Forgiveness

[rebl.brown]

Per some wonderful ideas from friends on my last post "dealing with hatred" I wondered if you all might have some thoughts on the idea of forgiveness.  What is it anyway?

Forgiveness, some people push it, some people say no, you don't have to do it.  Words are only symbols in an attempt to explain an idea.  I think forgiveness is letting go of a lot of things.  Of the hope that the parents will ever change or understand, that I can control another's behavior, the hope that the reality of abuse is not really true. The hope that I have the power to change the past.  I need to "forgive" the circumstances of my life.

What does it mean to forgive a person?  If you don't forgive does that tie you to the one you hate or not?  Part of me says whatever I feel I have the right to feel it and however I handle it is also honorable.  Maybe if I start from what I know forgiveness is not.  It is not letting someone off the hook.  It is not pretending abuse didn't happen.  It is not allowing someone to continue to abuse you.  It does not mean reconciliation.  It does not have anything to do with the other person.

For me, the things that my parents did are so unforgivable that there is no retribution I would be able to take that would restore justice.  Not the death penalty, not hate filled words, nothing. I could stand and recount everything and even if their eyes were suddenly opened and they owned it and understood it that would not set me free from all the damage, all the years.  If I cannot leave it to the divine, that, in this mess there is some type of righting of the scales or judgement or whatever you want to call it, that somehow justice does prevail, that there is even such a thing as justice, I don't think I could live with the sorrow.

That's important to me because for me to forgive I have to step aside and let go of the idea that revenge is even possible and let God have it not for the other person but for me.  For me.  I don't know, letting go, is complicated.  I have to have times where I wallow in the hatred, I have to, the suppression of emotion and denial of abuse nearly killed me before.  Forgiveness is nothing like that.  What do you guys think it is?

[Sitara]

When I think of forgiveness, I view it as something mutual. Something where both sides have to acknowledge that something happened. For example, if two people have a fight and they realize they hurt each other's feelings, you say sorry to each other and forgive each other and move on. I don't personally see forgiveness as something that is one sided. With my mom, I feel that if I forgave her for things she will not admit to, that I'm just allowing her to continue and allowing myself to be abused. Forgiveness for me is saying the issue is resolved and lets move on.

How I am working on moving on with my life where my mom is concerned is more with understanding, letting go, and moving on. I understand she is ill and I understand she is incapable of a lot of things. I'm working on letting go of things I always wanted but never will have, like a loving mother and supportive family. I'm working on moving on with my life so that I can become the person I want to be.

I don't see the point in forgiving someone who feels they've done nothing wrong. Is it really forgiveness if it's one-sided? It seems to me in that case it is more like letting go and moving on.

[lucyhoneychurch]

God what a fantastic post rebl... .

My history ended up taking away any spirituality beyond what I see in my garden, my woods (there are 10 turkeys who have shown up this fall, after 17 years without nary a one! I am loving it, watching the pecking order and drama and activity), my children's faces and now two awesome little grandchildren - that is all the religiosity I can handle - that of a blue sky.

For me, and only for me, it seemed that when the "pressure" of a system I'd embraced all my life, from the restraint imposed by abusive parents to keep up the facade of church and Sundays while home life was pure pure pure hell - to developing my own "brand" if you will and finding a niche in a wonderful setting (it seemed back then), to simply resting in the agnostic approach that nobody knows, a sort of cosmic shrug of "whatever" - all the efforts to analyze and attempt internal forgiveness about what had happened to me and my siblings seemed to simply fade.

I was ambivalent enough that it didn't matter.

This is what happened to me, not really what I sought.

If my programmed mind were still at it, I'd be caught up in not having feelings like you describe - where nothing any of them or either of them or my uBPD'd mother could say would wash the dungeon-like depravity away.

Because one word for what most of us have experienced is depravity. The tip of the iceberg is these child molesters who grab a baby girl or boy off the street, a total stranger's little loved one, and that's it.  In my world, the depravity was not a stranger's morbid abuse but my own parent's. Parents' plural as he knew and watched and let it happen.

Forgiveness - I see it and I hear it and I don't doubt its legitimacy at all. I know there are those who offer it to a wrongdoer for both their sakes, sometimes simply for their own as a way to move past a horrible grievous loss.

It's just not on my table anymore.

And I have made more progress since it seemingly evaporated than when I was trying to learn to drive it because I thought I had to at some point, to "move on" as people would say.

My world took care of so much of it. I have a house I love, I have children I am so deeply impressed with and by, and now two children have arrived that I can love and enjoy as a grandparent.  I'm good, is what I'm trying to say.

I know many here aren't in the same boat. It is still agonizing to have dreams where I wake up choking like yesterday morning because I am driving a friend's dad's truck into floodwaters after a wrong turn off a familiar highway and then suddenly I am going over a precipice and the rupture at the bottom woke me up - just now waking up from a dream where this same friend's hallway in his home is filled with - wait for it it's so damned creepy and weird - bloodied *Mickey Mouse* stuffed animals nailed to the walls... . I mean, my god... .

Something isn't resting inside of me at night, but I'll just say this - my waking hours are the best I've had in years.

You're right - do not suppress. Do not deny. It only drives it deeper I think... . where maybe we can't get at it no matter how many good things we now possess in our lives.

I say - rant. Vent. Scream. Hit (inanimate objects that will not harm you in turn). CURSE. Oh god, do I let the f-bombs fly at times about the stupidest things - mouse poo in my utensil rack in my steel sink - I mean REALLY little mouse how'd you manage climbing back out! eek!

I'm shaking your hand in our joint voyage in cyberspace because you are mulling and chewing and investigating and asking and seeking and possibly shaking your fist and I say the shaking of the fist, the adamant refusal to keel over, is where our path lies. Somewhere down that way is where we might find some salve and balm and healing - but I think we must and have the right to shake that fist at the sky, the heavens, the abusers, the enmeshed enablers, until we turn the fist in another direction and do something else with our hearts and minds. That would be the only idea of forgiveness I have at this point. Better "things" came along that absorbed my energy and allowed me to WALK AWAY because I could at that point, not because I'd worked at it.

I walked away because I had a place to walk TO. Not everyone reading my words does. I am divorced now, I live alone, I have my space, I call the shots, etc... .

Not everyone reading my words will get them, and I am so not prescribing anything whatsoever for my friends here - just describing how it "came about" for me.

I love these types of discussions - it's like we are all around a big table, hot tea or wine or cognac, there's a fire going in the woodstove, someone's baked maybe an apple pie and I've brought my famous pecan pie and we're just SHARING.

We never got to share before, did we/have we? many of us.

I love it.

thank you for throwing it out there rebl.

Here's to you (lifting my hot cuppa coffee in your direction!).  Be safe.