Question of the Day | 02/24/2009 11:00 pm
Have you ever had a great injustice done to you, and have you forgiven it?
Burying the hatchet via Up Your Service
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My husband of 26 years fell in love with another woman. Was I always a good wife? No. Was he always a good husband? No. But we had a marriage, and a family, and I was prepared to spend the rest of my life with him and our family into the future. I was an active alcoholic for most of our marriage, and he had a black belt in codependency. So it wasn’t a picturebook marriage, but it had its share of good times and bad. The bad, I guess, was enough to make him need someone else to spend the second half of his life with; so it goes.
Fast-forward 10 years. He is still married to his second wife. I am now widowed after having had a too-brief second marriage. Husband One’s and my three sons and I have a wonderful time together, and they have brought two marvelous daughters-in-law and a total of five grandchildren into my life. I get to see them and enjoy meaningful relationships with them all. I am now a sober member of AA, which means I try to live my life on spiritual principles, including that of forgiveness.
Ex-husband and oldest son have a terrible ongoing estrangement, which pains everyone involved. As a result, Ex hasn’t seen his grandchildren from that son for at least three years. My son and his wife won’t be in the same room with him, yada yada yada. But I know the pain it would cause me if I didn’t have those children in my life. I know that Ex is a good and flawed man. So (with my son’s and his wife’s permission), I recently arranged a day out at a park where my Ex and his wife and I could play with the grandchildren. When it was time to go, I hugged my Ex and his wife, which was reciprocated, if bemusedly. That day gave my Ex much pleasure, which he expressed privately to me later. It heartened me to know that I was instrumental in increasing his happiness. I hope to continue to do so.
If I hadn’t forgiven Ex and "her," none of us would have had this healing experience. Without forgiveness, I will drink again. I’ve learned that. Holding on to wrongs done me is like picking up a hot coal to hurl at someone. Who gets burned?
We have all had injustices in our lives, but the hardest ones are the ones simply because I’m a woman. Thats o.k. I chose to let them go, long ago!
They do not define me…my failures, my successes..they define who I am and what I am constantly trying to be. Not the injustices, they just spur me on!!
I’ve had injustices done. There are two that really stick in my mind. One was a close family member who purposely excluded me from some family celebrations. The other was at work when my boss’s boss told a falsehood about my actions and then insisted that my manager give me an appraisal that was not as positive as it should have been. My manager was very kind, was shocked by what she saw happening but was powerless to change the situation. In fact, she was forced into early retirement the following year. In both cases, I moved on but did not forget the circumstances or the person and have chosen to distance myself from them. It’s just a question of knowing someone’s moral character and keeping control of your own life as much as possible.
When a relative died and my sister and I were heirs to the estate, my sister caught a whiff of a little bit of money and FLIPPED OUT. She swore up and down that I was stealing from the estate, even though she was given a full accounting of every penny; her nut-job neighbor and she would pore over every page, convinced that somehow, while showing her this much less this much equals this much, I was hiding my clever theft. I AM clever, but I have never yet figured out how to get two and two to add up to anything other than four! Anyway, when it was all done and said, she actually hired a lawyer to write me an extortion letter trying to "smoke and mirror" up a claim against me, with the offer to make it go away (maybe) in exchange for a few thousand now, and a few more to be determined on down the line. (BTW, it was SO stupid; the jackass tried to claim that I, of all people, might have caused a tax issue! PUH-LEEZ! Clearly she hadn’t shared much about who he was dealing with, with him.) Anyway, my lawyer sent a letter back telling him to basically kiss our collective tushies, and we never heard from him again. But all I could think was, that was how much her relationship with me was worth, a few thousand dollars. She was willing to completely end, completely sever for all time, our bond for a few thousand dollars. Not tens of thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but single-digit thousands of dollars. I didn’t speak to her again for 8 years. My nephews and niece would approach and gingerly probe the topic, but I just didn’t want anything to do with her. Finally, last summer, we were all together at a park for a picnic with family that lives overseas. My sister has become sort of infantile; she is so unstable, she hurts herself sometimes. I realized that she probably isn’t capable anymore of grasping the enormity of what she did. I said hi to her, and I thought she was going to pee her pants before she fled. She stood beside me for a picture, and then ducked her head and hurried away again. I didn’t talk to her again, but I thought about her some, and this month, when her birthday came around, I got her number from my niece and I called her and wished her a happy birthday. She stammered and floundered and struggled to come up with something to talk about, and I realized she was trying to keep me on the phone. So I chatted with her a bit, and let her be the one to say she really had to go. I just decided that I couldn’t let this own me; I couldn’t let her being blinded by greed all those years ago, and making an amazingly bad decision, define and lay claim to me that way. It was just time to put it in the past, because that is where it needs to go live. It doesn’t belong here, in the now, with me. I didn’t do it so much for her, as for me. I wouldn’t want this to be what lived on with those great-nieces and nephews after I was gone, that great-aunt J was nice, but she just never got over being mad at gramma. Of course I won’t forget; it was just time to move on, and I did.
