Forgiveness

Have you forgiven someone? 

When I think of forgiveness , I notice that forgiveness is always about someone.

It's different from letting go.. You can let go of an idea, a project, a habit, a job and you kind of let go of things. 
Forgiveness is always about people.. You don't forgive a bad habit or an illness. You forgive people.

I have forgiven many people. And sometimes, after I have forgiven someone, I feel a  deeper anger, deeper sadness, and then I forgive them again, or remind myself that I already forgave. And so it goes in waves until the forgiveness is integrated, along with every other emotion involved. It is as if forgiveness creates space in which something else that was supressed can show up and release.

So what is it about people that makes us hold something against them that we carry around and have to release through the act of forgiveness?

I realize that it’s about something they did that made me feel unseen, that disrespected me in someway, and took my agency away.

Bad, hurtful, painful things happen to us, that don’t always lead to holding something. You can be in a martial arts class and be thankful for the hits you take because you participate willingly... You can be into BDSM and allow someone, even invite someone to dominate you in physically painful ways, but internally it does not lead to a loss of agency.

When someone reduces us, disrespects us in a way that takes our agency away, we feel incomplete, broken, and we carry this pain.

So when we forgive, we are reclaiming a part of ourselves. Our soul that was taken away from us, that was stolen from us, in that moment that made us feel less than we are and that hole gnaws at us, until we are ready to forgive and reclaim what is ours. That is how forgiveness feels to me.

When these parts come back to us, it feels as if they are coming alive from a period of being frozen. They come with their old stories, fresh energy. They want to get to know the rest of us, to hear the stories of our life they missed. In doing so, I am renewed as I am made whole again.

If you need to forgive someone, or if you want to forgive someone, or if you think you should, can you notice that there is a part of you that you want back?

Regardless of what happened, what they did to you, or to someone else, that took something from your being, can you imagine reclaiming that part of your self?

I wonder if instead of thinking of of forgiving, I feel myself and see the parts that were made numb, not accessible to me as if they were taken away from me, and I take them back. Forgiving almost becomes automatic.

What part of YOU do you want to reclaim? You need no one‘s permission to do it.

Simply reclaim for what was always yours, always you.

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P.S. They say that forgiveness heals. The funny part is that the person you forgive may not be aware of it at all.. sometimes they are long dead. So who is your forgiveness healing? It’s you. It’s me. I heal in forgiveness.