Grief and Forgiveness
Someone recently asked me, “What’s the biggest thing that comes up in your work that people would be surprised about?” My answer was the role of forgiveness in healing grief. He responded, “forgiveness?!” Yes, forgiveness. I was surprised, too.
I haven’t come across a person yet where forgiveness has not been a component of their healing. The need to forgive can come in many forms, but it’s usually always there. Maybe there’s someone we hold responsible for causing our loss. Perhaps we need to forgive someone who used to always be there for us and now is not. Maybe it’s someone who should have been there for us but never was. Sometimes people hurt us deeply. Sometimes we are angry because someone we love didn’t take better care of themselves. Sometimes there are old grudges we’ve been hanging onto for decades.
And then there’s the work of forgiving ourselves — and this may be the most challenging one of all. We wish we had done more, said more, been more. We wish we had handled things differently. We wish we had been a better friend, mother, or son. We wish we hadn’t said that. Or we wish we had, and now we won’t get the chance.
One of the roadblocks to forgiveness is the thought that if we forgive someone, it means what they did was okay. I love this thought from Dr. Michelle Harper, an ER doctor and author of “The Beauty in the Breaking. “Forgiveness condones nothing, but it does cast off the chains of anger, judgment, resentment, denial, and pain that choke growth. In this way, it allows for life, for freedom.”
Dr. Edith Eger says, “To forgive is to grieve—for what happened, for what didn't happen—and to give up the need for a different past.”
Giving up the need for a different past involves accepting the reality of what is with the knowledge that we can’t change the past, but we can change our trajectory going forward. This isn’t always an easy task or something we can just switch on. It often takes time and the willingness to be real about our true emotions.
Dr. Frederic Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project says, “Forgiveness is a process. And while the duration and difficulty will vary significantly, it can be equally applied to all levels of pain – whether it’s the result of someone being rude to us in a store, a life cut short, or a partner cheating.” You can find a great article by Dr. Luskin about the process of forgiveness HERE.
Unresolved forgiveness leads to unresolved grief. Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves. The anger, resentment, and pain we carry toward other people doesn’t really affect them — especially if they are gone. It does impact us in big ways and holds us back from truly healing. What happens to us isn’t always our choice, but choosing to forgive and heal and move forward, even when it isn’t easy, is absolutely up to us.
