A few years back, I experienced the most painful breakup of my life. After a seemingly non-eventful week together, I was shocked that the follow-up phone call (once I got home from our rendezvous), ended with “I don’t want to see you anymore.”
I just thought love cured everything, and we could work it through because the love between us was powerful. I thought it was. I lost hope for humanity, love, and the world during that time. He left the country and was not reachable by phone. I personally process things by sharing and talking about them, so I felt as though I were going to die because he left with very little explanation. He had discussed his issues with a psychic, friends, and others, but not with me.
I was so angry. Hurt. Hopeless.
But that anger felt like “my taking rat poison, but hoping that he suffered.”
“Do I forgive him?” No. “Maybe I should forgive myself?” No. It wasn’t about forgiveness.
We are two human beings with the personalities we had at the time. It was a perfect storm based on all of our protective mechanisms. Me blinded by love at any cost, after leaving my husband. Him, hurt by a past that left him untrusting… and I’m sure there was more. But it doesn’t matter.
SO WHAT DID I DO IF I DIDN’T FORGIVE?
I found my way home to my heart… not for him, but for me.
What others do to us is often not okay. But it’s not okay in the world that people play power games (like his former wife), that people be in love with love while not using their instincts (like me), that my former husband had some pretty horrible things happen in a former marriage, that my stepdaughter had a drug-addicted, abusive stepfather who had his own history, that his wife had low self-esteem because of abuse from her alcoholic parents… and so on and so on.
None of it is okay. It is all suboptimal. So, what to do?
Use that emotional energy, change your life, be an example of love, find compassion for those in front of you now, volunteer, carry someone’s groceries, start a company that wakes people up from the fog, make adorable videos on social media that opens people’s hearts, take inspiring pictures and share them, AND USE THE ENERGY OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU, TO FUEL THE CHANGE.
Don’t feign that you need to forgive, or that you need forgiveness first. You may or may not get it. You have been in this world many times as perpetrator and victim, and you were often a part of the budding culture that nurtured the “dog eat dog” mentality of this world. Of course, good people are going to do bad things in a culture that fosters that behaviour.
Transcend “forgiving,” or “waiting for forgiveness,” and use the energy of your emotions to create a different future for your grandchildren.
What is beyond forgiveness is compassion and understanding. So, for anything you might have done that you feel shame for, I UNDERSTAND WHY IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED. I get it. You are human. It’s not always okay, but it can be better. To make it better takes compassionate people who have been through it all… and maybe that’s you.
Sure, you might need help to get out of your own way, but AIM HIGH. Don’t just aim for completion; aim for a world that fosters kinder and more compassionate people and outcomes.
Are you with me in New Year? Can we do this together? I’m an Agent of Awakening; how about you?
Jennifer
xoxoxoxox
