What is forgiveness?
Comments
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Barbe...Regarding Wallis...She was SHOCKED that David renounced the thrown. Truly shocked. The bottom line was....she didn't love him as much as he loved her and when he abdicated, she realized she was stuck with him for the rest of their lives.....
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, and was never made a Duchess to boot!! hehehehee
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Barbe...THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! The Queen Mother NEVER forgave them! That's what I said in my first post regarding myself...and then about the Queen Mother. You don't have to forgive and forget...To me that's a bunch of bunk. You have to figure out how to move on....
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She did become a duchess. But NOT "Her Royal Highness." And look what the Royal family did to Diana....They gave her the title "Her Royal Highness" and then took it away......
Just to show you how devoted David was to Wallis....he was ticked off at his family for not giving Wallis the title...in their private home he had all of their linens inscripted with HRH The Duchess of Windsor. Sad. Very, very sad.....
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Gotcha!! I thought you were trying to say the Queen forgave them.
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VR, I read your post. It illustrates the struggle we are discussing here. Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mum blamed the Windsors for the death of the King. It is hard to forgive or forget that.
I guess for me, there are certain people that I cannot see, or if I do see because I have to (a family member) I stay as far away physically and emotionally as I can. My daughters have told me that they cannot understand how I can still speak to certain members of my family, and that they would never speak to me if I did to them what has been done to me. I tell them that it has taken me a lifetime to get me to this point--well that and therapy!
I don't trust them, and I don't allow them access to me or my life. I have a civil relationship. More than that, I cannot do.
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Just listening here ladies but want to say your posts are very helpful
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Just listening here ladies but want to say your posts are very helpful
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VR .. I read your post too about the Royal family. That feud went on for years and years and was so sad. I also agree you have to figure out how to move on.
I can't remember who wrote about just taking your hands off the other persons neck. That in itself is a big relief. Maybe some of that relief is forgiveness.
I raised my son alone since he was a little baby. His father NEVER contributed any child support and could not be depended on to pick him up when he was scheduled to. I harbored such deep resentment and hatred for him, and kept it to myself. I did not want to hurt my son by talking negatively about his father. He was already hurt by him and I didn't want to make it worse.
I guess my son was around 16 when one day he made some happy positive comment about his father. I said to him that I was glad he felt he had a good relationship with him at that time, but don't ask me to forgive him, because I can't. That's all I said.
This was a long time ago ... I haven't forgiven him for his neglect ... but so much time has gone by that I just let it go and don't carry it around with me anymore. My son is a grown man now and he looks back and sees the pain his father caused him. I'm just glad that I didn't add to his pain all those years ago by slamming his father constantly.
Maybe the key was all the time that went by and I just decided somewhere along the way to take my hands off his neck.
Bren
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I really admire people who are able to look the enemy straight in the eye and make like there is/was never anything wrong.I went to a family members wake awhile back.her X husband who is the worst piece of crap showed up.The lady who died hated him.Her daughter who is like a daughter to me was able to go over to her Xhusband and speak to him very nice.Now if that was me I dont think i could of even looked at him...he tortured her,her poor mother,and her 3 kids yet she could have won an award that night.I guess that is what you call FORGIVENESS.....
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Granny...I call it ACTING! Do you know for sure in her heart she found forgiveness? You should see how I treat people that I despise! You know the expression, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." JMHO
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One more thing....this past week, I was at two different libraries and saw people behaving badly that it gave me a headache. I went to one library to take out my "fix" and I went to the other to enjoy a lecture on Marc Chagall. Afterwards, I complained to BOTH library directors about how the people treated other patrons as well as the librarians. One of the directors actually approached the patrons and had them apologize to the librarians....WHICH I HAD INSISTED UPON. Afterwards, what I reflected on was that I saw folks who knew who those people were and went to services with those same people on the Sabbath. So, on their Sabbath they behave piously and during the week it is okay for them to behave badly.
I prefer to be a lady, 24/7. But you want to talk about forgiveness...Nah! Doesn't appeal to me. In fact, I think the word was invented just to sell "How To" books.....Honestly, I skip that section when I'm in the library..................
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VR, I agree that it may be acting, and that sometimes treating despicable people with "kindness' is actually the healthy thing to do.
Granny, you may be right. If so, I tip my hat to her.
