I literally groaned aloud when I saw my writing assignment today.
Naturally, if I resist it or try to swat it away like gnats in my face at dusk on an otherwise perfect Summer evening, I know it significant I address it: face to face, heart to heart, soul to soul.
Here goes the prompt:
Forgiveness - What one thing do you need to forgive yourself for this year?
First off, self-forgiveness at all is challenging to me. I am able to forgive almost anyone else, but myself? Pshaw, why would I want to do that? I mean, if I continue to not forgive myself I may as well lock myself in a jail made of bars of self-neglect and self-loathing and throw away the rusty from tears key.
Melodramatic, perhaps? Yes and no.
This is why, after I read the prompt and groaned suitably, I decided writing one response wouldn’t be enough. For me that would be like saying, “I want to lose 50 pounds!” and fasting for one day. It just isn’t enough.
I need to make self-forgiveness a practice. I plan to take it on for 30 days: from January 29 to February 29, which is my 50th birthday month. On that day, I will build a bonfire and burn them all, offering my forgiveness to heaven, where this sort of thing isn’t needed. I feel like the folks up there understand both the jail I have been building for all of my life as well as the desire to be free of it.
First up: forgive myself for not being the perfect parent 24/7 – 365/6 days a year. This is the most difficult of all because it includes those I love more than my own life. From the time my first daughter, Marlena, was stillborn, I felt guilty for failing her. I have never completely forgiven myself for that loss nearly twenty two years ago.
When Katherine was born, I felt guilty for feeling at all sad and depressed in remembering then what true loss of Marlena meant. I felt guilty for feeling guilty. The bars on my jail got higher.
When Emma was born, I felt guilty I left her for work at six weeks. I hated my work, I loved my baby, why was I opting for work rather than baby? Oh, yeah: guilt ~ since I was the one supporting the family, providing the health insurance… and the thought to leave that stable, job-most-people-would-love-unless-ofcourse-you-abhor-bureaucracy like me…. Up go the bars, higher and with more shallow gaps.
When Samuel was born, I was horrified. Not at him, but at the ridiculous fact of having a wooops baby at age 39. What sort of fool does that? Why was I continually making mistakes? Oh, yeah. I remember: I am the lowest form of life… wow, I had almost forgotten and then… Samuel. It took me more than six weeks to fall in love with him (more guilt) and when he was eventually diagnosed with autism? A fleet of garbage trucks full of guilt dumped upon me. (My advocacy work goes unnoticed, my work for all children including Samuel goes unnoticed. The fact I made my daughters into “Special Needs Siblings” ~ what a horrible legacy to have passed along to them.
Would I trade Samuel for a simpler life now? Not at all, but whenever he has a tough day, I continue to feel guilt. Unforgiveness.
I will work with this concept – forgiveness for my lack of perfect (or even respectable) parenting, even though I get continual kudos from people about my parenting skills, the anvil of unforgiveness for this lack pounds me between my shoulders: an anvil, struck over and over and over.
I am imagining living 2012 without these burdens of unforgiveness.
This is a great start.
Writing prompt: thank you and I loathe you. Yes, yes, yes – in my world the two frequently come hand-in-hand.
Is it an accident that since I wrote this, what… eight hours ago… I have been crying very steadily? Crying is healing, I tell myself. And I even forgive myself for crying as well as I forgive myself for not being the perfect parent 24/7 – 365/6 days a year.
Recent Comments