CHAPTER 4
I know that all this sounds as easy as waving a magic wand of forgiveness, and all will be well with you in your emotional and physical world. Bullshit, go ahead, I know some of you are saying that to yourself because you need a battering ram not a magic wand.
Believe me when I say I understand this feeling. I address this in this chapter because it is the elephant in the room of forgiveness and needs to be written about here.
How do you forgive someone who has hurt you deeply? This is a very difficult thing for many to even think about, yet I will stress again that forgiving them may be one of the best choices you ever make.
This isn’t about that person who picked on you on the playground in elementary school type of forgiveness. This goes deep, it brings back pain, you bleed, and you might want to throw up just thinking about it.
It is vital that you have laid the cards of the hurt out on the table. Maybe you have had the counseling of a professional to even shuffle that deck of cards. You were terribly hurt and you truly need to grasp the extent of this pain.
There is no doubt in my mind you can picture that person. You can see the moment this deep hurt happened. You can see where you were, the surroundings, and you can smell the air, feel the atmosphere. It is painful, so breathe. Breathe deeply and allow this breathing to help you relax to the point where there is no fear because in reality they cannot hurt again you. You are there to erase the hurt, to heal the hurt, you can do this.
If you have been able to get this far, I promise you that you are ready to let it go because when you forgive them you will find yourself feeling compassion for them that they are truly that miserable.
One last thing – if your hurt is that painful, please get guidance from a professional before taking any of the steps I wrote about. Doing this while sitting with someone else might be the better way to handle it.
The deepest hurt I have ever experienced is one I have not yet myself totally worked through. If you know me, then you know that my beloved husband died suddenly with no warning and his death gave me a hearty dose of PTSD because he died in my arms.
I reached the anger stage, and I am still there at times. I am also still in grief therapy to this day.
I am angry because after he died I remembered some things he had said to me. In cleaning up his office, I found things that shined a light on the fact he knew something wasn’t right. Every other time he had felt “off” he had told me about it, and we got medical help. Not this time.
I love him more today than I did the day he died, however, sometimes
I want to punch a wall, days I yell at his photo, days I cry my eyes out.
Yes, I need to take this step of forgiveness and I know I will. I understand I cannot have him back, I cannot change anything that happened, all I can do is forgive him for leaving me with this pain.
There have been other deep hurts in my life and some may be worse, but in my here and now I need to forgive Larry and I know in my heart I am not there yet.
This act of forgiveness will cleanse my soul while opening my heart even more. There will be the right time, I will feel it, I will know it, you will too.