Forgiveness

[ecomama]

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different".  Oprah Winfrey

How many times have you heard someone say, "You need to forgive that person" ??

One billion and counting would be my answer lol. My question to the person saying that to me, was 
"Tell me HOW to forgive, like give me the STEPS to follow and I will do it!"... 

No one has been able to answer the HOW to do this. Maybe I have forgiven now, maybe I haven't, IDK. 

Is forgiveness a practice we work at every day? 
Is it visualising a little gift box wrapped with a bow and handed to that person? (Yep that was suggested to me lol). 
Does TIME help us forgive or is this just "letting go"? 

I've found it VERY hard to Pray loving Prayers for people I needed to forgive. Just sayin' lol. 

Although the Bible has Jesus' words "Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do." I'm not Jesus. 

Have you forgiven people who've wronged you? 

Could you be brave enough to share with us HOW you forgave that person or people? 

Thankyou for your contributions. 
Love EM

[ecomama]

Dear Tony WK, I completely believe you did no wrong with mother. I know no one is perfect but I can just imagine you would be one of THE most reasonable people to work things out with. xxxx

Thankyou for your post. It illustrated how a 3rd person who is trusted somewhat by both parties CAN effect healing in the relationship. And as much as your cousin's heart was breaking at the loss of her mum, yours was broken by the loss of her too, and exponential hurt by the travesty of events around your first marriage ending. 
I'm grateful to know you and I appreciate knowing more of your story, thankyou for sharing. 

Hmmm I think my cousins are all NC with me! lol. Just because their minds were polluted by my mother. But when THEY all went NC with my mother they blamed me lol. For decades I copped the brunt of mother's violent episodes and I "cushioned" the family by being there "in the middle" shielding them. When NC that cushion was removed so I was to blame CLEARLY LOL! 

Ahhh life hey? 

I must say I am only NC with people who've been violent to not only me but my children. They just happen to be related by blood or ex marriage.
With all others, we've usually been able to mend things with a lot of SPACE. But as I get older I just don't have time for the bs just saying! Really depends on the motivation for them to know me, just sayin' again! 

I've forgiven my mother ofcourse, it's hard for others to understand but if I had any emotion for her it's compassion. She has extremely unmanaged MH issues and has had since childhood. But I'm still NC. She's extremely manipulative, a MASTER lol, so I doubt I'll ever see her again willingly. 

I realise I've mismanaged my replies to another member by withholding information and that's not fair to them. 
So I'll go off and try to rectify things if I can. 

Thankyou Tony WK, a White Knight indeed! 
Love EMxxxx

[Summer Rose]

Hi Ecomama and others

Fascinating thread. Hope it’s okay to share my forgiveness story …
As a teen I was hit by a drunk driver. He was over the limit, ran a red light, was on the wrong side of the road, and travelling with no headlights. The car I was travelling in exploded. The coward ran away. A stranger saved my life.

I was left with very serious injuries, including a broken back.

To top it off, the drunk driver never asked for forgiveness. Lied to police and showed no remorse. His sentence of one month jail reflected the norms of some 40 years ago.

Angry, bitter and resentful doesn’t even begin to cut it. Now, I could have hung on to it all, but I let it go.
All that negative emotion was destroying me and getting in the way of my recovery. So, in my heart and mind I forgave him. And, in turn, returned to be the girl I had been. A girl with the will to learn to walk again.

I forgave him for me. It was a gift to myself. And it freed me.

To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember his name. Yet the face and the name of the man who saved my life will be with me until the day I die.

I have used forgiveness to heal myself all of my life. It just feels right for me.

Please don’t think I’m telling anyone you must forgive those who have wronged you because I’m not. I’m just sharing.

Kind thoughts to you all 

[ecomama]

Hey Summer Rose, thankyou for sharing more of your story with us and how your journey towards recovery included forgiveness. 

I can only imagine that carrying a full burden of negative feelings would have added weight when learning how to walk again. I'm so glad you're free! and I'm so grateful you're walking again lol. How wonderful. 

I also believe that forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves. 

I found the phrase "letting go" wasn't enough of something or other, IDK ACTION? 
IDK but whatever it was didn't feel tangible enough for me to feel entirely free of thoughts of the perps. 

In the 12 Step Programs there's "let go and let God" which helped me enormously through many years of Courts. Once I had done beyond everything humanly possible, and to help me sleep at night, I could imagine bundling all the Court stuff up + any other thing on my mind like FOOD and shoes for my kids and handing it over to God to sort. 

