Forgiveness Happens
“If you’ve been the victim of evil, do what you can to heal to the degree that you can, whatever that entails… and if anyone tells you that what you really need to do is to forgive the person who wrought that evil upon you… try to give them a little smile before you turn and walk away from what will inevitably be some seriously misguided advice.“ Victoria Pendragon, Medium.com, September, 2019
I wrote the above words just about a month ago… and, while I stand by them, I have found, most unexpectedly, that I need to add something to this statement because I have discovered, since writing those words, that sometimes forgiveness, much like shit, simply happens. The key thing to remember, however, is that, much like shit, when it happens, forgiveness apparently also happens on its own terms and whenever it damn well feels like.
If I were to list all of the bizarre and awful things that have happened to my body in this lifetime in one place, people would have a difficult time believing me, believing that all those things could possibly have happened to one person…. but they did. And while some of those things were the sorts of things that simply happen in life — like fatal, incurable illnesses, (of which I’ve had two so far and recovered from both), others things that can happen in a life are wrought upon one by others. That is the kind of evil to which I was referring in the quote above.
When bad things happen to children, almost always, in some way or another, they affect the adult that child grows to be. The grown victim of evil may tend either to attract more of the same or to generate more of the same depending on his or her inherent nature. Said adult may also, entirely unintentionally, screw things up for themselves really badly, nothing necessarily “evil,” but very often quite devastating not only to the person themselves but also to anyone who loves or cares for them or may employ them.
It also happens, for people who have been the victims of evil, that they may, when they are exposed either to people who were similar to those who enacted evil upon them, or when they hear about other people enduring the same kinds of things that they once endured, that they may be “triggered,” a word which has been rendered almost impotent by overuse in recent times.
My own healing process, which began in 1992, changed me and changed my self-destructive life in many ways. That change was not immediate but because I was behaving well and attracting good things into my life, I understood that I was at least somewhat healed. From 1992 until about 1996 I was very much involved with my own healing process but fate and other unusual things entered into play and I ended up acquiring many certifications and degrees in various sorts of therapies, allowing me to help others to heal. This had never been a plan. It just kind of unfolded; it happened to me. Opportunities presented themselves and I responded.
For about 12 years I spent most of my time helping other people and as a consequence of being in that particular situation I both overheard and read about this whole “forgiveness” thing, as if forgiveness were something one could simply do, and I knew from my own experience that was not necessarily true. I watched people beat themselves up because they could not forgive their abusers; I helped them to understand that forgiveness may have to happen on its own terms, that, although you could ask for it or intend for it to happen, you could not simply mouth the words and expect it to be so.
At the beginning of the political administration that is currently in charge of the governing of this country, I had found myself triggered most specifically by the man at the head of the parade whose face I could not even look into without verging on vomiting. I knew then that, while I had “healed” from all the vile things that had happened to me in my youth, the memory of those things still had a hold on something inside me, deep inside me, and so I found myself, once again, involved with my own process. I was not happy about this. I had been engaged in personal work on myself for over twenty years with the help of many others and had reached a point where I had become a person who attracted good things, great people, and exceptional circumstances. I resented knowing that childhood evil still had a grip on the cellular consciousness of my body and I began to have to pay attention, once again, just as I had back in the nineties, to the faces and expressions and nuances that caused my stomach to turn so that I could work with my body to allow her — oftentimes with the help of others — to release the old emotional information that she was still holding onto for dear life.
But that’s why cellular memory is there; it’s there for your life. It’s there to help you survive. A primitive person, wandering in the jungle, had better remember the sound of a growling tiger or that person would not have been long for the world. It’s what we humans do, we remember things that involve our physicality at a physical level; it’s not a mental thing at all, that kind of memory.
But a 73-year-old woman such as I am is in little danger of being sexually trafficked and in somewhat less danger of being raped at knife point or abducted. Still, she could be killed. So the old memories — the cellular memories — still have to be honored. This body of mine has to be able, still, to look into the eyes of a politician or a handyman or a passerby or someone who says they want to “help” to see if a lie is behind those words. Yet, it is no good at all for this body and this person to be trapped in fear… so there is a delicate balance to be maintained.
Healing does not — cannot — mean forgetting. And it does not have to mean forgiving either. But sometimes, when the mind is open to healing and when, perhaps, enough of the cells of the body have latched onto good information, information that tells them that, for the most part, life is good, sometimes in the midst of a meditation, or while daydreaming, or painting, there might be an opening in which one sees the truth of what Louise Hay said: that the person who unleashes evil upon another has, once upon a time, been the victim of evil themselves and has never been able to heal from it, and in that moment, if the heart of that meditating/dreaming/painting person has healed enough, forgiveness just happens.
It happened to me yesterday.
