The Synergy Game - A Journey From Death to Life
Chapter 12 - Pathways to Peace: Embracing Forgiveness for Personal Freedom
This is my book The Synergy Game. I’ve made a few changes from the last chapter I published. First the subtitle and also the cover.
I am serialising it here a chapter a week. Each chapter will be available for everyone to read because, after all, that’s why I’ve written it, to help others, to share what has helped me to rebuild my life.
Chapter 12 - Pathways to Peace: Embracing Forgiveness for Personal Freedom
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Phew this is a big one, and probably one of the hardest.
As children we are taught about forgiveness, especially if we have siblings! Once we go to school it's inevitable someone will upset us, and we are given the forgiveness lecture by our parents or teachers.
But we are never taught why we should forgive, at least, I wasn't. I was told it was something I should do. Forgive and forget, or forgive, but don't forget. Either way, it's all missing the point.
We don't forgive because we are being kind to the other person, or we are finally ok with what happened and can rise above it all.
The reason we forgive is so we are not stuck in that situation anymore.
It's so we can leave it where it belongs in the past.
We don't want to have it in our present or carry it with us into the future. We forgive for ourselves, no one else. We forgive because we love ourselves enough to want to live with peace and not with anger or resentment.
It doesn't matter if it's a small thing or a big thing. It's the same process, one just happens faster and is easier. It's a lot easier to forgive someone who cut you off in traffic than it is to forgive a parent for abandoning you or a partner for betraying you.
It's a process with no definite timeline. We are all different, and all our situations are different too. Not only that, but each time we come up against a situation that requires forgiveness, that is unique too. There are no rules for this. Some people like to say there are, but I don't think so.
It's such a personal thing to go through, and there are so many variables. One such challenge is that it is often much easier to forgive when something has been done to you, as opposed to when something affects a loved one. The hardest is when someone hurts your child, either physically or emotionally.
I remember when my daughter had her first serious boyfriend, and he broke up with her in a less than honourable way, over the phone while she was visiting us in France. To see her pain and sadness made me want to hop over to the UK and do dreadful things to him.
I took a while to forgive the pain he had caused her. I would think I'd forgiven and then my mind would wander into the realms of possible ways to ruin his business or let his friends know how awful he was.
I learned the power of forgiveness many years ago. I had been reading a Jack Canfield book called The Success Principles. In it there's a chapter on forgiveness and a step-by-step process on how to do it.
I followed it to the letter, as I felt it was time for me to forgive my father for his abuse of me when I was a child. I took a while to work through it and the night I finished it, I slept the deepest sleep of my life and felt like a weight had been lifted.
That was only the start of it, however. It's not final; it's an ongoing process. You seem to go so far and then stop. I had started it, but it was still quite a while after that I could say I forgave him, and it was not affecting my life anymore.
As I'm writing this, I am trying to think how I would know when I have truly forgiven, and it's when I can think of that person in a neutral way. That thinking of them doesn't affect me, and I can remember happy memories and the good times we had together.
I read once that forgiving means we don't let that person have control over us anymore. That is one of the main factors in why I work towards forgiveness. If someone has wronged me, why would I let them have space in my head and control my life?
Holding on to anger, bitterness and resentment keeps me stuck in the past with them, and if you part ways and they are no longer part of your day-to-day life, you deserve to move on. You can't move on and let go if every time you think of them, you are planning their downfall or hoping that their life is a miserable mess.
In the previous chapter, I spoke about the burn and release protocol I was taught. This has helped me hugely on my forgiveness journey. I can't forgive if I keep it all bottled up inside me. It must go to get out of my head, my heart, my mind and my feelings.
By writing it out, I can see it more objectively. I can say things I maybe can't or wouldn't say in person. I can give free rein to my emotions and my feelings. I can be as angry and upset as I want to on paper, and it feels good.
We can't even think about forgiveness until we have acknowledged how much it hurts, how much pain we feel, and how disappointed we are by the other person's actions.
In the year after my marriage broke up, I wrote so many letters to my husband that I never sent. I told him exactly how I was feeling, I poured it all out. Every time after writing one, I would feel a little lighter, a little less like my head would explode until I didn't need to write them anymore.
I didn't exactly forgive straight away or all at once. It seemed to come in stages and was a different process than when I forgave my father. I'm not sure why, maybe because what happened with my father was when I was a child, and I was already distanced from him and had a beautiful life I was living. This time, it was the end of spending 34 years with someone, and my heart wasn't just broken. It was smashed to pieces.
I knew it was important to my health in every way, though, mentally, emotionally and even physically. It took quite a few months before I could even contemplate forgiving, probably over a year. Once the thought was there, though, I explored it and decided it was time to start the process.
I call it a process because when it's something that has affected your life in a big way, you can't just wake up one day and think, ok, that person is forgiven. It takes active work.
The first thing I started to do was spend part of my meditation each day working on it. At first, I would just try and see what it would feel like to forgive.
Then, I used a visualisation that I had been taught. You imagine yourself on a beach with a stick in your hand, and you write the name of the person in the sand. When I tried to do this at first, I wasn't able to, I couldn't see it, I wasn't ready. So, I started to send him love, peace and good thoughts. After a while of doing this, I wrote his name in the sand. I cried the first few times I did it.
Forgiveness is a form of letting go. You are breaking the control they have over you by what they did.
Another thing I did was what I spoke about in the previous chapter, on a full moon, which is a good time for things to conclude, I wrote a final letter. In it I told him I was letting him go and that I forgave him. I thanked him for the years we had together and how grateful I was that I knew what it was to love and be loved.
I cried so hard writing it and then reading it out loud after over the next few days. The burning of it on New Year’s Eve signified an ending and gave me a symbolic new start for the next year.
I think sometimes we need cut-off points. A definite act that marks one part of our life as the past and the next part as the future.
It's not something that's finished. It will take much longer for me to forgive fully and completely, but I am well on my way, and I feel better for it. I know people who are bitter and angry because of past hurts, and I never want to be like that. Not only does it make your life miserable, but it causes health problems, too. I’ve seen that firsthand in my own family.
I'm so grateful that I learned the importance of forgiving. I look at it as part of my self-care and self-love routine. It's not optional if I want to live a happy and full life.
It's difficult, and some days you may feel as if you have gone backwards instead of forwards, but the most important thing to do is not to give up and think it's impossible to do.
If you want to do it and will put in the time and effort, I can promise it brings peace and calm that is worth way more than the effort you put in because to feel like that is priceless.
Previous Chapter - Release to Heal: The Essential Power of Crying, Screaming, and Shouting
Next Chapter - Nature's Embrace: Healing and Transformation Through the Seasons of Life
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