Accepting the challenge: The act of forgiveness

Reading time: 20 mins

"As I look out onto the horizon, I feel free. I feel free because I choose to forgive - I choose to forgive others and I choose to forgive myself. Forgiveness is liberty" - Kathleen Sleigh

This dedication post goes out to my follower Tiffany, who suggested I write a post about forgiveness. What a great suggestion as I have not covered it in my blog in its entirety as yet. One of the biggest challenges we face is the act of forgiveness, and I say 'challenge' because it is not an easy task to forgive others who have done wrong by us or those we care about. It is even harder to forgive ourselves when we have made mistakes. Once we master forgiveness though, we set ourselves onto a path of freedom, joy, peace and love and it is not considered a challenge any longer.

Up until now, I have always struggled with forgiveness towards others and even more towards myself. In particular, whenever guys did wrong by me it was easier to be filled up with anger and grudge holding rather than forgiveness because in my mind, if I chose to forgive them then it meant that what they did was okay. Without realising it though, this anger began to consume me - so much so that nearly every conversation was about how much of an asshole this guy was and that I was glad he was out of my life and that I hope something bad would happen to him etc. Soon enough, they became the topic of my life again because of the pure fact I had not opened myself up to forgiving them... and being eaten up by anger and grudge holding is too time consuming and emotionally draining.

The thing about forgiveness is that by forgiving, it doesn't mean that we are accepting of what someone did was okay. And because we associate this with forgiveness we choose not to forgive. The danger in that though is that your anger towards that person will consume your life and without realising it, you become an angry and bitter person yourself. Forgiveness is not about allowing someone to think that what they did was okay, not by a long shot. We can still choose to forgive others and accept that their behaviour is not okay. We can forgive and choose not to have them in our lives. What I used to think also is that by forgiving someone it meant I had to be on good terms with them, but it doesn't mean that at all. By forgiving someone else for their actions we accept that we want to let freedom, love, joy and peace into our lives so that we can move forward, rather than be stuck on the merry-go-round of anger and bitterness. No one wants to be on that ride... Yes, forgiving someone is a challenge because we may see it as a weakness, we may think it allows them to think that their actions were acceptable. And so that's why we don't forgive, but in order to live your best and most peaceful life, forgiveness is essential, it is a MUST.

Before I talk about my forgiveness towards Mr X, I will tell you about a story where I forgave someone who was really close to me, someone who hurt me a lot (and this person was not a man). I became really close friends with this woman who was 7 years older than me and had 3 children. Me being me loving children and being giving to others, I bent over backwards to be there for her and her children, I did everything she asked me to do for them even though I wasn't their parent. It got to a point where it was taking over my life and she just expected me to be there all the time... but I had my own life. I began to feel guilty for choosing me if I didn't choose her and her children. Long story short, things blew up because I finally decided to choose myself. And even in all that, I still tried to be nice and tried to patch things up with her as I knew she was going through a tough time, but things just got worse. Her reaction to me not doing what she wanted really hurt me because there was nothing I had done wrong. If anything, I had done more right. I was always there for her. I was angry for a while yes, but it eventually got to a point where in order to be happy I needed to forgive, and I have done that. That's not to say I am friends with her now or ever will be again, but I have made peace with what has happened and have been able to move forward. When she comes to mind I hope she is doing well and genuinely wish her well.

When it came to Mr X, I was probably angry towards him for a good 2-3 weeks after the break up but then I realised that my anger towards him was all I thought about, it was the only association left I had with him and it wasn't helping me move forward. But in my mind I told myself that if I forgave him for his actions, then it meant I was okay with how he treated me. But as I mentioned earlier, this isn't the case at all. I don't need to be angry at him forever in order to move forward because I don't want to end up being a bitter person for it. I accept that I am not okay with how he treated me as a woman but I forgive him for that because he wasn't in the best place and I wasn't in the best place. It was just a disaster waiting to happen really. I am a happier person without him in my life, I have made so much more time for myself, I am allowing myself room to grow, I've allowed myself to love myself harder than ever before, I enjoy my own company without feeling guilty for saying no to other guy's time because I'm on my time for once. I have been able to achieve goals like looking for a new career and going back to the gym; massive focuses in my life that I would never have been able to or chosen to pay attention to if Mr X was still in my life or if I was consumed by the anger I felt towards him. By forgiving him, I feel so much more at peace with myself and with my whole life. I have never felt more joy and love before, well at least I can't remember when I felt joy and love at this level before.

I can think about Mr X without feeling angry, tense sad or stressed and that is because I have been able to forgive and let go. If I saw him out on the street I don't know I would necessarily say hi to him at this point in my life just yet but I would be able to walk passed him and feel at peace. And that is a great feeling. I know one day we will probably be able to be on a civil level but that isn't my focus right now, the focus is what I want to do for me in order to grow and be a better person.

