The Practice of Forgiving

 My father and I circa 1966

"Your daddy's grandmother was a full blooded Indian." 

This is what my beautiful great-aunt, a woman I had not seen in 30 years, told me when I visited her in Mississippi two years ago.  It was a homecoming of sorts and the bittersweet end to my journey to find my father.  My mother, two sisters, and I escaped his alcoholic terror when I was 12 years old.  At the time, I was relieved.  At the time, I never thought I would leave my own family to scour the streets of an unknown state and city to find a man who caused me such pain.  

After my great-aunt and I cried, embraced and got reacquainted, she shared the pictures that she, on arthritic knees, had climbed into her attic to find.  I saw myself as a girl, I saw myself as a baby being loved my father, and I saw my great grandmother. When I looked at the petite, red clay skinned women with dark flowing hair, I felt her strength, resilience and hope.  I have been exploring my Native American roots since that visit.  The Choctaw Nation is on both my mother's side, and resides within my paternal great-grandmother.  

In the Native American tradition of old, a woman determines if a man stays in the home, even if that man built the physical house.  A woman decides whether a man is worthy to be in her company and in the company of their children.  A man expelled from the home must provide a daily offering of food until he is either invited back, or another man takes his place.  This tradition of graciously and generously yielding to a woman's wishes did not reside within my father even though Native American blood flowed through him.  It did not reside within my ex-husband either.  

I forgave my father, but I could not fully forgive my ex-husband.  While I had wonderful moments of forgiving and healing during the first year of our divorce, I still continue to struggle.  Holding on to my anger and feelings of betrayal, I noticed that I began to feel drained, powerless, and victimized.  Just as I had chosen to forgive my father, I chose to continue the forgiving process with my ex-husband.  With the help of Debbie Ford's seminal book, Spiritual Divorce, I continue to forgive and to heal.  I repeated the exercise from Debbie's book and like magic, my ill-feelings clear.  You can do it, too:

• Write down your version of the events fully with all the hurt and emotion present.  Don't hold back or try to be kind or understanding.  Let your raw emotions flow.

• Write down the other person's version.  Imagine all of their hurt and emotion.  Let yourself indulge in their feelings by fully stepping into their shoes.

• Write down a neutral version with just the facts. 

When you are done, you can create a ritual of release.  You can burn the three versions, bury them, or shred them into confetti and release them into the wind.  Choose something that is meaningful to you to achieve a full sense of letting go.

Taking the time to do this ritual again helped me to discover that forgiving is continuous.  It is a daily practice like any other in my life.  When I wake, I can choose to forgive myself and others for any acts that I may have deemed harmful.  What I also discovered, as I wear the spirit of my great-grandmother, is that I, too, can practice as my ancestors did.  I can stand in the power that I get to decide who comes into my physical, spiritual and emotional house.

Waiting to Exhale

Angela Bassett

Remember the scene from the movie Waiting to Exhale when one of the characters, played by Angela Bassett, ceremoniously burned all of her soon-to-be ex-husband's processions? That iconic moment gave women a reason to cheer.  Angela Bassett's character in the movie, based on Terry McMillan's popular book of the same name, was reclaiming her power.  However dramatic, within that moment she snatched back what she had willingly given away.

The radical and perhaps uncomfortable truth is that when people treat us poorly, we are co-creators of that poor treatment.  Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."  Our consenting to giving our power away general starts in childhood when we adapt to the constructs of the authority figures in our lives.  As children, it is natural and often necessary to adhere to the rules of love and punishment our authority figures, in their own best way, structured for us.  If we were loved for being smart, we strove to get all As.  If we were loved for being of service, we served irregardless of our individual needs.  If we were loved for controlling our emotions, we trained ourselves never to visit our emotional landscapes.  Many of us continue to carry these ideals of love and punishment into adulthood even though those ideals no longer serve us.  Absent the physical authority figure, we often re-create the same standards of love from our childhood and even punish ourselves through toxic relationships, drink, drug, food, sex, shopping, people-pleasing and a host of other ways when we fall short. 

Being a former woman waiting to exhale, I now understand that giving my power away to another in order to receive love no longer serves me.  Missing in our culture is the simple study of loving the self.  I tell my youngest son when he makes a "mistake" to forgive himself, love himself and to be grateful for whatever lesson that "mistake" taught him.  What we may call "mistakes" or "failures" can be re-framed as gifts and learning opportunities if we train our minds to view them as such.  


