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Forgiveness ~ A Foundation For Healing

© T. Darlene Cheek

There are a lot of folks in my life that have harmed me. When people ask, "Oh, don't you just hate that person," I always respond with, "No." This is the beginning of a very interesting conversation! Can you really forgive others for harming you? Can you really forgive yourself for the "bad" things you've done in your life? Can you forget? Can you heal? Can you actually learn to love that person and yourself unconditionally? Now that's a list of very difficult questions! And no, I don't have all the answers. I would like to share some of my thoughts on this issue, though.

Holding negative feelings inside can only do us harm. So, by having negative feelings towards someone else, we aren't harming them... we're harming ourselves.

A lot of folks try to make a real big issue out of this whole thing. Oh, can you really forgive a person who has hurt you really bad? What does forgiveness mean? But if you don't forget, have you really forgiven? We can come up with lots of complicated, philosophical things to talk about round-and-round in circles over the area of forgiveness.

What we actually need to do is quit analyzing the thing to death and just say, "I forgive you."

One of my first steps towards healing began when I had to sit down and make a list of all the folks in my life that had harmed me. Then, to my amazement, I had to make a list of all the people whom I had harmed. This isn't a short list on either end of the scale. Doing this requires that we go all the way back to that kid in kindergarten who wouldn't let us have the red crayon or that young man in junior high who broke our heart. When we look at ourselves, we might see that poor old lady in traffic whom we gave "the bird" because she was turning too slow or that time we told our sister she looked really fat in her prom dress. Yes, even the little things count.

I did all those soul searching lists, but it wasn't until years later that I paid attention to what it really meant. When I took hypnotherapy classes, the second thing we were taught was how important forgiveness is. Forgiveness is a way to let go of all those negative feelings that we've been covering up. We might have actually been feeling anger, sadness, pain, guilt, you name it. Outwardly, we might be holding a grudge, keeping people at a distance, or never speaking to a dear friend or family member again. Those grudges or feelings of guilt cause us to set ourselves up for downfall. They are the things that keep us from loving deeply or having close friends. They are the things that create barriers, build walls, and leave us lonely and in pain. They eat away at our soul and keep us from healing completely.

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