I had a very profound experience last weekend with a group of women friends... we were sharing pain from our varied pasts and when it was my turn to talk, it was so much more than words... I felt myself releasing pain that I'd been holding onto for 30+ years and I cried and cried while I talked. So very healing.

And since then, I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking about all of this and I realized that releasing all that pain left a lot of room in my heart for something else to grow - and what I have found growing there instead is forgiveness!! So I have come to see that: True, my mother was not perfect. But she did the best she could with what she was at the time; so it is okay that she was not perfect. And that realization makes her appear actually forgivable.

And you know what realization came on the heels of that huge one? That if my mother in her imperfection is forgivable, then I AM ALSO forgivable.

I am looking forward to sharing all of this with t when we talk again in a few days. Even though this stuff didn't happen with her, it never would have happened if not for all the work I have done with her over the past 2+ years. I am so, so thankful to my t for how much she has helped me grow. I never thought I would ever see the day that I could say the words out loud: "Mom, I forgive you. For everything." And I can now.

I have worked very hard in therapy and accomplished a lot of goals but I think this is one of the biggest. I think now looking back that before I took that what 3-month break or whatever it was in October, I must have somehow sensed this next bit coming and was trying to run away from it. But it wouldn't let me. So glad I faced it and called t again and got back to work.

I just wanted to share this. Thanks for reading!

[feralkittymom]

I'm glad for you. Anything that leads to such a release and welcoming calm is a good thing.

I've never been able to forgive my parents. But what I have been able to do is appreciate what good there was, and that would not have been possible without the deeply changing experience of therapy. And that's enough for me.

thanks feralkittymom. i never would have gotten to this point without the work done in therapy - "the deeply changing experience of therapy" is exactly how I would put it too. that was an extremely condensed version of how I got to this point of course... there's a ton of work that led up to it. I just have been feeling the need to try to get it down on paper so I went for it here!

I think when we're free to choose to feel how we wish to feel. That does free up a lot of space.
I didn't find forgiveness as you have. For me it was happening in the background as I slowly worked on me.
But the result is the same. I am so full of my own life now that I hold no bitter feelings.

[CantExplain]

I find I can forgive two kinds of people: those who are worth forgiving and those who are not worth hating.

If I calculate that the future value of the relationship is worth more than the past pain, I can forgive.

On the other hand, if there is no relationship or the relationship is clearly doomed, I can walk away from that.

But this still leaves Madame T as a person I can neither forgive nor discard.

[feralkittymom]

And that is so much the enigma that is the T relationship!