Forgiveness does not mean "getting over it" as some people will tell you to do. There is no "getting over" no matter how much you try, no matter how much pain you are in, no matter how much you may wish you could "get over it." In my experience, "getting over it" just doesn't work.
I tried many times and many ways to get over, under, and around the pain of incest. I even tried denying my pain and feelings and wearing a smiling, happy face for several years. None of it worked. I even tried stuffing it down with food and denied myself access to my dad's family of origin for 10 years in an attempt to be happy and normal. The reality was Hell instead. I wasn't happy. I wore a mask of sweetness with my friends and almost continual feelings of rage that kept escaping and affecting me and those I loved.
In some ways, I recreated the home of my childhood. I was the raging controller [my dad]. My husband was the passive-aggressive one [my mom].
I tried controlling and fixing everyone else's problems so I wouldn't have to feel my own pain or look at my own problems. None of it worked and I still couldn't forgive. I just hated myself more. I ignored my physical and emotional needs. I pretended they never existed, just like my parents did when I was a child.
I often tell others that I was blessed to have a dad and grandfather who were alcoholics because when I was able to see myself as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I was able to finally see who I was and what the family disease of alcoholism was doing to my life. Add the incest on top of that and the mixture was even more dysfunctional and often intense.
Getting a sponsor in my 12-Step programs was my second blessing in recovery. Thank you, Jack. He made me start attending Al-Anon meetings not long after I started Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings. I can honestly say that Adult Children meetings saved my life and my sanity and helped me find myself where I was finally able to do forgiveness further down the road. The Al-Anon meetings were about healthy and unhealthy relationships and helped me save my marriage and start a new relationship of healing and forgiveness with myself and my family.
I had to heal me before I could even think about forgiveness. I had to feel and work through my feelings of anger, rage, shame, hurt, betrayal, trust, abandonment and safety. I had to first create a feeling of safety before I could begin to trust myself or anyone else.
My 12-Step sponsor had me make a list of people that I needed to make amends to. Then he told me to put myself at the top of the list. Then I had to make a list of things that I needed to forgive myself for first.
That list for self-forgiveness included:
Forgiving myself for believing the lies of my abusers.
Forgiving me, the adult, for ever believing that the child me was capable of protecting herself. I wasn't given the tools to do that by my parents. I was just a child.
Forgiving me, the adult, for blaming the child me for the incest.
Forgiving me, the adult, for staying silent about the incest for so long.
Forgiving me, the adult, for abandoning my own inner children when they really needed me the most.
Forgiving me, the adult, for adding on more abuse by listening and believing my inner critic voices for so long.
Forgiving me, the adult, for using food to keep my feelings buried inside for so long.
Forgiving me, the adult, for being so afraid all the time instead of living my life to its fullest.
Forgiving me, the adult, for allowing my rage to control me and for using that rage to hurt others.
Forgiving me, the adult, for living in denial for so long.
Forgiving me, the adult, for being so controlling of people and circumstances and becoming my dad the dictator, in the early years of my marriage.
Forgiving me, the adult, for hiding behind a mask and not allowing the real me to shine my Light for others to see.
Forgiving me, the adult, for carrying around the shame of my abusers and believing it was mine.
Forgiving me, the adult, for not seeing the abuse of bullying that my daughter went through in her teenage years of high school because I was so focused on my own needs at the time.
Forgiving me, the adult, for not being a better protector of my daughter when a teenage boy made sexual advances toward her when she was 10 years old.
Forgiving me, the adult, for passing so many of my fears on to my children so that my son suffers from panic attacks today.
Forgiving me, the adult, for not being more emotionally present for my children, when I was so focused on my early recovery that they probably felt that I wasn't there for them. In many ways, I wasn't.
Forgiving me, the adult, for lashing out at my husband with my rage before I reached the stage of being able to control it and hurting the person, other than my children, that I love the most.
The child that I was doesn't need forgiving. The abuse was never her fault. She didn't deserve to be treated the way that she was by her abusers. She was blameless and shameless for what was done by the adults in her life.
