Forgiveness

The topic of forgiveness came up today in my world. I was reminded that a few years ago, I had anger, grudges and resentment directed at a number of people in my life. In my ongoing quest to heal and recover from cancer, I knew that part of the journey was dealing with my mental/emotional garbage.

I would have conversations in my head to the effect of:

“I’m so mad at so and so for this.”

“I can’t believe you did that to me.”

“I hate you for doing that.”

“You’re such an %$&*!!!”

I realized that I was really the only person suffering from this. Person X Y or Z, who I had a grudge or hurt feelings against, had no idea. If they did know, they didn’t care to rectify the situation. Some of these people I hadn’t even had any contact with for years.

I do believe that mental and emotional hurts have an effect on the body. If someone calls you a bad name or makes fun of you, it actually can hurt you physically, a lot of the time, you feel it in your chest.

I do also believe that there is a mental/emotional component to developing cancer and having cancer. (Certainly going through cancer has an ongoing mental/emotional strain.)

Like most people, I had emotional baggage stored up from my past, it was making me miserable. Why was I doing this to myself?

Mayo Clinic wrote this about grudges:

“What are the effects of holding a grudge? If you struggle with finding forgiveness, you might:

• Bring anger and bitterness into new relationships and experiences.
• Become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can’t enjoy the present.
• Become depressed, irritable or anxious.
• Feel at odds with your spiritual beliefs.
• Lose valuable and enriching connections with others.”

So this is how I dealt with my mental woes, in case it can help you deal with yours.

I accomplished this in a couple of different ways, depending on the person, my relationship with them and the level of hurt.

I talked with people, explained my feelings and received an apology. I didn’t go this route very much. In retrospect, a lot of the times, the problem was within myself.

If my hurt was from say my parent or sibling, now that I’m older or now that I’m a parent, I can put myself in that person’s shoes and try and understand (which doesn’t always work) why they did what they did. Sometimes, I would realize that I probably would have done a similar thing in the situation, and that would bring understanding to me.

I would then say out loud, “I forgive you Person X, for doing this, that or the other thing.” Sometimes, I had to say it a few times.

Other times after doing that, I would say to myself, “that sob #*$&#&$*#&#*$&#!!! GRRRRRR…..” and I knew that method didn’t work.

There is a practice of writing things down on a piece of paper and burning the paper up. You can burn it in a fireplace or buy a clay pot and burn it outside (in a safe burning spot!).

You write down all your emotions. All your anger, resentment, rage, sadness, whatever. Write down the situation that happened to you. Write like you are writing a letter to someone, if need be. For particularly hurt feelings, I found for me personally, writing swear words a lot helps.

The key is to pour your emotion into it. Spelling or handwriting tidiness doesn’t matter at all! Finish your page and lite that paper on fire, throw it into your pot and watch it burn. Depending on your level of hurt, you may have to write several pages about the one incident to be rid of it (or a ream of paper). If it still bothering you, keep writing.

“Person X, how could you have done this to me?”

“You are a #*$&#&$*#&#*. I’m so mad at you.”

“You made me feel ___________.“

“You #*$&#*-&#*$! And the time you did this #*$&#+#*!#&$!”

Once I could feel like I was working through it or getting it out of my system, I would write on a new piece of paper,

“I forgive you Person X, for doing x, y and z.” Lite it, throw it in the pot and watch it burn. You may have to write a whole sheet of paper of “I forgive you Person X” for you to have resolution.

Just like that, I let it go and I was free (time to work on the next person or situation). It’s also quite amazing, once you actually forgive someone, how you forget about things. It just melts away.

At times, the person you need to forgive, is yourself. People make mistakes in their lives and can hold onto it, beating themselves up for it. Everyone is human and make human mistakes, bad judgments and thoughts. If I need to forgive myself, I look at myself in a mirror and say “I forgive you.”

As a personal example, every time I had a meeting with my oncologist, I would generally be ticked off and frustrated afterwards. My oncologist was about 1000 years old, stuck in his ways and if he wasn’t a doctor, he would have been a politician, the way he dodged all my questions (that pissed me off the most).

I would get so mad and I’d walk around cursing his name, #*$&#&#*. Of course, he was completely oblivious to most of my annoyance (occasionally I expressed my displeasure to him 😡). I was torturing myself, and it wasn’t doing me any favors and I was the one suffering.

I wanted to work it out within myself, because that’s where the problem was. He wasn’t a bad person. I realized he was part of a medical system that only allowed him to talk about certain things, so they weren’t sued. I realized he has a tough job, where the majority of the time he fails. I wrote a lot of swear words and situations, and a couple pages of saying I forgave him and watched it burn. It was gone and no longer harassing me.

Sometimes it is excruciatingly hard to want to forgive someone or actually forgive them. It can be one of the hardest things you ever do. It can take so much effort and drum up so many negative emotions that people won’t do it. Forgiveness can and will change your life. It changed my life, my relationships and released me from my torment and I feel so much better.

If you are struggling with the idea of forgiving someone, do it for selfish reasons. Just like how you can be the one suffering the most from a grudge, you will be the one who benefits the most from forgiving. Your life will improve greatly if you can forgive.

Forgiveness comes from within yourself. Other people can’t do it for you, and other people can’t prevent you from doing it. It’s all up to you. Please give it a try….