My therapist has an expression: never show a predator your jugular. Meaning, never give them anything they can attack you with. I have learned to be extremely wary of the predators in my life. I may converse --not talk-- with them, but I am always on guard. I do not give them a smidgeon of info of "me" that they can use to hurt me
There are others that I could never, ever, ever pretend to even look at. I may have forgiven them, but they are dead to me.
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VR----i did tell her she could win an award.she just smiled at me...maybe she thinks like you do....I turned my back so i would not even have to look at him and i know him since he was a kid...and we also all worked together....MY FACE WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT AWAY.I told you I DONT FORGIVE...keep my enemies far away from me!!!!!!!!
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Granny...perhaps she does....
covertanjou...Your therapist sounds very, very wise! Glad you've figured out what to do and CAN move on.....and be happy!
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Mary .. I hadn't heard that before. I'm going to remember the line your therapist told you. Too often, I make my jugular available. I need to be more protective of myself.
Bren
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To me forgiveness is about protecting myself. If I harbor anger all I'm doing is allowing this feeling to drag me down. I'm still working on my anger though. When dad died in January I called my pastor to tell him. My brother was going back to Japan on Thursday and dad died Monday. We had to have the funeral before my DB left. We had the funeral Wednesday and no one from the church came to the funeral. Dad had been an active member there for years plus had been active in the choir. A few weeks later I spoke to several of the members who had been visiting him at the VA home. They were so sorry not to have been there for the funeral. It seems the paster didn't call anyone in the congregation. People keep asking me why I've not returned since. At some point I need to resolve this, but not sure how.
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Nice picture Kira...What a sweet smile!!! Radiant!
The first thing that I noticed is that your congregation doesn't use email? What's that about? Honestly, if you love your congregation, I would return...Then I would make an appointment with your pastor and tell him how you felt and then ask if they could set up email to notify congregants. We now do it that way. Sadly, I get way more funeral notices than I would like to have.....
Oh...and one more thing....I know lots of people STILL don't go on the computer....but trust me...bad news travels VERY quickly.
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I spoke at both my parents funerals. And I spoke well and eloquently and had people crying for the decesased, not for me. It was about them at that time, not about me. I've had a number of people mention how surprised they were that I could speak so well of the dead!
Acting was 5%, and closure was the other 95%.
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Barbe---you are such a gift to this thread.When are you going to write that best seller????
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Barbe,
You are very eloquent and evolved. I have read many of your posts on this and other threads. It clearly shows you've done a lot of hard work on yourself in order to create a better life for yourself. Kudos to you, girl!
"Acting as if" is a great way to get through tough situations, and it's also a great way to move beyond bad environments or to regain good relationships that have been broken (see Michele Weiner, "Divorce Busting"...her techniques work in all kinds of situations).
I have received two great pieces of advice that help me work through sitiuations that call for forgiveness:
From my mom -- Kill them with kindness.
From my husband -- Living well is the best revenge.
While these both sound harsh on the face, what I really experience it this:
1) when I "kill them with kindness" it de-escalates my own hurt/anger, and helps me to focus on me and not the other person.
2) When I strive my best to live well, then all the focus is on me and not he person who has slighted me. After a while, I'm having too much fun and fulfillment to give a rat's ass about that other person any longer.
These both work!
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Kira - I'm so sorry for you not getting more support from your church. I sing in a church choir and last week one of our own passed away. His wife also a choister asked for the choir to sing and Everyone showed up! I'm sure that would have been the case for your Dad had they have known. This choir for me is about 45min to an hour away and I started going there because the choir director what my highschool music director who I had lost contact with. The chuch is alright, I'm not wild about the Reverand but being in a choir you have a different relationship in some ways with the church and usually the choir is a very tight knit group so I'm so very sorry you were hurt by this and I'm sure the members of the choir were also very upset not to have been able to have been there for your Dad as well.
I too have not returned to the church I grew up in, which is also the church my great- grandfather helped build and the majority of the beautiful stainglass windows are all given in memory to members of my family. When my Mom died she had spend her life and had given and left the church a great deal of money - always volunteered and helped start the soup kitchen... well, the the Priest at the time who was the son of one of her dear friends and was also the Rector, he just was awful to all of us. We asked him to give the homily and make it personal where myself and sisters all inculded some stories. He said he would but then at the service it was very sort and totally general except instead of saying my Mother's name throughout the service he said Mine!!! It was sort of horrifying as you can imagine. The money left to them cost us money to give as they were such a pain about it and then when we requested some tribute to her they said no they didn't to honor our wishes so too bad they wern't. So I don't know.... do not get that at all. I mean it is a church???
