Forgiveness

In looking back over 2020 and in preparation for 2021, I am examining the concept of forgiveness. (Thank you, to Janet Connor and participants of the Lotus and the Lily Intensive.)  It is important to begin this new year by shedding that which no longer serves and by letting go of old hurts.

To start the process, I looked up the dictionary meaning of forgiveness. The psychological definition is that forgiveness is “a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, whether or not they actually deserve your forgiveness.”

But why should I forgive? What does forgiveness do to help me be more whole? The way that I understand it, forgiving another gives me back my power. If I am focused on the wrong that has been done to me by another, I am giving power over to that person every time that I think of them. I am allowing that person and whatever they have done to do it over again whenever I rehash the incident. If I forgive (not condone) and move on, I take back my power.

Forgiveness opens me up. When I forgive, I also create a new space that I can fill with things that are both helpful and healing. Thoughts of revenge or rehashing old wounds don’t leave room for other things. Letting go and forgiving will clear spaces in my Soul for other more life-affirming things.

The reasons then for bestowing forgiveness are to claim my own power and to create space for things which affirm life. Which leads me back to the question – “who do I need to forgive?’

Next week, I will turn 72 years old. That may seem like a long time, but in reality, the last fifty years have flown by. In my lifetime, I have been hurt many times. Parents, teachers, lovers, spouses, children, friends, and enemies, even God – everyone in my life has hurt me or has had the potential to hurt me, sometimes intentionally, but more often inadvertently. The more emotionally entangled with someone I am, the greater potential they have to cause pain.

Looking back, I do believe that I have forgiven the people in this present life, even those who have hurt me the most. I no longer think about hurtful incidents, nor do I give any thought to revenge or to the past actions of those people who have hurt me (some of whom are no longer in my life). I have chosen to let go and let be. Have I condoned what was done – NO!  But I have let go and no longer expend any energy nursing old wounds or rehashing old stories.

In fact, I have found gifts in many of those old wounds. Those wounds spurred me to grow, in ways that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I can even be grateful to the perpetrators, many of whom pushed me out of old patterns and forced me to examine my life.

As I look at who and what I need to forgive, an amazing insight keeps rattling in my brain: not only do I need to forgive people in this life, I also need to forgive people from past lives. This became very clear to me one night this week.

I was in that liminal state between sleeping and wakefulness. In that dreamy state, I kept hearing the words, “All those men.”  My body literally began to shake, and I wanted to weep. I thought about my past lives as a warrior/priestess that have been revealed to me. Of course! In those lives I had been tortured, killed, raped, burned, and betrayed by “all those men” because I was in service to the Goddess. No wonder I am furious when I read about what has been done to women over the centuries. No wonder I am angry when I see injustices toward women and marginalized people.  

So how do I forgive those nameless, faceless ghosts? How do I forgive the Patriarchy that drove them? How do I forgive the God in whose name they destroyed me and thousands of other peaceful women (and men) who loved the earth and who followed the sacred ways of the Goddess?

I think that I must remember that forgiving is neither condoning nor forgetting. Forgiving is letting go of the hold (even though it is an unconscious hold) that the old stories have on my psyche, and which still continue to resonate in my body and strike fear in my heart. Forgiving is reclaiming my power and my voice as warrior/priestess and doing whatever I can in this life to break the power of the Patriarchy. As the old Patriarchal institutions die, I must be ready to help forge new ways of being, based on the premise that all life, not just human life, is sacred and holy.

Whether or not you believe in past lives or the Divine Feminine, as 2020 becomes a page in history, how will forgiveness help you grow? Who and what do you need to forgive, in order to meet 2021 and fulfill your own unique role in the year to come?