would have done better! Seen through the eyes of Source, nothing changes in that eternal compassionate love that pours through us when we allow it to. When we do, hope, courage, determination, and love fills the place where remorse once presided.