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What a great thread! Thanks for starting it Leaf.
Like so many, I have struggled with forgiveness and still do. Firstly, what is it? I used to excuse too easily, and allow myself to be hurt over and over. I don't think that is forgiveness. I think that there are consequences for our actions, and if someone abuses me, there has to be consequences. I don't mean that I take revenge, I mean that our relationship is effected - how can we have a close healthy relationship if there isn't mutual respect, caring, willingness to consider each other's feelings, accountability, honesty, etc. etc. No relationship is perfect, but good ones have at least some of these qualities most of the time. So, after a point, if someone shows me that for whatever reason, they aren't capable, willing, or both to treat me well, I'm not taking care of myself if I open myself up to them. And in a way, I'm enabling them to continue bad behavior if there are no consequences for them. And, I look at what they do, not what they say (that one has taken me a long, long, time) - it's like the Aesops fable about the scorpion - no matter what the scorpion says, he will sting, because that's what scorpions do.
I'm talking here about people who are still alive, and I can't totally remove from my life. But sometimes, even if they are physically gone, for whatever reason, they are still taking up room in my head - I love the boxes in the attic analogy. There are some boxes that used to be sitting in the middle of the living room, and it's taken quite a bit of work to get them into the attic!
When that box was in the living room, and I was very angry with a family member, certain people in the family couldn't hear it, and would say "you have to forgive" and "don't be bitter". Not helpful, but now I realize that I was expecting too much of them - they are so involved in the dysfunction, that for me to point it out was too much, so I had to be discounted. That said, I don't want to be bitter, but I had to get there myself.
I think it's more freeing ourselves from the hurt, than the traditional idea of "forgiveness".
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In the majority of these posts I seem to find one consistent theme/statement/ desire to change-holding on to the anger surrounding the situation is not helpful. No matter what forgiveness actually means, releasing the anger seems to let us move on.
At age 25, I had to teach side-by-side with my perpetrator. I was able then to confront him, not forgetting, not forgiving, but releasing the anger that I had squelched for so many years. I acknowledged what he did to me, not asking for his response or acknowledgement, not even wanting it (he knew what he did-the confrontation was about ME not him). After that moment I felt as if I was floating and my head was hitting the ceiling as I walked-it was an amazingly wonderful feeling.
I am actually reminded of the past on a daily basis though. After many years of "living an amazing life" (as Marthah referenced), many years of therapy, and continually striving for honesty and integrity (in spite of continued mistakes...) in all I do, I can smile at the way I've handled the anger and continued pain that flares up from time to time.For the past 4 years I have worked side-by-side with this man's brother-a daily reminder of the situation, especially because his brother has no idea what occurred and constantly wants to share details of his brother's life with me. Believe it or not, I am able to listen to his brother without any negative emotion-BUT I have confronted my perpetrator/his brother again by matter-of-factly letting him know that he has no privilege of being anywhere near my life or the lives of my 550+ children. I haven't seen him since. Time and age (I'm now 45) has helped me let go of the anger ( only rears its ugly head on rare occasions). It feels good!
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Saw this and thought I'd share this....
Iranian blinded by acid pardons her attacker
July 31, 2011 by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
An Iranian woman blinded and disfigured by a man who threw acid into her face stood above her attacker Sunday in a hospital operating room as a doctor was about to put several drops of acid in one of his eyes in court-ordered retribution.
The man waited on his knees and wept.
"What do you want to do now?" the doctor asked the 34-year-old woman, whose own face was severely disfigured in the 2004 attack.
"I forgave him, I forgave him," she responded, asking the doctor to spare him at the last minute in a dramatic scene broadcast on Iran's state television.
Ameneh Bahrami lost her sight and suffered horrific burns to her face, scalp and body in the attack, carried out by a man who was angered that she refused his marriage proposal.
Bahrami, whose face remains visibly burned, was a glimpse of her former self, wearing a touch of pink gloss on her lips and a loosely wrapped headscarf to the hospital where the sentence was to be carried out. She was helped into the building by two women who held both her hands.
"It is best to pardon when you are in a position of power," Bahrami said, explaining that she did not want revenge.
The sobbing man, Majid Movahedi, said Bahrami was "very generous."
