While you are doing that, it would be helpful to contemplate some affirmations. Affirmations are the second set of exercises that you will be using in this book to help you forgive. Affirmations are powerful beliefs with powerful energy connected to them. I encourage you to contemplate, learn, and practice the affirmations in this book in a consistent way. Here is one way I recommend.
Write each affirmation down on a 3 × 5 card and contemplate the cards for a few minutes four to five times each day, beginning in the morning and ending in the evening before sleep. Save these cards. The affirmations in the book can, in themselves, catalyze a great deal of change. When used along with the other exercises, they will be even more powerful. You might want to make up several cards, and, to help you remember and repeat them, post them on your bathroom mirror, on your refrigerator, on the dashboard of your car, or in another convenient place. Throughout the day, repeat them whenever you experience a challenge or grievance.
Exercise: Affirmations 1 and 2
AFFIRMATION 1
“Inherent in every difficulty or challenge is the seed of an equal or greater benefit. I will look for that seed and nurture it.”
AFFIRMATION 2
“Inherent in every grievance, judgment, and attack thought is the seed of the opportunity for practicing forgiveness. I will look for that seed and nurture it.”
Exercise: Journaling Positive Benefits of Experiences 1–3
After you have contemplated these affirmations for a little while, write about each of the three previous experiences and how each one activated strengths in you; how you became a better, stronger, wiser person in some way; and how you experienced some positive outcomes from the experience or strengthened a relationship because of the perceived harmful experience. Focus not only on the positive benefits to you in the past but also on the potential benefits for you in the future.
APRIL'S RESPONSE ABOUT LAST YEAR
After everything that happened with my grandmom, I realize the importance of being dependent on myself and no one else. I think that maybe she has things going on in her own life that are causing her pain. I also realized that I don't want to surround myself with negativity because it won't help me have a positive attitude.
APRIL'S RESPONSE ABOUT EARLIER IN LIFE
My relationship with my mom has come a long way. I decided the only way to have her in my life was to forgive her for the past. I learned how to communicate with her better. I now understand that part of the reason we didn't get along was because we were so much alike.
APRIL'S RESPONSE ABOUT HERSELF
From this experience, I learned that there are many things in my life that are sometimes beyond our control. I've tried to stop blaming myself for that day and realize that even if I came downstairs a few minutes sooner, it wouldn't have mattered. It was my dad's choice not to create a healthy lifestyle for himself.
Keep on Journaling
As you go through all the steps to forgiveness outlined in this book and practice different exercises and processes, write about your experiences of doing these exercises in your journal. Make sure to note what exercises and processes have had the most positive, beneficial, and healing effects on you. If you do this regularly, you will be able to look back at the earlier entries and notice the significant changes you have made in your ability to forgive and in your level of happiness and well-being.
CHAPTER 3
Discovering What Hurts:
One Core Problem (Unforgiveness) and One Core Solution (Forgiveness)
“Before we can experience the pure and serene state of love, there is one priceless gift we must learn how to give—to ourselves and to others…. The gift I am speaking about is forgiveness. To heal the split between our dark side and our higher self, we must learn how to forgive ourselves for our imperfections, … for our judgmental minds…. We also must find the willingness to forgive those who have hurt us, lied to us, disappointed us, and betrayed us…. Ultimately, we have to … forgive the presence that we think of as God.”
—DEBBIE FORD, Why Good People Do Bad Things
“Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself.
It is the wish that you be joined with him and not apart
…
The holiest place on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.”
—A Course in Miracles
I MET ELLEN MANY years ago. I knew her and her husband and some of the personal, marital, and family struggles she has had over the years. She is a courageous and loving woman and was kind enough to share this story with me. It demonstrates the kind of healing transformation that can take place in family relationships when you are ready and willing to forgive. It also shows how forgiveness can bring about love and an open heart.
I never really understood my father; he was a distant, harsh man who ruled our home with an iron fist. With a houseful of women, he would complain about the fact that he had three daughters and no sons. My whole life I tried to please him. As a youngster, I was a tomboy—as close as he was going to get to having a son. He would often refer to me in masculine terms calling me boy, son, or Paco. When I approached puberty and decided I preferred dresses and dancing to climbing trees and playing soccer, our relationship—if you can call it that—ended.
Eventually, I married, had a baby boy, and I could see that his baby grandson brought him enormous pleasure. Unfortunately, two weeks after my son was born my father had a massive stroke. The doctors never understood how he survived, but I knew his determination to live would not let him go so easily. After he was released from the hospital, his left side was paralyzed, his speech was slurred, and he needed someone to care for him while my mother was at work.
Every morning my husband dropped our son and me at my parents' home on his way to work. I would care for my father, bathe him, shave him, feed him. I even had to deal with bedpans and cleaning him afterward. I went there day after day, hoping, praying that just once he'd say, “thank you” or “good job”—something, anything positive. Instead, day after day I got, “You don't know how to make oatmeal” or “I hate the way you bathe me.”
“You're going to cut me with that razor”; “You're stupid”; and “You can't learn anything.”
Day after day I came home in tears. This went on for about two years until my mother's union switched insurance companies. The new company covered a nurse's aide for my dad for up to six hours a day. So now, I only had to cover two hours a day but nothing else changed. I still went there every day, and all I wanted to hear was that I was loved and appreciated for all I was doing and giving up, and every day I was disappointed, heartbroken, and tearful. After about ten years, my husband said to me, “Enough is enough; either you find a way not to be upset or stop taking care of your dad.”
I had a difficult decision and I prayed for guidance. Could I continue to care for my dad, because he was my dad