Forgiveness

I’ve been quite because I’ve been processing. Healing.

I’ve gone silent because words did not express the feelings that I was having.

I’ve had lots of thoughts lately on forgiveness. There’s so much we hear on the importance of forgiveness. That forgiving others is for ourselves not for the other person. Then I have run across the exact opposite. That one does not have to forgive anyone. That it does no good to us by forgiving those who have done heinous and/or violent acts towards us.

I honor whatever choice one wants to make. Forgiveness, I have found through this past year has been empowering. Although it is trite, the most relevant expression of forgiveness I have ever heard was from Lauren Conrad in the reality tv show the Hills or one of those programs, where she said “I want to forgive you and I want to forget you”. Right now that is where I stand. Those words always ring strongly in the back of my mind when I think of those who have harmed me. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting all the time. Forgiving can be releasing. Freeing. Loving one’s self. Forgiveness can be anger. Forgiveness lives in rage. Grief. Pain. It can be a deep aching rift between what we desire and what we receive. It does not make one weak just as anger or fear does not make someone weak. These emotions make us sentient beings. Why do we run from them? Why do we try to destroy them?

– Rose