A few thoughts on forgiveness for my first post, it seems...
Forgiveness is a concept I struggled with for many, many years. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say I came from an abusive, highly dysfunctional home.
For a long, long time, I would never forgive anything, EVER. I kept a record of everything, and used those things as a weapon, and also as a shield to keep people at arms' length. I never forgot, I never forgave.
Eventually, as I grew and healed (something that is still happening), I realised that a good portion of my emotional "baggage" was the fact that I had to keep a record of everything, that I never forgot and never forgave.
I had to think about it for years before I realised that forgiveness is not saying "It was okay what you did to me." It's saying "I'm sick of holding this debt, so I'm writing it off."
The metaphor I use is this: Imagine someone borrows money from you. You go to collect it and they refuse to pay you. You keep asking, they keep refusing. Eventually, maybe after a long, long time, you realise that they're never going to pay you back, so you might as well just write off the debt, balance the books, and stop chasing them for it. You
forgive the debt.
I've known this for a while, but still struggled with it. I wanted to hang on to my anger, to my outrage, to my indigation, to all that stuff. I deserved it! They owed me!
Just recently, though, for various reasons I decided that I was going to start forgiving. EVERYTHING. And so I have. It's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I just let it all go. I just say "Yeah, you were nasty and you never apologised, I'm tired of caring about it, I forgive you." Or I say "You were careless with my feelings, maybe on purpose and maybe not, but you were and you hurt me, but I'm not interested in carrying the burden of that any more, so I forgive you." Or various other things, depending on the situation.
I've become so adept at this that I'm getting to where I can just give a little shake of my head and take a couple of breaths and let it go. Gone. Forgiveness. Sometimes it's "I forgive you, let's resume our relationship," and sometimes it's "I forgive you, never darken my doorstep again," but it's still that release, and I genuinely do forgive as far as I can tell. (I don't forget, but that's another story.
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I've found that in the process of forgiveness, I am much less burdened, much less bound to the past, much less tied to people I'd rather not be tied to. I'm free of them, and whatever they think about the subject is immaterial. It's given me tremendous healing.
And I also find that in forgiving others, I am more able to forgive myself. I tend to be hard on myself, and when I'm forgiving of others, I can extend that to myself, as well.
Perhaps this is just my peculiar psychology at work, I don't know. I do know I'm far from the only person who has found power and strength and freedom in forgiveness, though.
So, that's my take on it. Hope it helps, or at least gives some food for thought.