This is the big one, I know. This is the one that sparks the most vehement cries of "No! Never. Never."
Those cries echo with pain...I know they do. I've lived inside of that pain before.
That pain felt like the only thing that I had left of her. The pain of loss was my identity; it WAS me. My sometimes excruciating pain proved that I once belonged to someone else. It proved that I once was whole until an unspeakable wrong was committed to me, a wrong which disabled my mind, my trust, and my self.
Did my birth mother commit that wrong? Or was that unspeakable wrong done to us both? Can I forgive the culture that disabled her ability to keep me alone, my birth father who abandoned us, but took her back when she had left me, others in my story, (for that's what it is, a story I tell myself) can I forgive them? And the legion of people since who refuse to understand that anything is broken in that story...we all meet them now and then when we find ourselves revealing our status as an adoptee to a stranger, or sometimes to a friend.
"Oh you're adopted? How interesting! Do you ever feel curious about where you came from? Lucky you for being chosen, you know that it was so hard back then for women, you mustn't feel bad towards her, the best thing happened, you made two childless people very happy, you didn't lose out, you had a great childhood, people who loved you, gave you everything, you must be so grateful. Why don't you search for your family? Two families, lucky you, you must be so grateful, and curious. Curious, interested in your background? Or not really bothered?"
Does committing to never forgiving leave you something worth hanging on to?
Do you commit to never forgiving because they don't deserve your forgiveness?
Don't you deserve the peace that your forgiveness of them will bring? Because that's what the action of forgiving can give you.
Does the thought of letting go of this position and forgiving them feel too much like more loss? Loss of control, loss of the only very real, almost tangible proof you have of the past? Will it feel like a loss of your dignity, of your self...again?
What if forgiveness was not those things?
What if it was a sense of space? The nurturing of hurts and wounds and the ruminating on all of the wrongs takes up so much more bandwidth than I ever realised. Even if I didn't think about the past in any depth, it still occupied space, it still demanded energy from me.
I needed to draw a line in the sand. To create a ritual to mark a change. To choose new thoughts even though the old ones knocked on the doors of my mind again and again. (I politely thanked them for their attention but told them that our time together was over. Go Well, thoughts.) I chose to let new thoughts inhabit the space. Simple words, Good bye and Goddess Bless. I forgive you, and I let you go. I welcome myself, I belong here. I am whole.
Is the change instantaneous? Yes and no. Forgiveness is an action, one you choose. Sometimes multiple times a day, an hour. Don't wait for it to wash over you like a wave, because it won't. You have to walk into its waters, and immerse yourself, again, and again and again. After a while, it will become where you live. A light, spacious place, with opportunity, freedom and maybe even joy.
What if forgiveness was a sense of lightness, freedom, freedom to belong, to belong to yourself and to others, to become born, properly this time, born into your own life. What if forgiveness is the new beginning that lights your soul, that enables you to create your life, piece by piece, and to belong fully in it, in peace, with love.
Adoptee, you had everything taken away from you at your most vulnerable. But somehow, a part of you survived. Let that part now call all the other wounded parts home, for now there is a home inside your heart for them, and it is warm, and safe, and welcoming to them, and that home belongs to them. To you. Recognise that, with all that you have lost, no one took away your ability to choose, today. You retain the ability to choose how to proceed, from right now.
Go well today, with a lightness in your soul, for you are here.
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