This felt like a bandaid though. Not quite forgiveness. 

Last night during a Meditation I wasn't trying to imagine the perps but one of the worst ones came into my thoughts. In reaction I filled myself with LOVE and put it all around this perp as I visualised it walking away from us down a road. 

Fortunately I don't have any feelings of vengeance or revenge for any of them, BUT perhaps also these feelings could be being masked by my belief in Karma. lol. 

Love EMxxxx

[Summer Rose]

Hi Ecomamma

In this first instance of major forgiveness in my life I had no professional support. This was 40 years ago and MH wasn’t even on anyone’s radar. No one even mentioned MH in terms of my recovery or asked me about my feelings, despite the fact that I was surrounded by doctors. There were no podcasts or even books I could access as I couldn’t go to a library and online shopping wasn’t even a future dream.
I relied on what I’d been taught by my parents growing up and at church. It helped that I had the example of my parents to follow. I chose to forgive because I didn’t like who I was becoming and it was an instinct. And when I did, I felt like I had emerged from a fog. It was an actual moment of “I’m back” and lighter and I can move forward again.

 I see this learning experience as the silver lining to the accident that changed my life.

As I’ve moved through life I’ve been challenged time and again by the need to forgive, like many other people. It’s not easy.
I’ve found a sweet spot where I can balance forgiveness with self-protection through boundaries and reframing of thoughts.

For example, I have a toxic person in my life through marriage. I have very firm boundaries in place on contact with this person. I simply don’t let her close enough to hurt me or my children, and have empathy for her struggles with alcohol and MH.

For me, Archbishop Reverend Bishop Desmond Tutu is the world’s inspiration on the art of forgiveness and I find his writings helpful.

I wish you—and everyone else—well with your own personal journeys in this space. Again, my support for everyone here is true and unconditional. Please know I’m not preaching, just sharing.

Kind thoughts to you

[ecomama]

Hey Summer Rose, thanks for your post. I didn't take your post as preaching lol. ALL GOOD! 

My question at the beginning and throughout this thread has been HOW TO forgive? 
ie was there a "process" you even made up yourself? 
I find the processes I make up myself far more beneficial than anything else, perhaps because it relates directly to me and I'll credit "piggy backing" information in all areas of living a whole hearted life, not only forgiveness, in my life. 

I know the benefits and probably have "forgiven" most people. Probably all IDK lol. 
My other question is how did you MEASURE that you had forgiven that person? 

I don't mean to put you or anyone under the spotlight of interrogation lol! 

I was also raised in the Church(es), my parents were Missionaries. 
Even My Church only had 1 way - to Pray with love to Jesus that He would look after this person. 
I'll be honest here, the only Prayers I could authentically do was to Pray that the Almighty would PROTECT anyone in their lives. That was it. 

But yesterday I had a lovely Meditation and Blessed demon with love. Not the VERB uck no. 
With a light pink fairy floss like cloud of love, turning demon around so it would face the OTHER way away from my children and I and go off walking down the road. 
I liked that. 

But I make no excuses for demon's behaviours. The actions were carried out with sure footedness evil intent. It was no accident. And I'm not saying that's any better or worse either. 

Just a 'forgiveness process to follow' is what I think would help people. A lot! Myself included. 

Love EMxxxx

[Summer Rose]

Hi EM

The process for me has evolved over time. Step one is to first make up my mind that I want to forgive. This can take some time, but for me the longer I live with hurt, anger, etc the worse I feel. Me carrying negative emotion doesn’t hurt anyone but me.

Then I use a couple of tools. Reframing of the incident and/or person. I try to separate “evil”, hurtful, unkind actions or words from what is after all just another flawed human being.

Sometimes I use a visualisation where I put all the “crap” in a rowboat and send it off floating toward a waterfall. I watch it plunge and smash into the rocks and disappear.

Often I will read passages from The Book of Joy, co-authored by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

I also often tell others what I am doing, as I find it helps keep me accountable.

I measure success by how I end up feeling about me (eg lighter) and about the other person. Sometimes it’s indifference, sometimes it’s kindly and sometimes it’s a return to genuine affection.
But that doesn’t mean that the relationship ends up being the same or that I don’t protect myself with boundaries. It also doesn’t mean that I won’t take action to protect myself or loved ones (eg lodge a complaint or seek legal advice on a matter). But I can do all of that without anger, bitterness, hurt, etc.

