Day 34: The F Word: Forgiveness

The pain of the past can be hard to overcome. Your pain is yours and may have been inflicted on you by a family member or spouse. What I’ve seen over the years is the heaviness and internal struggle that people have carried with them for years.

Forgiveness is not easy to do, but as part of the first step, I ask if you could forgive yourself.

I look back at my childhood and all that my mom suffered. When my brother and I grew older, my mom often came to us and apologized for all that we had to live through. She felt guilty that she couldn’t always protect or provide us with what we needed.

And I know that it’s been hard for her to forgive herself. Choosing a partner who treated her badly, is a weight that my mom carried with her for a long, long time.

But the destructiveness of alcoholism and dysfunctional patterns is that the behavior that we see tends to be generational. Adult children of alcoholics often find themselves in similar relationships.

I grew up thinking that my partner and I would be together and that we would help each other. Two halves would make one whole. I fallacy in that thinking is clear for anyone to see. But it took me years and years to figure that out.

Worse, it took me a long time to forgive myself.

The complexities of having grown up in an alcoholic/dysfunctional family is two-fold: I’ve chosen to be with partners who were not emotionally able to be there for me (typically due to their issues) and then I took my frustration and resentment out on them. My behavior perpetuated the cycle of anger (be sure to check out the book The Dance of Anger if you’re looking to understand more on this topic), and no matter how hard I tried to solve my problems, the more I found myself deep in misery.

How did I get out of this?

A therapist and following the twelve steps.

And then I learned how to forgive myself. It took time, lots of time, but I realized that I needed to let go of my shame and work on learning behaviors that would be helpful to my family and to me.

Today I wanted to focus on forgiving ourselves because it’s important that we start there.

If you’re going through a difficult time, what can you do to ease up on yourself and begin to forgive?

Admitting that you have a problem (no matter that’s a chemical dependency, behavioral or other issues), now is the time to start dealing with your challenges.

A big part of that is forgiveness.


Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.