"I couldn't imagine being blinded by acid," Movahedi said, as he wept against a wall.
It is a legal right for victims in Iran to ask for a strict enforcement of Islamic law, under which an attempt is made to reach a settlement with victims or their families. If no agreement is reached, then "qisas," or eye-for-an-eye retribution, is enforced.
Under the Iranian judiciary's policy of qisas, convicted murderers are sentenced to death. In another example of a case where qisas was carried out, authorities amputated the hand of a convicted thief in front of other prisoners in October 2010.
In the trial of Bahrami's attacker, the court ruling allowed the woman to have a doctor pour a few drops of the corrosive chemical in one of Movahedi's eyes as retribution.
A few months after the November 2008 ruling, Bahrami told a radio station in Spain, where she traveled for treatment of her wounds, that she was happy with the sentence.
"I am not doing this out of revenge, but rather so that the suffering I went through is not repeated," she said in that March 2009 interview.
Though she was blinded in both eyes, she said in the radio interview that the court ruled she was entitled to blind him in only one eye.
After undergoing treatment in Barcelona, Bahrami initially recovered 40 percent of the vision in one eye, but she later lost all her sight.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said Movahedi would remain in jail until a court decides on an alternative punishment, according to Iran's ISNA news agency.
He said her attacker will have to pay financial compensation as Bahrami has requested. In the past, Bahrami has asked for up to $200,000 in compensation from the assailant.
There have been several other acid attacks on women in Iran. Last week, a young woman died after a man poured acid on her face for rejecting his marriage proposal. Her attacker remains at large.
Amnesty International criticized the Iranian law that allows victims of such attacks to deliberately blind the assailants under medical supervision.
In a statement Sunday, the rights group said the practice was a cruel punishment that amounts to torture.
"The Iranian authorities should review the penal code as a matter of urgency to ensure those who cause intentional serious physical harm, like acid attacks, receive an appropriate punishment - but that must never be a penalty which in itself constitutes torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
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Voracious reader, I'm sorry, but please, what do these stories all have to do with the theme of healing ourselves through forgiving people who have harmed us?
I really did not need to read this story about the Iranians torturing each other, it only makes me want to never read this thread, I wasn't particularly interested in the story about spoiled rich people having their feelings hurt about the titles other people give them, but this last post is just dreadful.
Please, think about what you post. For me, this was about spirituality and growing as a human being.
and this topic is very important to me.Sue
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Sue - thanks for saying what I was feeling.
Martha
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Icandothis... I respect that for you the meaning of forgiveness is found in your spirituality. Leaf asks, "what is forgiveness?". Clearly, there are many different points of view. I am sorry that you don't find the example of the Queen Mother relevant and that you dismiss her along with Wallis as being spoiled. I am sure many British folks do not share that sentiment. In her lifetime she was the most beloved Royal. And she was brave too! When the Nazis bombed London, she remained with her daughters in the shelters with the commoners. I use her as an example because I firmly believe she was a good person and did NOT have to forgive someone.
Regarding the Iranian woman, that example makes me thankful that I am an American and never have to be in the position that that poor woman was placed in. IMHO, I don't think her spirituality helped her find forgiveness.
A difficult topic for sure. What is forgiveness? It means many different things to many different women here and around the world. -
I too am sorry to say that I agree with ICanDoThis and mostlymom. While the topic of the Brits and the Iranian woman may have to do with forgivness, it is too broad of an example and does not meet the needs of the women here. They/we are looking for stories and examples from one another that can meet us where we are hurting now, whether past or present. There is no shortage on this thread of stories about giving and needing forgivness. While I do have compassion for the Iranian woman, I could care less about the Brits, as it does not bring any comfort other than being an example of acceptable social behaivor for someone in the public eye. Thank-you ICanDoThis, and mostlymom for inspiring me to say my truth about this topic.
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I just was reading some of what has been said here and feel we have been given alot of good advise..because we are sooo vulnerable when we are in treatment for breast cancer we can have a hard time dealing with very malicious people. My own sister sent me a card the day I started treatment saying that I was going to die...because I thought I knew alot and others didn't. And she said for the third time she never wanted to hear from me again. Well, I told my doc about it and she told me to rid myself of toxic people...actually my sister was the only one...so did I forgive her...no...that was ten years ago and as far as I am concerned she is history..I guess I picked up the box in the attic and threw it in the garbage truck..
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