“Forgive yourself Hon, and move on.” These were the sensible words a friend uttered through the phone. I’m sure she was tired of me beating myself up over having purposely hurt someone I cared about. I think the saying goes, “ Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned.” And you guessed it, there’s a full sized color picture of me right above that caption.
Forgive myself? I began pondering what it meant to “forgive myself?” How should I go about doing that? Should I stand in the mirror and tell myself, “Kimberly, you are forgiven?” I guess I could flog myself like that monk in The Davinci Code? Or maybe I could drive over to Malibu and toss a stone into the Pacific, as a symbol of letting go of lingering guilt. (Better yet, I could drive over to Malibu and toss a stone at the guy that hurt me.) But I digress. Forgiveness… forgiveness…
It’s funny because I sincerely thought my girlfriend was going to say, “Forgive him and move on.” I was shocked to hear her say, “Forgive yourself, Hon.” The thought hadn’t even occurred to me.
Hundreds of ideas ran through my busy mind. I mean, I really wanted to get this self-forgiveness thing right if I was going to do it. I didn’t want me rehashing this thing with myself. I wasn’t going to throw this thing back in my face again. I just wasn’t going to stand for it! So, this forgiveness I was asking of myself had to be sincere and, well for lack of a better word… brilliant. Once I forgave myself I was not turning back.
Then one day, the answer rang loud as a bell. Out of all of the ritualistic approaches I could take, why not choose the oldest one in the book? I would contact the person I offended and simply ask for his forgiveness.
Okay. So, then I began to “neuroticize” (made up word), about how I would go about my apology. Since I hadn’t spoken to this person in about three months and any attempts to make contact via phone had gone up in smoke, I decided I’d apologize through email. I felt that my email needed to convey a tone of sincerity, yet at the same time it needed to be precise. I also wanted to make sure that the apology was about me taking responsibility for my less-than-noble behavior and not about rehashing old annoyances or placing blame.
I was scared of what response I would or wouldn’t get. Scared of hostility, indifference or rejection. But I knew this was the only way I could finally forgive myself and let it go. So, I guess, for purely selfish reasons, I decided to torture myself a little longer in order to free myself from torturing myself any longer. By asking his forgiveness, I felt I would be doing everything possible to finally close the circle of hurt that lay open between us. And deep down inside I needed that circle to be closed. Honestly, I began to realize that forgiveness was the only thing that could close it.
So, I typed up my apologetic email, read it several thousand times and clicked send. Immediately I went to the sent mail section of my email to make sure I had really sent it and to also make sure I hadn’t accidentally sent it as an email blast, (which, thank god, I hadn’t).
It took him about three days to respond. His response was not what I hoped for but it didn’t really matter. What did matter is the lesson I learned about self-forgiveness: In asking for his forgiveness and making a heart felt apology there was nothing more I could do. I knew then that it wasn’t anyone’s responsibility to forgive me, but me. So, that’s what I did.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’s.
(Oh, those aren’t typos. They’re my closed circles. Aren’t they beautiful?)
I’d love to hear your stories on self-forgiveness. Feel free to post.
Happy New Year,
Kimberly Hawthorne, C.Ht.
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