When we love the self, we can finally let go of our childhood beliefs about receiving love because we understand that the true source of love is within us.  That spark of the Divine that resides in each of us is a wellspring that we often fail to tap.  

If you do find yourself standing in that place of giving your power away, know that you can forgive yourself, love yourself, and have gratitude for the lesson learned.  What is even more powerful, you don't have to burn the car.  More on forgiving others as a means of empowering ourselves in the next post.

Our Sacred Circles*

Nash and I Thanksgiving 2008

I tell my eleven year old son, Nash, that it's time for us to eat better.  I tell him that I want to eliminate cookies and all unhealthy sweets because I love him.  I tell him that I want us to treat our bodies like royalty and eat like kings and queens.  I also tell him, as my 40s wane, that I will need his help to stay a young and vibrant mother.  His response:

             "You're young, Mommy.  You'll always be young."

When I hear his words, I want to live up to them.  I decide in that very moment to stay young in my Nash's eyes.  The sacred circle that Nash and I have created as a family is a place where our love can be a mirror to one another.  When I tell Nash he is extraordinary, he sees himself that way.  In turn, the reflection of who I am through the loving eyes of my child creates my best, most high self.       

History tells us that human beings are drawn to things circular. We are drawn to circular gatherings again and again in the form of healing circles, reading circles, giving circles, business circles, sewing circles, mentor circles and sacred circles of all types.  Lakota Indian and holy man, Black Elk, states in the book Black Elk Speaks, "The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same.... Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves."

Our power moves within our sacred circles.  With the courage to shift beyond our limiting beliefs and step into the lofty image our loved ones hold of us, we can transcend our fears and doubts to create within ourselves the extraordinary.  I'm embracing a life-long spirit of youth because the mirror my son holds up to me tells me I'll always be young.  Within my sacred circle, I have the courage to be anything I dream I can be.     

How have your sacred circles affected your life?  

*Previously published on A Woman's Place Blog July 7, 2013.  Consider making a donation in the name of someone in your sacred circle!

 

Lessons from Lincoln

Lincoln engaged in his favorite activity - tearing the stuffing from his bed

Navigating life with three children--two grown and one still under my care--after divorce has been the greatest lesson of my life.  When I can step back and have awareness of what living beyond a 19 year marriage has yielded in terms of growth, I am so very grateful.  Yet, I am not immune to moments of anger, sadness, loneliness and simply being misunderstood and under-appreciated. This week, I felt a sense of being under-appreciated by an adult child.  I wanted my child to acknowledge my sacrifices, my this, my that....  In short, I expected to be validated in a way that only I can give to myself.  Those who have college-age kids can relate to the competing forces of guiding while letting go as our adult children search for a balance between independence and autonomy while still needing support and acceptance.  The answer to balancing those contrasting ideals came to me from an unlikely source--my dog, Lincoln.

Spiritual writer and philosopher, Mark Nepo, said when recounting the words of a Native American elder, "Animals never forget their original instructions, but human beings do."  Those instructions are to love and accept unconditionally.  When my adult children show up during summer breaks and holidays, they are met with the embrace of Lincoln shaking his tail uncontrollably at the door and jumping with excitement because they are simply in the room.  His excitement belies anything given in return.  If they ignore him when they came in, Lincoln holds the same enthusiasm.  He has no expectation of outcome.  He only wants to express his love.

As my adult child left our home, stooping to pet our precious Lincoln with a pure sense of love toward our rescued Pitbull from a just outside of the beltway Washington, D.C. shelter (thus the name, Lincoln), a flood of understanding filled my body.

I had forgotten my original instruction as a mother--to love and accept unconditionally.  I was not in the moment of the gift of my child visiting.  I was outside of that moment in my head with all kinds of expectations from my child, from myself and for the future of our separate and mutual lives.  I fell outside of experiencing what was right before me--the loving gift of being a mother. 

Lincoln taught me to release my grown children to their own journeys and to honor their choices while I honor my own.  Like Lincoln standing at the front door sensing the beauty of his beloved family before they even come into view, I will no longer take for granted the gift of having a beautiful soul come to me, a soul that come through me, by allowing that soul to walk at their own pace along side of me in this life.  Whether or not I see them next to me, behind me, in front of me or not at all, I can sense them, like Lincoln, being not too far off in the distance.