I hope these real-life examples have given you some clarification as to why it is so important to forgive others. You need to in order to move forward with your life.

Remember these key tips:

1. Forgiveness does not mean you are okay with what someone has done

2. Forgiveness does not mean that you have to be on good terms with that person

3. Forgiveness does not make you weak

Now let's get to the other aspect of forgiveness - forgiving ourselves, the hardest forgiveness of all. For me personally, I have always found it difficult to forgive myself because I am always so hard on myself. I always used to feel guilty and go through a lot of self blame to the point my brain exploded! It wasn't healthy at all nor was it productive or beneficial.

Why do we find it so hard to forgive ourselves?

As I ask this question I want you to think about why it is you haven't been able to forgive yourself for a relationship that has ended now, or one that is continuing and you feel bad for choices you've made in that relationship OR, I want you to think about a time where you were not able to forgive yourself in another situation. Have a think about it - what was/is it about the situation that is making you be so hard on yourself that you cannot forgive yourself? The thing is, you deserve to forgive yourself, we all do no matter what mistakes we have made. Think about times where we have forgiven others who probably felt like they would never forgive themselves for things they did to us, and yet we still forgave them. Self forgiveness is not just important for people eventually forgiving us and moving forward themselves but it is important for us in order to be open to love, happiness and peace. If we can't forgive ourselves then we can never truly move forward, just like we won't be able to if we can't forgive someone else. It's the same idea.

I know it's easier to self sabotage and blame yourself and feel guilty for things said and done. But that thought process isn't useful because it isn't positive and it is living in the past. You can't change the choices you made in the past, no matter how bad they seemed. You need to tell yourself that although you haven't always made great decisions, you made those decisions that you thought were right at the time, so please don't be hard on yourself. It takes a lot of guts to own up to your mistakes and by owning up to them and being accepting of them allows you to forgive yourself. If you can't acknowledge your mistakes and can't accept that it is okay not to be perfect, then you will always be beating yourself up over your mistakes, and every mistake you make thereafter will lead you to more self sabotage and more self destruction. You deserve so much more than putting yourself through that, honestly. Think about someone who is worse off than you in terms of how they treat people - thieves, kidnappers, murderers, con artists, criminals in general. These are people who have no conscience and don't care about forgiveness however in saying that, you hear stories of criminals who eventually forgive themselves for their crimes because it is the only way they can make peace with their lives because they knew it wouldn't get any better, especially being in prison as it is. So if criminals of all people are able to forgive themselves, then you should be able to as well.

I can genuinely say that I have forgiven myself for all the mistakes and decisions I made in the relationship I had with Mr X. I felt so guilty for so long and self sabotaged very badly because of it - I isolated myself from my friends, I shut myself in my room for weeks, I put my phone on airplane mode for days on end without telling anyone which lead to them worrying and as bad as it is, I didn't even care I was worrying them because I was so consumed by my own self pity and self blame. I didn't shower, I ordered take away all the time, I basically neglected myself all because of this guy... I became the worst version of myself and it wasn't pleasant at all. I wasn't pleasant at all. I thought that by festering on the 'should have's, could have's, would have's' that that would benefit me and somehow erase the past and what I had done. I thought that if I had ruminated long enough about my mistakes that I could justify why Mr X had treated me the way he did, that I must have to feel so bad about myself because I deserved to be treated badly by Mr X.

I know I didn't make the best decisions in the relationship, decisions I am not proud of, decisions I made because I wasn't in a good place, because I wasn't emotionally balanced. And that's okay because it doesn't make me a bad person. If Mr X was my person, I wouldn't feel this bad about myself but if I had enough value for myself in the first place then I wouldn't have allowed myself to react so dramatically to his behaviour. I would have had dignity and walked away with pride, instead of walking away with hurt, desperation and fear. At least I can acknowledge why I made those poor choices and own up to them and tell myself that it's okay I made those mistakes, it just goes to show I have a lot more growing to do. I know I made those mistakes because I wasn't secure within myself. Had I not made those mistakes then I wouldn't know what I needed to work on to change. I can forgive myself because I have accepted that I have flaws and that I'm not perfect. I forgive myself because only my opinion of me matters, not that of Mr X's. I can forgive myself because it has allowed me to open up to more self love, kindness, joy and peace. I can forgive myself because it allows me to be a better person, the best version of Kathleen Mae Sleigh there is and I can be proud of her for it.

