electrycmonk
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I can't "walk in your shoes" but, I have "walked some of *that road* a time or two over the last 40+ years." Abuse from 'family' is one of the hardest experience to wrap ones head around with regard to this topic of "forgiveness" & @Guernsy 's post above #18,210 is a lot more concise than I could be here.Hmm, how do I explain this.
My brother is abusive. My family STILL don't remember any calm explanations for why I don't want to be around him and it's been 20 years but they remember the shouting matches crystal clear. "But you're family! You should forgive him!" Was ALWAYS in an attempt to make me be willing to be around him.
I've got five niece/nephews across three mothers from him, some older than me. Of his bio kids, four have had hospitalized suicide attempts (3 have multiples), two have been arrested at least once, and three are addicts, none of them has a career, home, only one has a stable partner, etc. The youngest is a teen mom with my grand-niece just this month, no dad involved, lives with her mom still and works at a drug store as a cashier, was previously diagnosed with severe kleptomania. Some of my sisters recently tried to stop my brother from taking my fathers retirement money. One of them confessed to me that she was scared he was going to show up at their doorstep with a gun if she kept trying.
Seeing what other people went through I can't even imagine what it would have been like if I "forgave" him, and tried to exist around him peacefully. Would I even be alive right now? I genuinely don't know.
Anger, grudges, fear - these are often responses we develop to keep us safe from harm. There's no nice platitudes that make them go away - only real growth on behalf of the people causing harm or an absence of the person doing harm. Certainly if it's over something less we should develop the ability to let it go. And if you have the option to just not engage with someone without consequences, that's good! That means you can stop being hurt and move on!
But real forgiveness, the kind that lets you get along with someone, have a coffee with someone, celebrate a holiday with someone? That requires love. It's for things like "You broke my favorite tea cup", or "You called me a mean name in jest and it actually hurt" or even "You did something VERY dangerous but you realized it could have hurt me and felt bad and took steps to not do it again". Not "You did something that risked my life and didn't care and still don't and you will continue to risk my life for your own benefit". How can you try to love someone who is happy to see you in pain and refuses to try to be better? That's just toxic behavior - if that were someones husband, we'd tell them to get a divorce! It's not better if it's "family".
We live in a time when a lot of choices have the potential to risk a lot of lives. So it does not surprise me at all that people are divided. Because REAL forgiveness, the kind that lets people get along instead of avoiding one another, doesn't happen without recognizing harm.
I just can't go into it here publicly. You have obviously had plenty of time to meditate on this and find the best possible path for you to travel upon now adays. That is very admirable and impressive given the destruction & scars that "brother" has done and continues to do.
I have in scale much smaller hill to get over with regard to my DB & SIL which truthfully hasn't changed any since covid-19-mare rolled up on our shores and sent my VA counseling into "pause mode".....
Growing up hearing the phrase "Hindsight is (always) 20/20" has really been a very tough thing to chew on *mentally speaking* over the last 3-4 years. Wondering how we/I/you/collectively and not-so-collectively will look back on this "year" and wonder how we did what we did to survive it. Over the last 2-3 months I think I finally came to a conclusion that a parallel could be close to what a cross between the Great Depression & the Plague could of been like. However, that's still a weak rough draft; as I have yet to fit the racism/prejudice explosion into the mix....
(Fingers crossed) (heavy sigh) g'nite y'all