To forgive is to heal thyself

Three weeks ago a story was set aside and forgotten, until I came across the file on my laptop. With the weekend coming upon us and some cultures celebrating Valentines Day, I thought no better venue then to share the importance of ‘forgiveness’ and the power it has to heal ones spirit and eventually the body.

Previously this year, there had been exchange of a number of correspondences with a friend living in Colorado about the similarities in our lives. This included how we each dealt with our situations, when the subject matter of forgiveness arose, as my friend was referring to a comment I had left at Katelen’s blog The Poetic Artist, where the discussion was learning to forgive. It was there, where I stated that only after beginning the process to forgive, was I then able to heal from the wounds that had been inflicted upon my person all those decades.

Forgiveness does not take away ones pain, it only diminishes the hurt, what forgiveness does, is take away the anger and hate. For it is the anger and hate that slowly destroys us, eating away our insides like a slow growing cancer, which eventually will consume our very being, this self inflicted form of a prolonged suicide.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts

surely will find peace.

Buddha

In the spring of 2005, the series ‘Family Secrets’, a sequence of photographs about child abuse illustrated through the use of empty abandoned buildings was made public. The ‘Self-portrait with shattered mirror’ at my other blog is a part of that collection. The photographs marked a seventeen-year struggle before I realized that the fault for the abuse suffered was not of my cause and therefore not my fault.

All those years I was so filled with anger and hate, I had not even considered forgiveness until after I had undergone open-heart surgery in 2006, when priorities and that which I viewed as important, took a dramatic shift in another direction.

By letting go of the past, I finally permitted myself to take the first few steps towards initiating the path to forgiveness. Though irrevocable damage was done and could never be reversed, the act of forgiveness allows us to move on with our life. Forgiveness does not mean we should forget, nor that we condone or exonerate the one who had tormented us. Forgiveness is for our own self; it is the medicine we administer to ourselves.

Bitterness imprisons life;

Love releases it

Harry Emerson Fosdick

To forgive is not easy. I had to believe in the ability of forgiveness itself. Just saying the words “I forgive you” without any conviction lacks the strength and any very power these words hold to heal the person saying them.

I cannot tell you how to go about forgiveness; this is a course of action you must discover for yourself. I can tell you that once a path has been found, the process can begin. It will be a journey of unfathomable depths and challenges, and it will exceed any pain previously suffered. In the end, a burden will have been lifted and it will feel like as if breathing for the first time.

This Valentine weekend give yourself a present,
the kind that no one can give you but you yourself,
the one that is priceless.

Photography by Egmont