Patricia
Links to other posts on forgiveness:
Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Forgiveness Is Not Forgetting The Child Abuse"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/10/forgiveness-is-not-forgetting-child.html
Emerging From Broken's post
"Forgive the Abusers? A bit of a Rant"
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/forgive-the-abusers-a-bit-of-a-rant/
Overcoming Sexual Abuse's post
"What About Forgiveness"
@ http://overcomingsexualabuse.com/2010/10/28/what-about-forgiveness/
Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Revisiting Forgiveness"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/06/revisiting-forgiveness.html
Showing posts with label Overcoming Sexual Abuse blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Overcoming Sexual Abuse blog. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Forgiveness Is Not Forgetting The Child Abuse
DO NOT EVER FORGET THE CHILD ABUSE HAPPENED!
Over at the blog Emerging From Broken, a conversation is going on about forgiveness. This isn't your usual discussion of forgiveness that you would hear at your local church or maybe even in your own family discussions on the subject. This discussion is heartfelt and often bone-weary, by survivors who have thought long and hard about what forgiveness means and what it doesn't mean to them as survivors of abuse. I have written on the subject of forgiveness more than once or twice here on my blog. Please bear with me again.
First, and foremost, in my mind is the opening statement above. I will repeat it so you forget.
DO NOT EVER FORGET THE CHILD ABUSE HAPPENED!
Why? Because if you forget, the abuse---emotional, physical, sexual---that happened to you or to someone else that you know and love, how can you ever hope to stop the abuse that will damage the next generation of children. If you forget, someone can come along and abuse you again. You cannot stop what you are not aware of. You cannot let that happen. You could do nothing to stop your own abuse when you were a child. Yes, the child abuse that you lived through WAS NOT your fault. [Sorry about the shouting with all the capital letters, but this topic is important to me.]
STOPPING CHILD ABUSE SHOULD BE IMPORTANT TO EVERY ADULT. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN.
Darlene [Emerging From Broken], it looks like I caught your Rant. Thanks for passing it along. I hope that I do the same with my words.
Some words about forgiveness:
"You must forgive your parents."
"You must honor and love your parents."
"You should keep family matters in the family."
"Just forgive and move on."
"I am so tired of hearing you complain about your incest issues. Can you just shut up?"
"Get over it."
"Heal already. This has gone on long enough."
"I don't want to hear another word about your issues."
"Why can't you just forgive and forget."
"How much longer are you going to talk about this subject?"
"Do you have to talk about the incest all the time?"
"That was a long time ago. This is now. Shouldn't you be over that by now?"
These are a few of the things that have been said to me to supposedly help me or shut me up and hurry me along on my way to healing and forgiving. Did any of them work? No, they just made me angry and hurt and helped me to doubt and abuse myself with questions such as:
"Why can't I just do what they say?"
"Why don't I just shut up and pretend that it doesn't still hurt?"
"Denial isn't so bad. Is it?"
"Forgiveness seems to be so easy for everybody else. Why can't I do it?"
"I must still be so stupid, like my parents said, because I am just not getting it."
"Forgiveness is just something else that I am screwing up."
"I just can't get anything right."
"I am just no good or I could forgive."
"Maybe my parents were right and I'm just a bad seed."
"Everything I touch goes wrong."
"I am such a stupid Bitch that I can't even do forgiveness right."
"It is all my fault any way."
Did any of those statements make it any easier to heal or to forgive? NO. When my own doubts joined with the words of others to further confuse me and the issue of forgiveness, I was actually ever further away from forgiving than when I started out. These words and doubts just gave me more ways to abuse myself. Abusing myself is just another something that I have to do forgiveness for. Is it any wonder that we often feel overwhelmed when we first look at forgiveness?
Well, I think that my Rant just turned into a series of posts because I am just getting started on what I wanted to say about forgiveness. This post isn't the direction that I thought I would be going when I sat down out here on my front porch to enjoy the mild Autumn temperatures, fresh air and sunshine while I was thinking and writing out my thoughts.
If you reach the place where you can forgive your abusers, DO NOT EVER FORGET THAT YOU WERE ABUSED!
