A Few Small Repairs

Reflections on self-forgiveness

A Few Small Repairs

Dear friends,

For a few reasons, this week I’ve been thinking a lot about self-forgiveness and forgiveness in general.  What does it mean to forgive?  When do we need to forgive ourselves and what for?  How do we even go about it?  How do guilt and shame play into all of this?

Some heavy topics for a very hot Tuesday afternoon.  Not one to rest on the surface of things, I believe that taking a deeper dive is always worth the effort.  There are always treasures to be found.  At the very least, we come to know ourselves better.

The other morning, I awoke very early feeling guilty for how I had said things in a recent interaction.  No one else seemed to notice my comment.  It wasn’t shocking or outwardly offensive, but I know that it wasn’t helpful to the other people present and didn’t reflect my best, highest self.  Though completely unintentional, my statement was bordering on a sort of “one-upmanship.” I know that I could have done better by not saying anything at all in that given moment or by affirming what the other person had said.  I should have been more empathetic.  I simply should have not said what I said in the way I said it. What I was wanting to convey was that I have also been touched by profound loss, as had the people with whom I was speaking. I wasn’t intending to minimize anyone else’s loss, but that morning when I awoke early, I saw that maybe it could have been interpreted that way, as if I felt that I deserved recognition for having suffered more, as if I were claiming to have had it worse than the others. Again, not what I was aiming for. My mom says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I felt like I was well on my way. And, as can happen at times when we are being hard on ourselves, I started noting all the other times in the past few years (yes, years) where I either said something stupid, selfish, unnecessary, in an irritable tone, or made any other faux pas in my conversations.  Pretty soon, I was buried beneath a snowball of shame.  I was asking myself what happened to my social skills? What happened to my empathy? What happened to my ability to validate the difficulty and suffering of others? What happened to my ability to be a really good listener? When did I become a horrible person? It sounds silly and exaggerated as I write this all out here, but I think there’s something universal about how we can be so critical of ourselves.  And what do we do with all of that?

Instead of sitting and dwelling all day on my shortcomings, I turned to my journal.  Journaling has been a tool for self-understanding and insight since I was young.  Others have said this, and it’s definitely true for me too— I write to know what I already know.  Journaling puts us rapidly in touch with our inner wisdom.  And in the process of writing, these words came up:  Accept, mend, repair, stitch, forgive, heal, reconstruct, reclaim.

What does it mean to forgive myself?  It means that I have to acknowledge and accept that I screwed up and to make amends, if possible.  It’s about being accountable to myself and taking responsibility for my behavior.  It doesn’t mean that I’m weak or inferior or a bad person.  I am more than my deeds or my words.  We all make mistakes.  We all fail at times.  We all say and do hurtful things for a variety of reasons. The truth is, we are all jerks sometimes.  What does forgiveness look like?  It’s soft, tender, flowing, billowing.  There an element of purity in it.  How does it feel?  It feels like a hug, like being held in the light, like being wrapped in something comforting.  It feels like a sigh, like a shifting, like an opening.  The body is one of the most forgiving things on this earth.  Think about how it closes wounds and heals broken bones.

And then I wrote this:  « Take a photo, tear it in half, stitch it back together, stitch it to the earth. »

Later that afternoon, I created this collage.

And that, friends, is my wonder for the week.  It’s the process and power of making. I’m in awe of the process.  The act of journaling brought concrete ideas to the fore and resulted in a collage that I like very much.  The act of tearing the photos, of piercing holes in the paper, of stitching everything back together, of visually grounding it to the earth… all of that allowed me to move through the shame, to create something beautiful out of something uncomfortable and dark, and, ultimately, to feel whole again.

Accept, mend, repair, stitch, forgive, heal, reconstruct, reclaim.

Humans are inherently flawed beings.  It’s not easy to accept our fallibility, especially when we think we should know better, do better, be better.  But if the times when we let ourselves down become teachable moments, in the end we are better for having had the experience.  We become more wise, more supple, and more forgiving in general.  If we’re better able to forgive ourselves, then we’re probably better able to forgive others as well.

Take good care, dear readers.

Until next time,

Anne