“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live.” – Neville Goddard

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been traveling—not just across miles, but back through time. Returning to New Mexico, where I lived for 27 years, stirred deep memories and surprising truths about myself, my relationship with my children and grandchildren, and my bond with the land.

I moved to New Mexico at 22, following my first husband’s dream to return to his hometown of Albuquerque. I don’t remember regretting leaving the east coast. It was the next right thing to do when you got married: follow love where it took you. I didn’t know that isolation would soon follow, or where those feelings would lead me. At that time, I knew so little about myself. I didn’t have the spiritual teaching I live by now—only the eager hope of a young woman ready for a new life. With our first child, our cat, a Pontiac, and a handful of belongings, we set off for Farmington, New Mexico for that was the place that my husband had employment.

Fast forward: Twenty-seven years later, I left both my marriage and New Mexico to pursue my dream of becoming a working actress in Los Angeles—a leap that ultimately brought me to my relationship and marriage to Patrick Feren. I could never have predicted this shift in my life when I first arrived in New Mexico 27 years before.

Whenever I’ve returned to New Mexico over the years, I’ve felt waves of nostalgia mixed with guilt and the occasional wondering of what if I had stayed? But this recent trip was different. The deep inner work I’ve done—the same work that birthed my book Where is My Red Dress?—allowed me to release guilt and see the past through the lens of its blessing. I could finally honor it as part of the winding road that shaped me. I believe I have finally recoded the past to bless the now.

How does one recode the past to bless the now? If life is about evolution and expansion, then change is inevitable. Hurt arises when we regret and believe we “should” have done things differently. Patrick and I made a promise when we married: we would always allow each other to change. Change is life itself. What does it mean to recode one’s experiences and life? “In personal growth and psychology, recoding means changing the way your mind stores, interprets, and responds to experiences.” It’s like rewriting the “mental software” you’ve been running—transforming old patterns, beliefs, and emotional triggers into new, more supportive ones. This is what the practice of the Science of Mind has done for me. I have literally formed new neural pathways in the conceptions I have about myself and my relationship to life and my choices.

Through the work I’ve done and through my intention to heal and make this trip to New Mexico a time of discovery,  I was able to look at everything from the standpoint of my new self. I didn’t see my leaving New Mexico as abandoning my grown chidren. I saw it as an opening for them to grow into independent adults. I realized I had given them something greater than even financial support—I had given them the example of following one’s faith and letting go when the time was right. Even now, they come to me when they’re ready to take their own leaps of faith. I was more than money to them. I was inspiration. I was loved and accepted exactly as I am. Any time I felt myself feeling displaced, and I did, I knew I was trying to fit my old self into my new skin.  

To recode the past is to see every step as purposeful. Even my first marriage was a blessing—important in its time, and complete when it ended. As Joe Dispenza says, “A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom.” Blessing the present doesn’t mean erasing the past—it means transforming it into sacred fuel for spiritual growth.

Ernest Holmes reminds us, “Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” The past is no different—it reflects our current interpretation. With the New Thought spiritual tools like affirmative prayer, meditation, and forgiveness, we can rewrite the old “scripts” in our minds, transforming fear into faith, guilt into grace, and trauma into triumph.

Then I traveled to Los Angeles, where more healing took place. I returned to reclaim my voice—literally. For nearly two decades, I carried the hurt of being unaccepted as a singer in my former spiritual home. In truth, I had silenced myself by giving others’ opinions too much power. But on that visit, I stood up, sang, and healed. No regrets—only gratitude. I even received an unsolicited apology. The person was transformed from my transformation. This is what we do when we step into our power. We give others the permission to do the same.

If you want to change your past, you can. Look at it differently. The observer effect teaches us that our focus changes our reality—even the reality of what has been. Choose to see the gifts, the lessons, the strength you’ve gained. Emma Curtis Hopkins said, “Bless everything.” A Native American elder, Golden Eagle, spoke those same words to me before I left: Bless everything, every day. And when we bless it all, the blessings find their way back to us.

My realization as I write this is this. Life is a journey into wholeness, a reclaiming of our true selves. The stumbling blocks, the traumas, the seeming mistakes that we think we have made are simply pathways to see more, be more and live more fully. It’s not what happens to us; it’s what happens through us and then how we process it for change.

Recoding our past is simply taking our experiences that we think left us wounded and less whole and instead seeing them as the fuel that propelled us forward to greater versions of ourselves.

Blessings Abound,

Rev. Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren, Author, Co-Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua’i