Forgiveness Exercise

Forgiveness Exercise

One of the biggest obstacles in life is to forgive those who have harmed us. The following is an exercise that helped me to forgive the most challenging person in my life, my mother. From her hands and mouth, I experienced years of repeated physical, mental and emotional abuse. When I was 44 years old, I came to the understanding that if I wanted to progress in life, I needed to heal my rage, bitterness and unforgiveness towards her. This was hindering every aspect of my life.

To heal, I decided to try the following exercise that I call “Fake it ‘til you make it,” because that is what you will likely need to do. Below are the basic directions. Tailor them to fit your unique goals. I have included my incredible experience that opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities!  I encourage you to press forward and break the chains with anyone you are holding unforgiveness towards.

Here are the basics to doing the exercise.

* Get a piece of paper and focus on one person that you want to forgive.

* Prayerfully write a sentence stating your forgiveness of this person.

* Next, write your apology for anything unkind you said or did to the person, even if you felt justified in doing it.

* You can include an apology statement for holding onto the unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, etc.

* Then write a statement reflecting your willingness to work together to make the relationship better or to release the negativity towards them.

Keep each statement as short as possible.

My experience:

I took a 3” x 5” index card. Then I wrote the following three sentences on it.

I forgive you for all the ugly and hideous things you have said and done to me.

I apologize for all the ugly and hideous things I have said and done to you.

If we work together, we can start over and rebirth our relationship.

I had heard that it takes 30 days to break a habit. So, I pushed myself to do the exercise every day, slowly and mindfully saying each sentence out loud.

The first few times, it was a battle to even pick up the paper. Part of me wanted to hold onto that “justified” rage. The first week, I couldn’t even say the words out loud. Instead, I would yell things like. “I don’t have anything to apologize for! You had no right to beat me like that! You don’t deserve forgiveness!” I knew it was important to let my suppressed emotions come to the surface, so I allowed them to come up and start releasing.

The next couple of weeks, after reading the first sentence out loud, my emotions would get the best of me. I would yell things like, “I don’t forgive you! There is no excuse for what you did. You had no right to treat me like that!” These were intermingled with some pretty strong cuss words.

I had an especially had a hard time with the second sentence, “I apologize for all the ugly and hideous things I have said and done to you.” At first, I couldn’t even get myself to read, much less to say the words.

There was a lot of denial of me ever saying or doing things that she didn’t deserve. After a few more weeks, I started to calm down and as objectively as possible, I reflected back on times when I got revenge or was rude back to her. I started to remember times when I had fueled the flames when she was already off balance. I also realized that I expected her to be disruptive, so I chose to be defensive, even before the battle began. I was ready for the fight, even starting it at times. It was humbling to acknowledge and accept responsibility for my past actions.

After a few more weeks, I allowed myself to begin to see things from her perspective, from her unhappiness. Although her home life was good as a child, she resented her mother. Being the oldest, a lot of responsibility was put on her shoulders. She got married right out of high school to escape home, only to find herself back home within six months. Her second, third, fourth and fifth marriages failed, also. Mostly due to her narcissistic behavior and sometimes evil choices.

I nearly quit the exercise several times, especially as I dove deeper into facing those unpleasant memories. However, I pressed on and after a few more weeks, I started to accept responsibility for the hurtful things I said and did as a teen and an adult.

I came to realize that like me, she pushed people away in order to avoid more pain. I began to feel compassion for her. It was small at first, but gradually increased. Slowly, I was able to start forgiving her for more minor things that she had said and done.

The last sentence was the hardest hurdle, “If we work together, we can start over and rebuild our relationship.” At that time, I hadn’t even spoken to her for a little over eleven years. For the most part, I would rather see her dead, than for us to work through the years of pain. I had no confidence that I would ever receive an apology, a hug or even a statement such as, “I love you” from her.

A few days later, I let go of any expectations I had placed on her. I realized that if she didn’t want to change her ways, it didn’t matter. This exercise was for me to heal. I also fully accepted responsibility for my own actions. As I read the third sentence, for the first time I felt that we could rebirth the relationship.

In that moment, I felt an emotional shift and saw this dark, heavy blob of energy forcibly shoot out of the right side of my torso. I felt like a ton of bricks had been removed. I began to sob, feeling the release of the emotions I had been holding for so long. Part of the crying was my truly feeling sorry for my part of hurting her back. This was the first time I felt any compassion for her. I didn’t like the things she did, they were hurtful. But the desire to “get back at her” was gone. The relief was palpable and I felt euphoric. I had reached my goal! I later came to realize that I had been storing anger, resentment, revenge, etc. in my liver.