I’ve had injustices done. I still seethe and wish I knew how to forgive. I will never forget.
Forgiveness is not for the offended.Forgiveness is a gift you give to the offender who asks to be forgiven.If the offender does not ask to be forgiven then you are under no obligation to even consider it. You have a right to be angry, disillusioned and disappointed. You cut ties cleanly and continue on with your life. No anger, no dwelling on the injustices, just surgically remove the toxic person or persons from your life and consciousness.
At 50, I have met far more of my generation who come from a dysfunctional family than do not. So I think we all have known injustice. I am in therapy trying to forgive the 3 people who told me they loved me, and I should trust them because they were my family and proceeded spend their lives sqashing my dreams (nd therefore my soul) like a bug.
I came out of the womb fearless and passionately singing my song. For myself. Saw the sound of music at 3 and a half and knew that was my life. My parents were frightened people who had been squashed by their parents, they resented my fearlessness and fought to "cut me down to size for as long as I can remember. Neglect, verbal abuse and ridiculing me in front of friends and strangers were their tools. I grew strong by fighting them. Moved to new York to follow my dreams (despite my parents endless hammering that I would fail). Met loved and married a man who swore he loved me for myself only to find out after deferring my dreams to help him with his, that he "was sure I would give up that nonsense" after I married him. Stuck. Stuck and growing fatter. Lyme disease, stuck and growing fatter. Dying, slowly dying.
Mother died. Right before I was going to divorce him, husband died leaving kids and me more comfortable than we had ever been. Father died. The last harping negative voice is silenced.
Baby step, to the gym. Baby step, piano lessons. Baby step singing teacher. Oceans of tears. Hours of anger. Forgiveness for a minute. Then two. And now sometimes I don’t even think of them or their carping ugly, fearful words.
And once again i can sing my song… almost fearlessly.
As a polite wimp, I remain civil to the few people who have betrayed me, but I am constantly wary when in their company. In a way, I feel sorry for them because they have to live with themselves, knowing what they’ve done. I hope I never make the same mistake. I hate guilt!
Yes,several times!!!
I have forgiven but I can never forget,how can a person forget what has happened to them especially if it was so unforgettably hurtful. You eventually come to forgive because you love these people who caused the hurt,they are family. Sometimes though I wonder if I have really totally forgiven,reminders bring back all those memories of long ago and you find yourself once again on the verge of tears!! CarolAnn
Injustice means unfair; that which is done to you and is undeserving. Yes, I’ve had injustices done to me many times. Will I or have I forgiven them? In some cases I’ve gotten over it, in other cases I will forever hold the sting, because the pain was so great. It took me years coming to terms with the correct way of answering whether I could ever forgive when realizing it wasn’t me that did it to them. It was they who did it to me. So I say it is up to them to forgive themselves for in the end what goes around, comes around ten fold or even one hundred fold depending on the injustice so callously thrown at me.
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