FORGIVE YOURSELF….

“Hold your head up, and do NOT wear your shame like it’s your skin” – Stacey A Palmer

She has offended you, somehow.  She apologizes and seeks your forgiveness.

You refuse (for whatever reasons internal to you).

You see her smiling and going about her day.

“She doesn’t appear contrite,” you say.

“Farthest from the truth,” she humbly responds.

You want more than that from her; yet, she doesn’t try to convince you. It is pointless, because what you do not know or refuse to understand is that she has already prayed earnestly about the “offense,” and He has forgiven her; she has forgiven herself and have opted to move on, as best as moving on allows.

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It sounds easy when you are forgiving yourself for something that you may have done to someone else, doesn’t it? I attest, however, that it is not as clear cut when you are forgiving yourself for the choices you have made that have been detrimental to yourself (and those in your charge) – within the standards you have set for yourself.  Forgiving yourself when you have “offended” yourself takes deliberate self-talk, deep introspection, self-love and a deeper sense of awareness that one must dig deep down into the recesses of ones soul to muster, master and allow to materialize. 

Forgiving yourself for doing or being something to yourself that doesn’t honor yourself is not for the faint of heart, but this is not an impossible feat.

How do I know this?  Because I have taught myself how to do this, and learning to master the art, still!

But this wasn’t always the case.  There was a time when I would have wallowed in the idea of someone else’ forgiveness and would have been bothered until the offense was somehow erased from my psyche.  There was also a time when some of my choices/decisions (work, relationship, friendship, money decisions, purchases, negative self-talk, parenting, etc.) made me feel horrible about myself, and I would have held on to those negative feelings for a while without acting in forgiveness of myself.

That was a long time ago….

Today, I am the opposite of that.

Once I agree that I have “offended” someone, I am not afraid of asking for forgiveness; however, I do not rely on another person’s forgiveness in order to move on. I apologize and leave the “offended” with the choice – to accept my apology or not.  While I hope for the forgiveness, it is not a requirement for me to forgive myself.

Selfish, some may argue, but I won’t belabor that point.

I stay stuck on self-preservation and practicing self-love (something I am still learning to do).

As it relates to forgiving myself for something I have done to myself, the process is almost the same, except it is a lot harder.  There are things about ourselves that no one else knows about us.  There are those things attached to our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our beliefs and those goals we have set for ourselves that will bombard us and lie to us each time we blunder and prevent these things from actualizing.  We hold on to these blunders, because we feel we have somehow failed ourselves.  Then the ongoing self-punishment ensues.  This involves sitting and stewing in our blunders and not letting go of our blunders thereby holding ourselves in indefinite contempt of ourselves, so it eats at us.

This is what it feels like when we do not forgive ourselves.  At least that is what it feels like to me.

When we forgive ourselves for what we have done to ourselves, we are kind to ourselves.  We may feel regret, but we do not dwell in it. We hold ourselves accountable and accept our blunders for exactly what they are.  We go through a process of deep introspection and we accept our role for what it is.  We pray, regroup, reimagine, release and then we move on.  We do not ruminate indefinitely in regret.

Admittedly, the act of forgiving oneself is more difficult when you are privy to the pain that others experience because of your actions… (but that is for another post).

Is it more important to be forgiven by someone else than it is to forgive ourselves?

Some may say that both are equally important; others may also argue that to live peaceably in this world with others, it is important for others to forgive you.

While in an ideal world, both would be the best scenario – to have someone forgive you and for you to forgive yourself, we all will agree that that is not always the case.  When we are sincere, and we apologize, we hope to be forgiven.  However, being forgiven by someone else hinges so much on the other person’s value system, propensity to heal, ability to let go, personal expectations and goals they have set for themselves, traumas they have not healed from, etc. etc. that it makes no sense being stuck in that space with someone trying to navigate their own personal systems in order to get around to them accepting an apology and offering forgiveness.   The forgiveness may never happen or may occur months or even years from the request for forgiveness.

With this in mind, I categorically agree that we must learn to forgive ourselves when we have offended someone and normalize forgiving ourselves when we have blundered against ourselves. 

In a nutshell, when we forgive ourselves, we:

• We accept responsibility
• We learn from the blunder.
• We correct our mistakes
• We are resolute in being better to ourselves and others
• We do not sit in regret
• We release it and move on.

It is true that we all need people, but much of our struggles come from allowing ourselves to be held prisoners by our blunders. The struggles come when we sit in that space of regret and negative stronghold all in the name of waiting to be forgiven.  When we are not, we pine and cause ourselves grief as we stew in the sadness caused by the unforgiveness of others. 

Why should that be our reality?  An alternative should be more appealing, regardless of how this might be interpreted.  The truth is, everyone has a different picture of what it means to look contrite and what it means to forgive and be forgiven. 

So, forgive yourself (no matter what), remember who you are and whose you are, and move on!