Forgiveness

The word forgiveness can evoke a variety of emotions. Fortunately, through the years I have discovered authors, Anne Lamott among them, who write about forgiveness in the vein that it is something a person does quietly for themselves. It's not something you say to someone else ~ it is introspective, personal, and something that has been hard for me to name and define for most of my life. 

I have practiced the intention of forgiveness for many years without calling it forgiveness. I forget that until I run across something written or work through what I'm struggling with until the "aha" moment when I think, "Wait, that's forgiveness," which is what happened this past week when I found a saying on an undated slip of paper in a drawer.

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different." It gave me chills. I had to google the saying to see who to credit with the wisdom ~ Oprah's name is attached to it. 

I had been struggling with something for days, tearing up at night when sleep wouldn't come. When I found the slip of paper, so many things fell into place, retroactively and in the present....

So I pulled out a journal I started 25 years ago. It's called a Journal of Gratitude and has a place to write a few lines under each day of the year. I use it to record quotes that have meaning for me, words of wisdom from movies and television shows and books and people I know. Last week I wrote this definition of forgiveness under the date December 6. 

That's the date my father died in 1996 from a sudden, fatal heart attack. My mom found him when she returned to the house to have coffee and talk with him; she had finally moved out that summer when he slapped her for the last time. Ten years earlier I had written my father a three-page letter informing him of my boundaries as far as he was concerned. It boiled down to three things: he could visit my home but he could not argue with my mom or hit her when he visited; he could not raise his voice to me or my children; he was no longer allowed to smoke in my house. With the help of an excellent therapist I had given up the hope that the past could have been any different with my father. I set aside his past behaviors and set forth the parameters for future expectations in my home and in the presence of my family. He chose not to visit for ten years, and when he did come to the state he did not stay at my house. I didn't engage when he talked about the past or justified his behavior. 

In 1986 and 1996 I didn't call my action "forgiveness." That would have sounded uppity to me, like I was somehow superior. That's not how I felt. Instead I felt like I had surrendered. I remember feeling desperate to do something to save my mental health, and this was all that was left. I knew what I had decided would impact my relationship with my mom.

And it did. She could not comprehend what I was doing. She did not understand what I was doing to protect my children. Again, with the help of my excellent therapist, I came to understand that my mom had not protected me and my siblings from my father, which my therapist explained was the job of a parent. I fought that idea tooth and nail for weeks, but I had to connect my anxiety and panic attacks to the kind of mother I was, a mother who was not a mother like my mother was. To get healthy and be there for my children I had to be a different kind of mother, and to me that meant that I had to admit that my mother did not take care of me. I did not say that to my mom; for decades I talked around that by explaining that it was what I had to do to take care of myself and my family.

Through the decades after my father died my mom and I worked through the process of letting go of what we couldn't change from all those years ago. In 2007 she had a stroke and sometime around then was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. She had remarried in 2003, moved to West Virginia, and stayed busy with him and part-time work. After the stroke it took years to find the best medication and get the correct dosage regulated. With the health issues she had started feeling anxious. She shared with me that she never understood what I was going through all those years ago, and that was an opening for us to talk more honestly about a range of experiences and feelings. She didn't hide her anxiety from me, and I was able to share the strategies I used to cope then and now. Those conversations added a new dimension to our relationship. We continued to talk honestly with each other right up until she died.

Within my sorrow in the last year has been a deep sadness that my mom had not been happier in her adult life. I do miss her - the cards she sent, our phone calls, and the sporadic in-person visits. My sadness was about more than that; as I've looked through photos of her with family and friends in her first 18 years I see a girl who is loved grow into a young woman who laughs with friends and enjoys experiences with family. She graduated from high school, got a good job with the federal government, and shared an apartment with a friend. 

As I have written posts this month and started putting my mom's photos in order, that sorrow has been front and center. What I realized this week is that where my mom is concerned I had given up the hope that many things in our past could have been any different. However, deep within my grief and below my consciousness I have been mourning the life she lost when she started the life with my father. Once that realization rose to the surface I considered what that means, what I could do to relieve the pain I have been feeling. Then I found the slip of paper ~ forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.  

Can I forgive my mom for staying with my father for 41 years? I am getting there.

The journey continues....