MARY HAYES GRIECO INTERVIEW (1 OF 2)
Mary Hayes Grieco
Mary Hayes Grieco is a respected spiritual teacher in the Twin Cities. She is the author of Be A Light: Illumined Essays for Times Like These, and the director of The Midwest Institute for Forgiveness Training. She has been teaching her practical step-by-step method of forgiveness for twenty years.
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MARY HAYES GRIECO INTERVIEW (2 OF 2)
The following Minneapolis Star Tribune article on Mary was written by my friend, Sarah Moran.
PLUMBER OF SOULS
Mary Hayes Grieco is a forgiveness guru who uses an eight-step method for helping people unclog old resentments and stagnant energy and lighten their load.
Mary Hayes Grieco is a living, walking welcome sign. Her life and work are built around showing unconditional love to all people — baggage included — and inviting them to learn forgiveness and to move forward.
Letting go is freeing, said Hayes Grieco, a forgiveness expert who lives in south Minneapolis. “Real forgiveness helps you walk your path more easily,” she said. The problem for many people is figuring out how to do it.
For more than 20 years, she’s been teaching groups and individuals a powerful eight-step method for forgiveness. She’s worked in Ireland helping people forgive historic hurts and at Hazelden helping recovering addicts.
“In the last 10 years, there’s been an explosion of psychological and medical research about forgiveness,” she said. Studies have shown that people who blame a heart attack on someone else are more likely to have a second heart attack, for instance. Forgiving decreases anxiety, depression and anger and increases self-esteem. It’s associated with lower blood pressure and heart rate and decreased muscle tension.
Kate Pfaffinger, a Twin Cities psychologist with a nursing degree, has used Hayes Grieco’s method with clients and watched physical symptoms such as headaches, chronic pain and insomnia melt away.
“Sometimes I think of myself as more of a plumber than anything else,” Hayes Grieco said to a group of mental health professionals who were learning her method at a recent workshop in St. Paul. “If we’re plugged up with resentments and stagnant old energy from bad experiences we haven’t forgiven, God’s light can’t come through.”
Hayes Grieco, 54, speaks to the group with the liveliness of a child and the wisdom of a sage. She shares real-life stories and heartfelt insights with the manner of a trustworthy best friend with a knack for calling at just the right time.
“Mary is an exceptional storyteller, and she’s funny — has a great sense of comedic timing,” said Teesie Vallero, who found healing from Hayes Grieco and has gone on to teach the eight-step method to others. “Part of that is because she really understands the human condition.”
Hayes Grieco’s philosophy embodies the teachings of Jesus, Buddhism, the Essenes and other spiritual thinkers and movements. Forgiveness, as she defines it, means to release an expectation that is causing one to suffer, to cancel a debt of demands and expectations that one is holding onto, and to dissolve an attachment that blocks our flow of love and energy.
The singing heart
Hayes Grieco, a wife, mother and grandmother, found forgiveness work after a prayer. She asked God to show her tools for helping others heal and soon met her mentor, psychologist Edith Stauffer. Stauffer, who died in 2004 at 95, was a forgiveness guru who developed and taught the eight-step method.
Growing up as the oldest of eight kids with an alcoholic father, Hayes Grieco realized she had much to forgive and started with the first thing on her list.
“At the end of that experience I just felt so free and great, like I’d lost all this weight and my heart was singing,” she said. “I thought, ‘If this is forgiveness, I’m willing to do it.’
“It kind of grew on me, and the reliability and results were so consistent and impressive I thought, ‘I have to do this! This is how I’m going to heal people.’”
As an 8-year-old, she had gotten chills watching Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his I Have a Dream speech. “It was like he was holding out a light: He had this energy of truth and freedom,” Hayes Grieco said. “I remember thinking clearly that I wanted to grow up to be wise and free and to help others be wise and free.”
She wrote a book with that idea in mind. Be a Light: Illuminated Essays for Times Like These points readers toward truth, freedom and personal growth. She’s currently writing And Now I Will Be Free, a how-to guide on cultivating the forgiveness needed to let that light shine.
HERE ARE MY FORGIVENESS-RELATED POSTS:
EVA KOR: A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR FORGIVES THE UNFORGIVABLE
IMMACULEE ILIBAGEZA: A RWANDA GENOCIDE SURVIVOR WHO COULD ONLY KNOW PEACE THROUGH FORGIVENESS
BILLY VERA: FORGIVENESS IS THE DOORWAY TO HEAVEN
MY VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH SPIRITUAL MEDIUM JAMES VAN PRAAGH
MARY HAYES GRIECO ON THE EIGHT STPES OF FORGIVENESS
MY 2002 MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH WAYNE DYER
CAROLINE MYSS VIDEO ON HOW FORGIVENESS PROMOTES PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALING
WE CHOOSE OUR JOYS AND SORROWS
RECOGNIZE THE LIMITATIONS OF WHO YOU USED TO BE
REWRITE YUR STORY THROUGH FORGIVENESS
LOVE + FORGIVENESS = RELATIONSHIP REPAIR
A PRAYER FOR SENDING PEOPLE LIGHT AND LOVE
ABOUT PHIL BOLSTA
Phil is the author of Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything, a collection of 45 inspiring, life-changing stories from prominent people he interviewed, including Joan Borysenko, Deepak Chopra, geneticist Dr. Francis Collins, acclaimed sportswriter Frank Deford, Dr. Larry Dossey, Wayne Dyer, Dan Millman, Caroline Myss, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, Dr. Bernie Siegel, James Van Praagh, singer Billy Vera, Doreen Virtue, Neale Donald Walsch, and bassist Victor Wooten.
Here is a three-minute video that introduces you to Phil and his book. Click here to buy Sixty Seconds. Click here to ask Phil to add you to his e-mail list for updates on his blog and books.
Reading this book is like spending a few minutes face to face with each of the contributors and listening to their personal stories. Click here to read unsolicited testimonials from readers. Learn more by visiting the official Sixty Seconds website.
Sixty Seconds was one of three finalists in the General Interest/How-To category at the 12th annual Visionary Awards presented by COVR (Coalition of Visionary Resources) in Denver on June 27, 2009.
Tags: Forgiveness, love, Mary Hayes Grieco, spiritual
January 28, 2010 at 7:12 PM
we are indeed complex beings, and we realize that to forgive is truly Divine. It is especially difficult to forgive ourselves and those near and dear to us. Even as we verbally forgive the other person, it is quite difficult to totally rid one’s self of residual grudges, especially if the damage caused is long-term, or to one’s innermost sense of self-worth.
in this world of human logic where debits must balance credits, we find it hard to accept that a hurt must go unaccounted for; although there is such a thing as an account write-off, not everyone’s accounting system has this feature.
oftentimes, the best we could muster is: “Forgive and Forget” – I Forgive you, and don’t you Forget that … :-)
January 28, 2010 at 7:18 PM
Ha! Hadn’t heard the “Forgive and Forget” line before, ArrVee. Yes, human justice and divine justice can look very different from each other. And it’s difficult for some to accept that divine justice may not require their assistance.