It's easy to get into a pattern of not being able to forgive yourself but it doesn't do you any favours. It just leads to more self sabotage and self destruction and you don't deserve to put yourself through that, no matter what it is you have done. Now I laugh at the choices I made about Mr X and the actions I committed because of how ridiculous and how so not me they were. I don't even blame Mr X for responding negatively to it because my reactions were so negative. So how on earth could I have expected him to respond the way I wanted him to? I know my poor actions don't define me because I wasn't the real me when I was around him. I became a version of myself that was toxic and bitter because I allowed myself to be defined by this one guy, this one guy who was in 7 months of my 27 years of life...

The thing is, forgiveness is not about being a good person or a bad person either. I accept that Mr X made some really bad decisions too and I don't excuse his behaviour at all but that doesn't make him a bad person. Had he have been in a better place then I'm sure he would be a great person and be able to love. But he just wasn't my person, nor would he ever be in the emotional state he was in. He just didn't have the capacity to be able to connect with me on an emotional level because of the problems in his own life that he was consumed by, his baggage. I have been able to let him go with love and peace and accept that he needs to work on a lot as well, which I am sure he will and I am sure that once he gets to that point he will look back and understand what he needs to change so that he can be a better person in his next relationship. And I honestly do wish him well and all the best. I wish him that because it allows me to be at peace with the situation and to be at peace with myself. I forgave so I could be free, the forgiveness towards him had nothing to do with him but everything to do with me because I matter the most. And you should all be telling yourselves that too... for that reason you MUST be able to forgive yourself. I know it's hard but it's a challenge worth accepting because of the long term benefits that will unfold. Forgiveness is absolutely LIFE CHANGING.

Forgive others to be at peace with that person and move forward without holding onto anger. Accept that their actions were not okay, but you can let the anger go in order to move forward and wish them well. Remember you met this person for a reason and I'm sure you had some great times with them, I'm sure you did. But remember that they just weren't your person and it is okay that they weren't. That is what love and growth and learning about yourself and what you do and don't want in a partner is all about. So be grateful for the experience, it has and will continue to teach you a lot as you go through life learning more about yourself and others.

Forgive yourself to be at peace with your life, to be open to love and joy so that you can be open to your person when they come along. Let go of anger and hurt so that you can be set free. Accept yourself for your flaws and the mistakes you have made, they are what shape who you are and who you will continue to be. Accept that you will make other mistakes along the way because you aren't perfect, but it's okay. You are a work in progress and you can always make room for improvement. Accept that you need to stop repeating the same mistakes so that you can make better choices for yourself and others. And accept that whatever decisions you made in past situations were always what you felt were the right ones at the time, that's why you made them. We always try and do our level best in any given moment, even though that may mean some pretty massive consequences. But you're not alone and you are not the only one who has made mistakes. The key is to not beat yourself up about them. Let them go and be free, it's what you deserve.

One of my most favourite quotes that my dad stood by and always instilled in me was that 'A man who never made a mistake never made anything'. He lived by that and always made sure I lived by that. It's the very reason he never told me he did not like my first boyfriend (I didn't find out he didn't until after he died and his best friend told me). I was 16 when I met my first boyfriend and my dad knew in his heart of hearts that even if he told me he didn't think that this guy was right for me, that I would go against him and rebel even more. And he didn't want to ruin his relationship with me because of that. I'm sure that that would have been very difficult for him to deal with being a father, but he knew I would not listen to his words unless I went through the pain of realising how toxic this guy was for me. Until I saw it for myself, his words would have fallen on deaf ears. I am grateful for him not expressing his concerns because he knew I would keep dating this guy anyway because I was infatuated, I was in love. His relationship with me was worth more than this sh**ty guy. He knew I would have seen my ex boyfriend for myself and make the decision to walk away. My dad was my greatest teacher and still is, even in spirit. Him living by making mistakes in order to learn is the reason why he was such a calm, forgiving and accepting person. And I love, respect and admire him so much for that.

I hope this post has given you some understanding about forgiveness and has made you think about why it is so important in order to live the most peaceful life. Forgive others, let go of the anger and the pain and most importantly forgive yourself. You are your own worst enemy, but don't allow yourself to be anymore because you don't deserve it. Be open to forgiveness and you will notice the dramatic changes in your life - your aura will change, your attitude will become more positive, your friends, family and the people you meet and associate with will enjoy being around you and most importantly, you will be open to love, joy and peace for YOU. How exciting a journey will that be?!

"Forgiveness is a gift to yourself.

It frees you from the past, past experiences and past relationships.

It allows you to live in the present time. When you forgive yourself

and forgive others, you are indeed free".

- Louise Hay

This is the life you want to live. So make it happen, I dare you. Forgive today. Not tomorrow, not the next day. Forgive NOW.

Let me know you go on your forgiveness journey, I will be glad to hear about it and the positive changes in your life that will unfold.

Love you all!

Xxx

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