Those of my generation, think Cousin It from the Addams Family. For those not familiar, he was short & all long hair. Vivid word pictures & phrases stick with me & are the way I best learn something that will stick with me forever. I used to love to say the phrase that's the title here. In school I was fortunate to know several gifted cartoonists. Picture Cousin It being held upside down by little skinny legs, as far out from your body as possible, & all that hair. Dennis Catron's drawing was on the front page of the school newsletter & I think I still have it. But I don't even have to close my eyes to see that whole picture, it stuck with me all these years.
Carrying past wrongs forward in a relationship is very destructive. If you do that, you have an underlying anger that will intensify your disagreements & other issues with the person. If you've truly resolved the issue, you have to find a way to forgive & not bring it up again or carry it with you. Forgiveness is necessary for the relationship but most of all, for ourselves. You can't fully heal until you forgive. Forgiveness is for our own benefit more than the benefit of others. I separated from my first husband in 1990, & he set about to hurt me every way possible to punish me for asking for the divorce. It went on for years, one thing piled on top of another to forgive. And some of it was pretty unforgivable. So I carried a grudge without realizing it until 2010, & I was the only one truly hurt by it. It diminished over the years, but I was very uncomfortable around him all that time, & it was all on me. I acted nice but hated every moment. I doubt he really knew how I felt. I was the one who suffered from my unforgiveness, not him. Now that I've forgiven him completely, I actually enjoy being around him, & again, I'm the beneficiary of the forgiveness. If I hadn't forgiven my second husband already, he wouldn't be at all hurt by it because there's very little contact between us, but I'd suffer.
Please note there's a huge difference between forgiving & condoning & forgetting. And how do you forgive the unforgivable? How do you forgive ongoing abuse? Forgiving is not saying whatever was done is ok. Whatever it is, if it's something you have to forgive it wasn't something that was ok to do or say. Period. But remember that forgiveness benefits us most of all. Don't mistake forgiving with forgetting either. We never really forget the wrongs even when we forgive. That's part of why we really need to be mindful of our own behavior toward others. You can't unsay or undo anything so please be very careful what you put out there.
I know a lot about forgiving the unforgiveable. One thing necessary is understanding of what happened or was said & why. If you can understand what caused the other person to hurt you, it's easier to forgive. Taking personal responsibility is important too. Things don't happen in a vacuum. Often we've said or done something that is a part of the occurrence. Sometimes it's just as necessary to forgive ourselves & understand why we played the part we did. There are lots of tools to help you forgive, including prayer, meditations, & rituals like writing it down & burning the paper with intent. There are whole books on how to forgive. Use whatever you need, do anything & everything you can until you reach that point.
It's harder to forgive those who aren't sorry in any way & those who keep doing it to you. For reference on this, I think of my mother. I was her possession rather than a person in my own right & her emotional abuse only stopped recently, when I got her out of my house. By the time I confronted her over her treatment of me, it was too late for resolution because her memory was largely gone due to the onset of Alzheimer's. When I first confronted her, her treatment of me didn't change so there was obviously no remorse or validation. At first she belligerently argued all I said about my childhood, & it was very painful for me. And it was obvious from her continued pattern of interaction with me that nothing was going to change. I switched to addressing current conditions & there was still no real improvement. (You have to understand she was living with me at the time & largely bedridden, I had total responsibility & care for her so couldn't simply escape confrontation.) So I constantly had something new to forgive. In these cases it's really important to understand the why, & you just have to keep forgiving over & over, one thing after another after another. It's tough but important, again, entirely for your own emotional health & wellbeing. The best thing is to get away from unhealthy circumstances so what you have to forgive is not ongoing but that's not always possible. For years I was able to keep contact with my mother at a minimum but that required a lot of forgiving of myself because society & the Bible & relatives tell you over & over that we're responsible for our parents.
I know I'm not doing the subject of how to forgive justice, because I can't. As I've said, whole books have been written on it by experts because it's a very complex problem for many people. And despite the title of this blog, I've told you that I carried a grudge for years. This is why I'm telling you not to, & to learn to forgive. Carrying grudges & not forgiving colors all your other relationships including with yourself. You walk around with a darkness inside the size of the issue, & it colors all else for you including your judgments, reactions, decisions, & all relationships. It's part of the heart of you so it plays into everything you say or do. It taints you, your dreams, goals, thoughts, feelings. And you truly can reach a point of forgiving the unforgiveable & ongoing hurts. I know from experience. Eventually I did a ritual given to me by a friend who listened to his angels. I wrote down everyone who's ever hurt me that I thought I may not have entirely forgiven despite working on it. I was to include a sentence about what I was forgiving as if I was talking to that person & a sentence about forgiving my part in whatever it was. I was also to write down things I needed to forgive myself for, & did. There were a few that didn't involve being wronged by others, were just me doing wrong. Then I had to light a candle & stand in front of the mirror & read them once a day, every day, for 21 days. It worked! Now I don't really remember most of them, which is refreshing. No longer carrying some of those memories near the surface is a true blessing. One of the best results of forgiveness is forgetting. I could bring them to mind if I wanted to - they aren't entirely gone, but of course, I have no desire for that. I'm thrilled to have those things off my heart.
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