What About Forgiveness?
A hard thing for me in my journey of healing was hearing that I should forgive the person who abused me. Or to forgive others who have hurt me with their judgement, lack of support or betrayal. Whenever I hear a platitude like “It’s important to forgive and forget” or “forgiveness isn’t for them, it’s for you” or even “if you don’t forgive then you won’t be forgiven” I start to get curious. So I started to take in a lot of information about the topic, and I’m sharing it here in the hope that other’s might be able to better define what forgiveness means to them.
What about releasing the anger?
A dictionary definition of forgiveness is to intentionally decide to let go of resentment and anger. I agree with that. We all should be actively metabolizing our emotions to aid in our physical and mental wellbeing. And I’m glad that this definition focuses forgiveness more on the target and not the offender. But this definition also feels like it’s a one time thing to forgive and be free from your anger and resentment. In my experience, releasing these hard emotions is not a one time thing like in the statement “I forgive you”. Processing the anger and resentment happens many times during the course of our healing and hopefully this will relieve the grip it has on us.
When is the right time to forgive?
A great deal of my experiences of forgiving people have been compulsory. I think I have quickly accepted the need to forgive because of my attachment to being a people pleaser. I didn’t want to be judged for being a grudge holder. I wanted to be the nice, loving (forgiving) girl. We’ve also been deeply, and in many instances, destructively socialized this way. Forgiveness should be the last thing that happens, if at all, when someone hurts you. The work of forgiveness has been misplaced when the focus is on the target to forgive. The actual work of forgiveness should be shouldered by the offender or the abuser. By forgiving too quickly or without the offender/abuser having a plan for reparation, we in a way give them permission to do the same thing to us again, and over and over. When the weight of forgiveness is on the target, we can miss if the offender even asked for forgiveness.
If you follow a Christian world view, Jesus says we should forgive as long as the offender repents and asks for forgiveness. How can there be real forgiveness without reparation? And what reparation would satisfy you if you were the target of ongoing abuse? I’m not writing with an answer. We can only answer these questions for ourselves.
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness from a place of my own power. I can ask myself what conditions I can create to be able to forgive if the offender makes it possible. I can take space away from the person without stating I will never speak to them again. I can aid in my own healing through processing my pain with a therapist, trusted friend or coach. I would surely not gossip about or relive my experience with others that are not in my trusted circle. But I’m okay knowing when forgiveness can’t be an option. And we only know when we process our own experience and believe ourselves before we believe others.
Please reach out if this is a topic you would want to take a closer look in a nonjudgmental setting with a trained spin cycle coach.
Our work is to learn and grow and in all things offer forgiveness and compassion to ourselves first.