Patricia
Here are the three other blog posts that prompted me to sit down and write out my thoughts about forgiveness:
Emerging From Broken's post
"Forgive the Abusers? A bit of a Rant"
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/forgive-the-abusers-a-bit-of-a-rant/
Overcoming Sexual Abuse's post
"What About Forgiveness"
@ http://overcomingsexualabuse.com/2010/10/28/what-about-forgiveness/
Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Prelude To Forgiveness"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/prelude-to-forgiveness.html
Over at the blog Emerging From Broken, a conversation is going on about forgiveness. This isn't your usual discussion of forgiveness that you would hear at your local church or maybe even in your own family discussions on the subject. This discussion is heartfelt and often bone-weary, by survivors who have thought long and hard about what forgiveness means and what it doesn't mean to them as survivors of abuse. I have written on the subject of forgiveness more than once or twice here on my blog. Please bear with me again.
First, and foremost, in my mind is the opening statement above. I will repeat it so you forget.
DO NOT EVER FORGET THE CHILD ABUSE HAPPENED!
Why? Because if you forget, the abuse---emotional, physical, sexual---that happened to you or to someone else that you know and love, how can you ever hope to stop the abuse that will damage the next generation of children. If you forget, someone can come along and abuse you again. You cannot stop what you are not aware of. You cannot let that happen. You could do nothing to stop your own abuse when you were a child. Yes, the child abuse that you lived through WAS NOT your fault. [Sorry about the shouting with all the capital letters, but this topic is important to me.]
STOPPING CHILD ABUSE SHOULD BE IMPORTANT TO EVERY ADULT. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN.
Darlene [Emerging From Broken], it looks like I caught your Rant. Thanks for passing it along. I hope that I do the same with my words.
Some words about forgiveness:
"You must forgive your parents."
"You must honor and love your parents."
"You should keep family matters in the family."
"Just forgive and move on."
"I am so tired of hearing you complain about your incest issues. Can you just shut up?"
"Get over it."
"Heal already. This has gone on long enough."
"I don't want to hear another word about your issues."
"Why can't you just forgive and forget."
"How much longer are you going to talk about this subject?"
"Do you have to talk about the incest all the time?"
"That was a long time ago. This is now. Shouldn't you be over that by now?"
These are a few of the things that have been said to me to supposedly help me or shut me up and hurry me along on my way to healing and forgiving. Did any of them work? No, they just made me angry and hurt and helped me to doubt and abuse myself with questions such as:
"Why can't I just do what they say?"
"Why don't I just shut up and pretend that it doesn't still hurt?"
"Denial isn't so bad. Is it?"
"Forgiveness seems to be so easy for everybody else. Why can't I do it?"
"I must still be so stupid, like my parents said, because I am just not getting it."
"Forgiveness is just something else that I am screwing up."
"I just can't get anything right."
"I am just no good or I could forgive."
"Maybe my parents were right and I'm just a bad seed."
"Everything I touch goes wrong."
"I am such a stupid Bitch that I can't even do forgiveness right."
"It is all my fault any way."
Did any of those statements make it any easier to heal or to forgive? NO. When my own doubts joined with the words of others to further confuse me and the issue of forgiveness, I was actually ever further away from forgiving than when I started out. These words and doubts just gave me more ways to abuse myself. Abusing myself is just another something that I have to do forgiveness for. Is it any wonder that we often feel overwhelmed when we first look at forgiveness?
Well, I think that my Rant just turned into a series of posts because I am just getting started on what I wanted to say about forgiveness. This post isn't the direction that I thought I would be going when I sat down out here on my front porch to enjoy the mild Autumn temperatures, fresh air and sunshine while I was thinking and writing out my thoughts.
If you reach the place where you can forgive your abusers, DO NOT EVER FORGET THAT YOU WERE ABUSED!
Patricia
Here are the three other blog posts that prompted me to sit down and write out my thoughts about forgiveness:
Emerging From Broken's post
"Forgive the Abusers? A bit of a Rant"
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/forgive-the-abusers-a-bit-of-a-rant/
Overcoming Sexual Abuse's post
"What About Forgiveness"
@ http://overcomingsexualabuse.com/2010/10/28/what-about-forgiveness/
Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Prelude To Forgiveness"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/prelude-to-forgiveness.html
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