The caveat to all that is that it doesn’t always work, I’m not perfect and I haven’t been tested by anyone I really love (eg mother, child, husband). That’s why I really appreciate other views, like those held by Tony, because I can see a place where a different approach might be genuinely warranted. I’ll cross that bridge when, and if, I come to it.

Your church experience sounds challenging. So happy you had a good meditation!

Kind thoughts to you 

[ecomama]

Thankyou Summer Rose! 
Thankyou so much for sharing your visualisation technique for forgiving a person. I really appreciate this! 

"Step one is to first make up my mind that I want to forgive. This can take some time, but for me the longer I live with hurt, anger, etc the worse I feel. Me carrying negative emotion doesn’t hurt anyone but me."

And herein lies the TRUTH! 

Hence forgiveness being a conscious process we do for OURSELVES. 

I agree BOUNDARIES are crucial. 

Love your visualisation lol. I imagined what happened at the BEACH today! An elderly man, form a European country, came up to us while we were flying my grandchildrens' KITE! He showed us what his family did when he was a little boy! Awww love that. He took a piece of paper, tore a hole in the centre and put it around the kits string. He said "This is a letter to Heaven". 

I'm going to USE that. (Being from generations of sailors I can't smash boats, even in my imagination lol, but I LOVE that this works for you!)

Accountability is really funny for me... I had another experience talking with my Fiance today and realised there was ANOTHER person I needed to forgive. They're lining up! Hahaha. 
I think that even the fact I find this all "humorous" leads me to think I'm well on the way. 

Yes! Getting to a feeling of "indifference". On Chump Lady we call this "The Land of 'meh'" like we don't love nor hate the person, we simply feel nothing. 

I've found EXTREMELY interesting YT talks lately. SO my aim now is to be GRATEFUL for them. Bit of a high goal BUT without having the childhood I had and the many experiences I've had, I would not have discovered the most amazing things about myself; resourcefulness, FAITH, what LOVE means! Courage of a Lion lol. 
Bravery in the face of extreme adversity. 

Because I've used all these traits to be where I'm at now. LOVING LIFE, joyful! Happy beyond measure. 
And so it is. 

Yeah my Church experiences were a bit weird when I was younger. Then I was honest with those around me and I felt pushed but embraced. All good there! 

Love EM

[Summer Rose]

Hi EM

I suppose my visualisation is a bit extreme! lol But it works for me. Glad it was helpful in some way.

Your words are very kind and you seem to been through an awful lot and come out on top! I’m very happy for you and grateful for your generous sharing.
You embody hope and provide a great reminder that there is always hope for brighter days ahead.

We all need that hope, so keep posting and spreading your great energy. 

Kind thoughts to you 

[ecomama]

Dear Summer Rose, I LOVED your visualisation because it worked for you! 

I LOVE that you shared it with us! So thank you! 

Not weird lol, it was freaking AWESOME! Quite like you right? hahaha... I meant that btw. 

What ever techniques, processes and understandings we can share here for others, so they feel the same FREEDOM, is worth investing our time for. 

Carrying the burdens of hurt from the past into our present day is something we can CHANGE. 
I see forgiveness as part of that healing journey. 
I've now accessed ways to forgive any one with compassion. 1 day with this intention and it worked lol. 

NOW is all we have and NOW is when we are creating our future! 

I've been Meditating for minimum 3 x per day and the changes within my body and mind are remarkable. 
Everyone around me is NOTICING too! That's hilarious! Hahaha. 

This amazing feeling of wellbeing I exude now is spreading to ALL those around me! I feel SO ELATED about this! 

Indeed my past was remarkable too lol! A list of horrendous happenings and MIRACLES abound. 
I NEVER LOST FOCUS ON HOW I WANTED MY LIFE TO LOOK! Completely healed, supremely healthy, happy, joyful, abundant in all spheres and it IS this way and gaining momentum. 

We ALL have this power within us. 
Love EM

[ecomama]

Thank you everyone for your valuable contributions on the Forgiveness topic! 

Just letting everyone know I'm taking time off the forums. All is GREAT in my world, I'm beginning many creative projects for my businesses, focusing on my family and friends in my REAL life. 
It's time. Probably beyond the right time lol. 

Thanks everyone, 
Love and best wishes for AWESOME mental HEALTH! 
EM