Forgiveness

“You’re better than me, I don’t think I could ever forgive them”, is one of the most common things I hear when I talk to people about their trauma, and my own. People think it is incredible how I have chosen to forgive the people who have wronged me in my life, and even allow some of them to still be a part of it. But what they don’t realize is, the forgiveness I have chosen to extend to others, is for my own healing’s sake, and it has nothing to do with them.

By choosing to forgive someone, or something, I am not forgetting all the things they did to me or justifying their actions. I am also not re-opening that same door, or allowing them to have the same access to me they once did. Instead, I am choosing to forgive them so that they no longer hold power over me.

I cannot change the way people treat me or act in response to their own trauma, nor can I force a person to apologize for their actions. Therefore, it is frivolous of me to dwell on such things, or try to pry an apology out of someone that probably isn’t sorry. It also isn’t my job to sit down and tell every single person that has hurt me how they hurt me, because odds are they already know, nor is it my responsibility to help facilitate them getting help in hopes that one day they will realize what they have done and apologize.

But what I can do, is take a step back and look at it from a different point of view, and open my mind to a new level of understanding.

By choosing to forgive them, I am:

Accepting that someone I cared for hurt me, and that I cannot change what they did or whether or not they apologize. Loving and caring for someone always opens the door to pain, but someone who really loves you would never do it on purpose, and be genuinely sorry if they did. If you have to ask, or even beg, for an apology, then it probably isn’t worth much anyways.

Accepting that the relationship is two sided, and while I may not have been aware of what was happening at the time, I allowed myself to remain in toxic situations putting myself at risk and opening the door to being hurt.

Acknowledging that some, or all, of their actions are coming from unresolved traumas of their own and that more then likely the way they treated me was a reflection of that, and not how they actually felt about me.

No longer giving the things they said and did to me power over my thoughts, emotions, and choices moving forward. I know who I am, what I stand for, and the type of person I want to be. I will not let the hurtful words of another dictate who I am.

And finally, learning how to be present in someone’s life, without giving them the ability to influence my happiness and well-being.

As you can see, forgiving someone is not about getting the apology you think you deserve, or forgetting that they did bad things to you in the first place.

Forgiveness is for your own healing, and your own growth.

It’s for focusing less on the actions of others and how they see us, and focusing more on how we respond to them and not allowing them to dictate our own self-image.

It’s for remembering that every person you meet every day for the rest of your life is in pain too, in one way shape or form, and that through the forgiveness of others we are not only accepting their pain as the cause of our own, but allowing ourselves to start healing.