I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FORGIVENESS.
Ug. A wonderful concept and experience when I can muster it but boy is it hard when I can’t seem to let go of some seemingly righteous, justified upset. Since the new year, life has given me a couple of situations in my life that have challenged me around forgiveness.
I’m happy to report some relief related to one of these situations: the on-going challenges with my mother – she is 80, works full time as a Psychology Professor, has a complicated financial/legal life we are managing more and more, and is having significant memory issues – which she is just now coming into some honesty about. We, of course, have known for years that she is failing, but she did not want to talk about it – “Don’t talk to me about my memory!” was her standard response. Now she says – “I’m having some memory issues.” Progress.
When she is struggling she calls me and leaves multiple messages, sometimes 5 minutes apart, with no apparent recall that she has left the previous, almost exact same message. I tend to get triggered into “save the day” mode, with my habit of “DO SOMETHING!”. I have been frustrated, sad, upset and finally just open to solutions for this situation that preserve dignity, offer kindness and keep my sanity.
In my meditation it came to me to create an alter for her and our situation. Brilliant! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I lovingly placed a picture of her over a picture of myself and my grand daughter in a frame, to honor the generations. I placed some grounding and supportive crystals on my alter and wrote a note on index card reminding me I do not have to DO anything… to just listen, reassure, assess, and only intervene in right time with right action.
I LIGHT A CANDLE every day at the alter and say good morning to her. I tell her photo I love her & hope she has a nice day. I give myself love and permission to let this be enough. When I blow the candle out I tell her I love her and remind myself of my ‘note to self’. I have not told her about the alter or changed my real time engagement with her. I have felt more loving connection towards her. I have felt relief from my habit of needing to do something. All good things.
Most strikingly, she has not called me for 5 days. I can feel her resting in herself and her days. A significant shift.
What a relief. What a reminder of the power of self forgiveness, energy intention and alter work. I look forward to working more deeply with forgiveness in this weekend’s Ho’o pono pono Mini-Retreat. Perhaps you can join me and bring your own challenging, righteous, justified upsets!
Big Love in this month of LOVE!
