Guest Writer Genia
By now I’m sure you’ve heard people say to forgive those who have hurt you. I’m sure you have also heard people say that you don’t forgive people for their sake… you forgive them for your sake. But just hearing this does nothing if you don’t fully understand what it means. So let me try to help you break down this whole idea of “forgiveness”. I hope this makes your journey a little easier.
We must learn to forgive those who have hurt us in the past. I’m not talking about your ex-boyfriend who cheated on you, your baby mama who uses your kid against you, or your buddy who owes you money and keeps bullshitting you. I am talking about your past. Think back to your earliest memories as a child. Think back to the first 6 or 7 years of your life… when you were just forming your perception of this world. When were you first wounded by the darkness, fear, hatred, spite, jealousy, selfishness, greed, misery, or pain of another person? Believe it or not, many of us were first wounded by our very own parents. And if not our parents, perhaps it was a sibling, grandparent, or someone in our immediate family. For a few of us, it could have been our first school-teacher or maybe even a bully on the playground. Acknowledge the true source of your pain. Who first hurt you? Take a look into your past wounds, your childhood wounds, those moments in life that taught you about abandonment, betrayal, and shame. Those moments in life that taught you, as an innocent and beautiful child, that not everyone would love you and even those who did love you were capable of taking their love away. These are the people who first introduced you to the darkness of this world... whether intentional or not. And these are the people you need to forgive.
You can heal your childhood wounds. Once you acknowledge your pain and are able to clearly see the source of it, you need to forgive. Forgive because everyone is really doing the best we can with what we know. Forgive because their actions have absolutely nothing to do with you. Forgive because they were not strong enough to protect you from their pain.
Forgive them for not being able to forgive.
And then thank them for introducing you to the darkness because it has given you a chance to grow. Thank them because without them, you would not be who you are today. Thank them for being in your life and teaching you to empower and love yourself.
We each have our own journey in this lifetime. Some of us choose to push through the pain and walk up the mountain because we want to remove ourselves from the suffering… we feed the light inside of us because we want to ascend to a higher realm of thinking, feeling, BEing. However, it is much easier to walk downhill than up which causes some of us to choose to give in and feed the darkness we have been introduced to. We feed the darkness by ignoring our wounds and letting them fester. We feed it by not having compassion for each other and being consumed with revenge, jealousy, selfishness, hate. We feed the darkness with anger and resentment. And the more we feed it, the bigger it gets. Sooner or later, we are consumed by it and that path up the mountain is just too much to bear. It’s pretty obvious what happens to an open wound if you do not clean it, take care of it, and make sure it properly heals. It becomes infected and an even bigger problem for you than your initial wound does it not? When you walk through life with unhealed emotional wounds, you are leaving yourself open for feelings of blame, guilt, shame, fault, and weakness to seep in. And then you find yourself inflicting, copying, imitating, duplicating, echoing the same type of pain on others… intentionally or unintentionally. Some like to call this “the cycle of abuse”. Take care of your emotional wounds.
We can’t hide from ourselves. We can’t heal from past wounds if we refuse to forgive others. And whatever lessons we are meant to learn will continue to resurface until we learn them. You were given this life for a reason. Feed the light within you. You will shine once you practice kindness, compassion, and…forgiveness. Heal yourself.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
Many thanks to guest writer Genia. We appreciate her enlightened perspective and look forward to her future contributions.