This is some good food for thought.

With me, it's relatively easy to forgive others who have hurt me. The one person I have trouble forgiving is ME. I'm very hard on myself, beating myself up for such things as being unable to work and having this disease which has changed my entire family's lives in some way.

But when I was inpatient a couple of months ago, my psychologist asked me to write a letter of forgiveness to myself for what (I thought) I'd done wrong in my life. Well, this filled up a couple of college-ruled pages (on both sides) and took up most of an evening. Still, when I finished it I felt more at peace than I had in years.

Now I take it out of the drawer and re-read it whenever I get to feeling down on myself again. I also add to it as necessary. I posted some of it in my blog after I got out of the hospital and all four of my kids said "Mom, stop being so hard on yourself, you did the best you could and we know you loved us. We all turned out OK because of you." That made my guilt over being inconsistent with them when they were growing up go away.