Forgiveness...
Forgiveness is way more difficult & complicated than it sounds. But also not. It's easier than it at first feels, when you realised that forgiveness doesn't mean something was ok, right, or open to be repeated.
By Katie Reeve-Arnold & StoriesOfSelf
5/8/20242 min read
‘What Is Forgiveness…
I learned to forgive like I learned to breathe. All at once, totally and completely. So it became me, and I became it. There was nothing between us to tell us apart anymore. But, always, I held something back. Something of myself that I didn’t give, because it was beyond forgiving.
The leaves shift, sun dapples my face, and I exhale completely. Because now I can. Because, now I trust that the next breath with be there, I no longer need to guard it.
I re-learned to forgive like I re-learned to breathe. The exhale just as important as the inhale. The trust - the exchange - part of the dance, and all in choice. Forgiveness was never that which I had been taught it was. While it had been presented to me as ‘for others’, I now know it is for me.
It is putting down something that was never mine to carry and saying ‘let’s leave that here’. Knowing that the choice of what I do from there onwards is all mine.’
by Katie Reeve-Arnold Narrative Fiction in italics.
I rebelled against forgiveness at first. I thought it meant saying that what had happened was ok. I thought it meant accepting that and accepting it would likely happen again. But I was wrong. I had learned that definition of forgiveness as a child because it suited adults for me to accept that as my truth.
I carried that mistaken definition through my childhood and teenage years and across early adulthood. Until, as I stood on the cusp of my forties, I opened myself to the right mentors to learn anew.
My truth now, in my updated, recreated framework for life, is that forgivenessdoesn’t mean that something was 'ok’, nor that I am opening myself to it being repeated, nor even that I want to necessarily keep the person who I am forgiving in my life going forwards. What it means is - I see you, I see me, I see what happened, let’s leave it there, I’m not going to carry it any further.
What then follows that are my choices for the future, and those might hold a second chance or they might not.
Either way, there is no opening to endless repetition.
Either way, the choice is mine.