On Self-Forgiveness
How do I talk about this? Forgiveness of self? Self-forgiveness? Either way it’s important and either way it’s tough. Those of us who have lived through stress, trauma, heartbreak, grief and/or a BLEEPY childhood spend a lot of energy preoccupied with trying to find the courage, strength, and/or patience (Lawd, I love me a run-on sentence) to forgive others, but we always forget about forgiving ourselves.
This has been another helpful byproduct of my journey in finding faith. I had no idea how many benefits I would encounter on this journey. There is safety to create for ourselves, whatever that may mean for each us. It means different things for different people. Some need physical safety. Others need emotional safety. For many, financial safety is key. For the really stressed or traumatized, it’s usually a combination of all of those options and more.
There are steps to finding faith, I have learned, and I am collecting them. In draft form (DRAFT, people!), they are as follows:
1. A willingness to believe - I had to basically force myself
2. Hope - it’s exciting to catch even a whiff of a better way
3. Trial & Error - answered and unanswered prayers reinforce hope but also cause confusion
4. Doubt - we enter the “is this real or am I crazy?” phase
5. Struggle - we keep up with toxic places, people, or things because we’re new at this
6. Surrender (i.e., Commitment) - the pain becomes too great, but faith is available to us now
7. Complete Destruction/Rock Bottom/A Crisis - the opposite of a Good time, but often necessary
8. Acceptance - the fight knocked out of us, we resign ourselves to embracing faith
9. Safety - we start setting boundaries, saying no, and prioritizing our peace
10. Personal Accountability - we look at our own role in our chaos, pain, and hardships
11. Healing - often requires hibernation, reflection, meditation, prayer, and therapy
12. Change & Growth - this is exhausting, but also worth it
13. Authenticity - ego shedding, dropping the mask, the end of posturing
14. Strength - we feel fortified by our faith and connection with our true self
15. Freedom - we feel relieved of the burden of our past and free to define our futures
16. Forgiveness - of self, then others
17. Gratitude - we have a lot to be thankful for and can feel it
18. A New Reality - peace, calm, kindness
19. Pure and pleasant chaos - life according to Good or God’s plan, but we can handle it
20. You tell me - what will you do with your new found faith?
For those of us walking around like emotional porcupines, this probably feels like a pretty long list. Many of you will note that safety is pretty much in the middle of the process, which may feel daunting.
Forgiveness of self, it turns out, is much more toward the end. The reason I suspect this is the case is because most of us are struggling or stressed or making poor choices which is WHY we’re seeking faith. It’s not that faith causes a crisis, it’s that we may be on the path to one anyway, which is why we’re looking around for a life raft.
The reason rock bottom or crises (that is the plural of crisis, isn’t it?) have value is because they force us into growth. Growth forces us to create safety, which then offers us the opportunity to look at ourselves and our own contributions to our current state. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to healing, creating strength, and living more authentically.
See? Easy peasy! Ha!
THEN, we can look back at our hardships and forgive ourselves (and maaaaaybe others, no expectations there) for what we didn’t know. We can forgive ourselves, and maybe others, for the incredible lack of basic knowledge or skills we didn’t have, which is very common these days, traumatic childhood or not.
And it’s okay to just forget about forgiving other people for a while. For many of us, other people have been a focus or source of pain for far too long. We are allowed to prioritize our own health and well being. We finally have the opportunity to offer ourselves some grace for not knowing any better or making mistakes. And, I must say, speaking from experience, forgiving oneself is extraordinarily healing.