your daily rock : forgive yourself first
I recently felt betrayed by someone very close to me.
Lies were told. Secrets were created where none had been before. And so much more.
My first reaction? I got angry. But not at him (oh, that would come later). I got angry at myself: “How could you have been so stupid? How could you have trusted him? How could you not have seen this coming? How could you have been so fooled for so long?”
We do this, don’t we? In the face of irrefutable evidence that the person lying to us is a sociopath, or worse, we question ourselves. We blame ourselves for being too trusting, too naive, too blind to the mounting evidence. We get angry at ourselves.
That anger will eat you up from the inside out.
I finally had to say this out loud to myself: Patti, I forgive you for not knowing. I forgive you your anger toward yourself. I forgive you for eating too much in times of stress. I forgive you for the disappointment you are still holding onto.
As Paul Boese has said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” You deserve a larger future.
Forgive yourself today. Say it out loud. Let it go.
Love,
(These beautifully painted rocks are created by Kim Mailhot, aka The Rock Fairy.
