The Sunday Spirit: "Forgiveness is for ME": On Parents, Compassion & Changing Our Relationships to our wounds

It took me a long time to get there. And even once I had arrived, all to often I found myself shifting back... Back to the anger, back to the pain, The frustration, the disappointment, the neglect. It took me years to see them as something other than just my parents. It took me forever to even recognize that they had pain too; To see that they had wounds, trauma and hurt. That they too had been socialized into a system of messages that they had never had the energy or opportunity to dissect. All I saw was myself. How i was treated, how I felt.

It never even dawned on me that my parents were real people. Not just people planted on this earth to take care of me, but people planted on this earth to learn their own lessons. People sent here to work through their own issues. It took me a while to even acknowledge that there were things about them I didn't know. Things they had experienced, as black people born in the 60's and raised in the 70's, that I would never know. It took me a long time to recognize that the only reason I even had access to the privilege I have today; was because of the painstaking effort they had put into simply surviving. And that all of the things that I had learned about the world; about healing; about spirituality, would not have been possible had it not been for their hard work.

But it's hard still no? To forgive your parents? Heck, To forgive anyone! To forgive them for everything that you wanted from them, needed from them, but they were not able, for whatever reason to provide..Whether it was emotional nurturing, material stability or just presence in our lives how do we find the strength and courage to forgive them? And does forgiveness mean no accountability? No confrontation? And what does forgiveness do? Just make them feel better?

These are some of the questions I've spent my life pondering. I've pondered them when men appeared in my life and they had energies that felt like my father. I've pondered it when I think about how my relationship to feminism is directly linked to my feelings about my mother.

You see, astrologer Liz Greene says "Children are psychological remnants of the parents." In other words, as children, we come into
this lifetime often mirroring back to our parents the aspects of themselves they have not dealt with. We are them of course, and they are us- and this riddle Liz Greene poses has helped me answer alot of questions about both the things I struggle with within my parents and given me clarity around the things they struggle with within me.

See I believe Forgiveness is for me. That's right. I don't believe it's about the other person. See when we carry anger and hurt at our parents, or at black people, or at black gay people, white people,ourselves who-ever; it takes it's toll on OUR spirits. It takes it's toll on OUR souls.

Because its within us; not them- that that anger is festering. And that festering wound shows up as all kind of dis-"ease" in the body and mind. It shows up sometimes as cancer. It shows us sometimes as hypertension. Depression. Over-eating. It shows up in soo many ways and so somehow for the sake of all us we have got to find a way to forgive.

And see, i don't think forgiveness is forgetting. Or even "letting go" of the wound.
The wounds will always be there.
I think forgiveness is about developing a different relationship to the wound and a different relationship to the person who inflicted it.

It means; I go underneath the anger and see my own pain-and I also realize that "Hurt people hurt people" and that the infliction of the pain, whether intended or accidental; is ultimately not so much about me but about that other person.

YES. That other person. You see; what ever energy people put out is always about them. Not you. You may serve as the site of their projection or you may even awaken something within them by your presence; but how they choose to respond/react to that energy awakened within them is ABOUT THEM. It's about their development. Their challenges and their room for growth. It is not about your worth or value as a human being because quite frankly, you are priceless. We all are.

We also have to talk about compassion. Compassion is about stretching beyond yourself. Getting out of your head and saying "this is what i would do" because the reality is your parents, and everyone else is not you and will respond to events differently based on their history and their wounds.

It is also important to say that compassion is not pacifism. It does not mean we don't assert ourselves, build boundaries or challenge authority. Compassion means we learn to see others beyond our own narrow views of reality and try to develop understanding. The ego often does not want to understand or even hear others; it simply wants to create what it desires and affirm its worldview as superior to all others.

I also want to be clear that anger is a powerful, beautiful and necessary emotion. It is violence that concerns me. And As i have said before, violence is anger acted out immaturely. We have to learn to find ways to express our anger that do not inflict trauma. I believe this; among many other things; is a goal of the energetic alignment we are currently experiencing on this planet.

Forgiveness is about me. And it's not a one time thing. Sometimes people do things that awaken old feelings for me.. And i have to journal about it. Cry about it. Write about it. Tell them how I feel about it. But i have chosen to not let my wounds control me. I have chosen to not buy into the powerless concept of "someone made me do something" or "provoked me" because I am affirming that whatever wound is awakened; I have a choice in how I respond. I have a choice in how i relate to my wounds. And I have chosen to work hard at seeing them as the past and be present now.

I have chosen to not hold onto and feed anger in myself at white people, or heterosexual black people, who-ever. I have taken the time to see how their socialization and wounds created their own understandings of reality and I start there. And when the anger is awakened in me; i speak my truth; assert my boundaries and name my reality-with an understanding it is just my reality-and not absolute.

Because Forgiveness is For me. It's for me to heal. To grow. To embrace. To kiss and not cut. To hear and not silence. Forgiveness is for me.Forgiveness is for you. For your own well being, for your own spirit; when all else fails; Forgive.


Yolo