Day 4 ::   Something you have to forgive someone for

I have done a lot of forgiving in my time.  A lot.  Over time as bits and pieces of residual leftover emotion pop up, I have found a way to let my heart and mind forgive often recognizing that people have varying and differing emotions and I can only control my reactions.  When I stuff things down and move on without releasing the chip of ice surrounding my heart, it will always come back and bite me in the butt.  I keep learning this over and over again and its a painful lesson each and every time because it often results in me hurting someone else and the cycle begins again as the list grows and expands and then shrinks down again.

I tell you this so that you understand that I have forgiven many someones for some big stuff.  Really big stuff and not because I am so highly evolved but rather because some of those big forgivenesses were a direct result of intensive emotion pulled out during therapy sessions years later and in some cases decades after the event.  I don’t like to hold on to residual anger or feelings of pain because I want to live in the light and dance in the colour of this earth.

But.  If I am completely truthful there is someone that I haven’t forgiven and even when I try and talk about it, I see red and I can feel the anger sitting there threatening to spill out of me.  I have done a lot of selfish things and I have seen a lot of selfish acts but in most cases I am eventually able to find that understanding and forgive knowing that forgiveness doesn’t always mean that relationships continue on and that at the end of the day it is about me, forgiveness can be selfish in that it lets us move forward and releases us from the darkness.

The problem I have is that I don’t really know this person, she wasn’t my friend but rather was a friend of my husband’s long before I knew him.  Perhaps it is because she isn’t close to me that I find it difficult to forgive her because if I knew her I would like to look her in the eye and tell her how her actions affected me, still have the power to hurt me and perhaps I could find resolution.  If I knew her perhaps I could understand her motives and that might help me forgive. 

It was about a month after we walked out of nicu for the last time, the emotional pain so bad, I couldn’t actually stand straight.  We were invited to their house to stay so that “they could spoil us with love” (that was how it was presented to me).  I didn’t really want to make the drive as I was tired and just adjusting to my first week back at work but I went thinking it would be relaxing at the very least.

It wasn’t.  Shortly after we arrived, people started arriving.  Many strangers with small children running around playing screaming laughing.  The alcohol was flowing both inside and outside as I listened to complaints about being a mother and more laughter and drunkenness.  I listened to this woman go on and on about how much she missed my husband’s ex-girlfriend who was apparently so much fun at a party.  It was a living nightmare and I couldn’t take it so I escaped to the unfinished basement where I crawled under a sleeping bag and cried for hours.  The next morning, I was yelled at for leaving my ahem pad in the bathroom garbage as the dog had pulled it out and raced around the house with it leaving behind the blood that held my babies close to me.

Over four years later, my hands are shaking as I type this.  I remember the long drive home, my throat swollen and sore, my husband and I quiet because there were no words.  We were shell shocked by the whole experience still battered and bruised and unable to even understand what we were feeling.  To be exposed to that situation was incomprehensible.  I ended up with strep throat and in fever spent the next week in bed.

I haven’t forgiven her.  I know that I should especially given the way my heart jitters up and down as I write this down but I don’t know how yet.  We never see her except at those big events like mutual friend weddings and I don’t talk to her.  Period.  I have nothing to say .. what could I possibly say to this woman.  I am grateful that we live in different cities.  I don’t hate her and I wouldn’t wish any bad on her but I don’t understand what she was thinking to put me through that.  I don’t understand how a woman who is a mother could possibly be so insensitive.  Perhaps it is best that I don’t understand and maybe I don’t need to as I don’t imagine we will ever be friends.

And so I should forgive her but I find that I am unable to yet and remain hopeful that there will come a time when I can let this go and move my heart forward, fully into the light.

4 day truth: I am grateful that I have found ways to forgive both myself and others but realize that it sometimes takes a whole lot of time and effort and that at the end of the day, it isn’t really about the other person but about myself and how I am able to continue down my personal journey with a lighter heart. 

*Important note:  Please know this is not an invitation to comment directly about her in mean or unhealthly ways as it is not my intention to create a space for hate, anger or pain and I will delete any comments of that nature ~ not that I think any of my lovely readers would do that but it needs to be said.  I would like to believe that it wasn’t her intention to hurt me and I am fairly certain that it wasn’t.  Just writing that tells me that I am closer to forgiveness than I think. 

’30 days of truth’

Day 3 ::   Something you have to forgive yourself for

This morning, my chi gong alarm chimed on my blackberry at 5:15 and after a warm curl into my husband and a soft kiss, my feet hit the cold floorboards as I pulled on my yoga pants and a work out top, a clean pair of white gym socks and threw on my coat and black motorcycle boots and with a quick grab of my bright pink workout bag, I was down the stairs and into the cold dark car.  Music blasted at me loud and furious and with a shake of my head and a rub of my eyes, I started the drive across the river to pick up my son ~ its his week at his dad’s.  Less than 20 minutes later we were at the gym for our early morning workout routine.  He is training for basketball tryouts and as we ran up the stairs, I joked that I was training for old age. 

An hour and a half later, as we headed home (for a quick breakfast before he grabbed the bus for school and my husband and I headed off to work) chatting rather merrily (because those endorphins hit pretty hard when you work out that early in the morning), he said something that was one of those screeech double take moments for me.  He was talking about how it is really important when we fail at something that we don’t beat ourselves up because if we do then we will never truly succeed.  He said we have to forgive ourselves because it is the only way to move forward and make true positive change.  Seriously right!   He doesn’t read my blog and very much prefers living firmly in reality and generally only uses the internet for school research purposes which I know is not typical for most 16 year olds but he is who he is and I like him for it very much.  Anyway, there was no possible way that he could have known that it was the very topic I was struggling with writing.

The thing is, the something I have to forgive myself for is how much I let him down when my twin babies died.  I don’t want to get caught up with talking about the ways in which I let him down or how that affected him because that is not my story and I am not comfortable sharing any part of his story.  I will say that even though I knew from experience what it felt like to lose my parents and even though I wanted to prevent this, it was something that I failed at.  When I was 15 my sister almost died (well she did actually technically die but was revived) and spent more months than anyone should living in the Intensive Care Unit with bolts in her head and so many tubes and machines that she resembled more of a futuristic meld of human and machine than a young girl.  We lived in a small town with the nearest city (the city where I now live) hours away and though my parents did the very best that they could and I know this with all my heart, I lost them and as a result lost myself for a very long time. 

So I knew better but in my grief, I went away from him because I was emotionally unavailable even from myself and then as I started to heal, I retreated into the internet.  I didn’t see it while I was in it but I see it now and it breaks my heart. 

But he’s right about forgiveness.  I know that he has forgiven me and our relationship has grown beautifully.  It is different than it was four and a half years ago but we have gone through a lot as individuals and as a family.  We are not the same people we once were but in some ways it is so much better because we are true friends who meet each other in the middle with love and respect. 

The thing is … I have learned over the years how to be gentle with myself but the truth is I haven’t been able to forgive myself around letting him down in this way.  The absolute surrealness of life and how we learn our lessons never cease to amaze me and having all of this come full circle pretty much blows me away.  The beauty is that we were talking about something completely unrelated but the lesson stands.  This morning my son gave me the tools to forgive myself because I realized that the only way I could truly continue to be present and go forward building on the wonderful relationship that we have is by opening up my heart to forgiving myself.

day 3 truth:  With tears soaked into my heart I understand that I am lucky to have sat on both sides of this life lesson and am blessed to be surrounded by such wise and giving teachers.  I am forgiving myself even as I write these words.

’30 days of truth’