To Forgive or Not?

Do you ever find yourself caught in an internal dialog, or even a live conversation about an action that someone did against you? Do you often find yourself going back to questioning “how could they have done that to me? Where was the loyalty? The friendship?” 

I’ve been there, thankfully not often, but I had a situation that was a real stinger and it randomly kept popping up in my mind. It got to the point that anytime anyone brought up a certain name, a certain period of time, I would start to shut down… this absolutely went against every piece of who I am and the type of life I strive so hard to live…. I truly was a prisoner in my own mind! What I just couldn’t figure out was, how to let go and how to forgive that person…..

Then, one day I stumbled across a quote that really resonated with me, “The Weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”  - Gandhi. I wasn’t weak….I just had to stop playing the victim and stop defining that part of my life by how I’d been hurt! Instead I needed to focus on how I’d grown from the situation, what I learned and most importantly how to forgive myself for being bound to these negative emotions for such a long time…

I know the day will come when I will run into this person, I also know their name will be brought up again…and now that’s just fine – I have learned to let go and to focus on all the good that has come into my life since then… I am no longer a prisoner in my own mind, it truly is freeing! Do you share a similar story? Struggle with forgiveness? Hard to let go?  I'd love to hear from you! We all can learn something from one another!

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were” – Cherie Carter-Scott