Eleven years prior, on Thanksgiving, she was being her usual holiday super nasty self, upsetting everyone present. I reached the point of, “enough is enough.” For the next few months, I tried a few new approaches with her that failed. Finally, I told her that if she could not treat me with respect, then do not bother to contact me. That began our eleven years of silence, which, I admit, was blissful for me and my children. During that time, I worked on finding and “re-creating” myself.

Going back to the forgiveness exercise, something magical happened the night that I truly forgave her. I went to bed feeling blissed out, having experienced this huge emotional and energetic shift. The next morning, my mom called me on the phone. In the past, whenever we had our spats, it was always me coming back and re-opening the door, usually to keep peace in the family. Her breaking the silence was a first! She started the conversation by saying, “I just had to call you because I had the strangest dream last night. I’m not even sure if it was a dream because it felt so real.”

Well, that piqued my curiosity!

She continued, “In the dream, you came to me and handed me a baby, swaddled from head to foot in a blanket. As I was holding the baby, I looked down. Instead of a face, there was a swirling mass of dark energy. I was asking myself why did you hand me something so ugly and hideous?

She told me that I handed her another baby, just like the first. Then she said, “Your stomach was swollen, like you were pregnant. But at the same time, I knew you weren’t pregnant.”

I was in shock! Calmly, I told her, “If you w, I can interpret that dream for you.”

She said, “What?”

Then I told her about the forgiveness exercise I had been doing. I then shared how the energy had shifted the day before. I also pointed out that the words she had used “ugly” and “hideous” were the exact words I had been using. On a side note, it was interesting, because neither of us had ever used the word “ugly” to describe a person’s behavior before. I had picked that up from my students who used the word in that way. Hideous was also not a word we used to describe someone’s behavior.

Then I told her how the first baby represented me forgiving her for the ugly and hideous things she had said and done to me. The second baby symbolized me apologizing and taking responsibility for all the ugly and hideous things I had said and done to her.

I explained that in the dream, I appeared pregnant as a symbol of rebirth, that we could rebirth our relationship, if we both chose to do so.

For the first time ever, we both were speechless. After a few moments of silence, she said, “Okay, thank you. I’m gonna go now.” Then she hung up. I sat there for a while just staring at the phone.

I was amazed that she had picked up what I had been doing. It was way beyond coincidence. And for her to call me, that was amazing in itself. After a few days, she called me back. She was touched that I wanted to heal our relationship. We were finally able to start the communication that led to further healing.

Then she brought up how hurt she was that I hadn’t called in eleven years. Here we go again, another round of her playing the victim and me as the perpetrator. I held back making the comments I really wanted to say. Instead, I approached her in a new way.

I told her, there were three main events that happened during my childhood that had led to that decision. I offered to share those with her so she could understand my point of view. However, to be successful, she did not need to be defensive, I was simply going to share how I perceived those events.

It took a few phone calls for us to work through those events. She even apologized for one of them. She didn’t agree with my perception of the other two events, but I reminded her that to me, it was my reality. She got it. What mattered was that for the first time, I felt heard. I also let go of the need for her to apologize or see things “my way.” That was very freeing. It was the beginning of me taking back my power.

Not only was the “Fake it ‘til You Make It” exercise and the follow up conversations important for the relationship with my mother, I was then able to apply it to other relationships throughout my life.

Her picking up the experience and exact words I had used was a huge eye-opener for me. I realized that the thoughts we put out do get picked up by others. That led me to start becoming more responsible for my thoughts, words and actions towards other. It was a huge life-changing shift.

Over twenty years later, I still do not enjoy the company of my mother. At 96, she is still one of the most negative people I have met. Having her move in with me as her sole caretaker has been quite a challenge. However, I took on the “assignment” with the conscious choice to use this time for me to become a better person. I admit that the first year was rough. She pushes every unhealed button, every day, all day.

Since then, I have learned to redirect the conversation or leave the room when she starts acting up. It takes two to tango. I learned to dance shorter dances with her and developed some strategies to keep the peace. I prayed for guidance on how to keep from being rude back to her. The answer I received was instead of saying rude things back to her, whistle, sing or whistle. The message was, that you can’t yell at her if your mouth is busy doing something else. I just smile when my mom says, “You sure whistle and sing a lot.”

There is a sobering Bible verse that helps me: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
~ Matthew 6:14-15

I hope my experience can help you to recover from the pain others have inflicted on you. Forgiving others is an act of self-love. Once you release the stuck blocks, ask God to fill the void with Divine Love. Then the healing is complete.

Be love all ways, always,
Theresa Crabtree