Love & Forgiveness

People are focusing on the topic of Love & Forgiveness right now. I hear it everywhere, which makes sense because there is a great deal of turmoil in the world. We can't live with resentment inside us, because it will eat away at us like a cancer.?

COVID really brought a lot of that out. There was plenty to forgive, when it came to people not going to the office and being thrown in with their families when they weren't used to it. It boiled up a lot of issues that could have been worked on earlier.

Forgiveness eliminates the feeling that the person I'm forgiving has some kind of a power over me. When I'm holding onto resentment and anger, the other person does have power over me. They have won in a way. They are giving me this negative energy and I am willing to carry it around. By treating it with love and forgiveness, I can let it go. I don't have to carry that suitcase full of negativity everywhere, and it's such a wonderful feeling.?

As a young adult, I thought that by forgiving I was kind of compromising my own worth. By saying, ‘I forgive you’ meant that what the other person did was okay. That I was okay with what they had done. I had it backwards.?

When it comes to a long term marriage and the little things are piling on through the years, we tend to take our partner for granted. That’s when the magic disappears and the spark dies out. It’s the little things like a quick text or leaving love notes around the house letting your significant other know that you are thinking about them. In other words, doing something to hold the love connection.?

If my husband has done something around the house I let him know how much I appreciate him, even if it’s not the way I would have done it.

Back in my twenties I had a three year relationship that wasn't good. So there were plenty of things to forgive. It produced a beautiful little son, so I don't regret it, and I learned a lot through that relationship. It wasn’t easy to forgive someone who took off when I was ten days overdue and didn’t come back until two days after giving birth.?

A supposed business trip where he partied and cheated on me.?

I forgave him because I really wanted that relationship to work. I wanted to have a relationship where our son could grow up with both a mommy and a daddy. At the time, I was not good at forgiving myself. So I carried resentment toward myself, not my partner. For some reason, I felt like I deserved to be treated that way.?

Then six months later he started yelling at me, woke the baby, and called me a whore. I put an end to the whole thing. I had had enough. I just lost it. I got so angry. It was like putting a needle to a balloon. Bang! Everything came out all at once and I punched him in the jaw. He fled, I packed up, called a cab, and left with my son never to return. It took some time before I was able to forgive him and when I did, I felt much lighter.?

It took me quite some time to have love and forgiveness for myself. What helped me the most was the ho’oponopono meditation, which is regarded in Hawaii as an ancient healing technique. In essence, that meditation is really a repeated mantra: ‘I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.’ The idea is to essentially heal those around you through healing yourself, similar to forgiveness. The word ho’oponopono means to ‘make amends’. I would stand in front of the mirror, look myself in the eyes, and say the mantra. In doing so I was able to release a lot of stored resentment, and I was able to cry as I let it all out.?

That was such a wonderful feeling because for the first time in a long time, after being bullied in grade school and experiencing two rapes as a teen, I felt love for myself.

Excerpt from my guest appearance on “People Come First” the book - Live

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