In our previous blog, we wrote about Monica’s experience in recovering from past childhood wounds that left her scarred and wounded. Monica knew that if she were to ever be healed from those painful experiences, she would need to forgive all of the people who played a part in those events, including herself. Monica did not feel that she had much courage prior to doing the inner and outer work that her recovery required, but by the time she had completed the forgiveness stage of the work, her image of herself as a weak, frightened, and damaged person had transformed and she began to see herself as a competent, confident, loving, and responsible woman. Others in her life have come to see her that way as well. As one of her friends recently said of Monica, “She wears her power with grace.”
Her transformed self-image has been earned and hard-won. She has become a courageously outspoken advocate for and inspiration to many men and women who have learned, through her example of the power and value of forgiveness. Forgiveness runs in accordance with its own timetable. It can’t be forced through pressure from others or from ourselves. If the intention is there, in time it will come. Trying to coerce ourselves or others to forgive only obstructs the process.
We can’t make ourselves or anyone else forgive, but we can set the conditions in our life that we predispose us towards an inclination to forgive by reminding ourselves of why we want to forgive, who we feel the need to forgive, from whom we feel a desire to be forgiven, what we stand to gain by letting go of the resentment that we carry towards those who we want to forgive, and to envision the specific ways in which our quality of life will be different when we are no longer burdened by living from a hardened heart.
[For more of this story, written by Linda & Charlie Bloom, go to http://blogs.psychcentral.com/.../forgiveness-part-3/]
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