As we know, divorce comes with a package of strong emotions and resentfulness, a lot of painful memories accumulated over the years, and this leaves you extremely hurt and devastated.
Whatever your ex did to hurt you was terrible, and you are right to feel hurt and angry; you can’t deny it, or bury it – you are hurt for a reason. The pain comes from the sense of having a lack of control over what happened, and it is this feeling of lack of control that wounds you to the core of the deepest. The hurt and pain of the original offense, plus the hurt from feeling hatred and resentment makes it very easy to gravitate towards unforgiving anger and bitterness and surely leaves you powerless and unhappy. Unless you deal with it you will be living in misery forever.
When my marriage ended I was loaded with resentfulness. I had a thousand things to be hurt about. It had been a twenty-eight years-long relationship, with a pile of betrayals and lies, plus physical and emotional abuse. My mind was filled with painful memories of those long hurtful years. I was so hurt that I didn’t know how to grieve my pain, I didn’t know where to start from. I knew I had to let go but didn’t know how to. I also wasn’t sure if I really wanted to forgive him, he didn’t deserve forgiveness – that’s how I thought. But I wanted to heal, I couldn’t bear the pain, I wanted all the memories to be erased from my mind, I wanted to be numb to the pain and not feel anything anymore. But this wasn’t the case, I couldn’t deny it nor run away from it – I had to face it and deal with every painful feeling that I had. I had to face the truth.
My healing started at that moment, endless tears – pain and confusion muddled up. I wanted to forgive but didn’t know how to. “How can I forgive if…” There were a lot of ifs. I managed to forgive the moment I changed the “ifs” to “because.”
“I forgive because I deserve to be happy again,” with tears pouring down my face I went on – “I forgive because I deserve a second chance in life. I forgive because I deserve to fall in love again. I forgive because my past does not define who I am and I have a damn good life ahead of me!”
A huge weight went off my shoulders! I felt a freedom I hadn’t felt for many years. I was then capable to resiliently start anew.
There is a huge misunderstanding when it comes to forgiveness. When most of us think about it, we think either of accepting someone’s apology or telling the person that hurt us that what they did was okay. In reality, forgiving does not mean you have to become friends or be all smiley with the person that hurt you, but it means you don’t deserve to hold on to the pain. It doesn’t mean either that you have to approach the person and say that you forgive them, you simply have to make that decision inside of you. “I choose to let go, even if the person doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, because my well being and happiness come first!”
What you want now is to regain your power and be in control of everything that has to do with you and your new life. Forgiveness shows power and self-control. You have to accept that you are hurt but be willing to heal, and the best way to heal is by recognizing that hurtful things were done to you but you choose to break free from reliving them over and over. You have to forgive not because the person deserves, but because you deserve to be happy. You went through the experience before, you don’t want to keep going through it again, it was hurtful enough once. Anger and pain are not healthy, and over the long-term, they will cause much more hurt and pain and long-lasting consequences in your life than the original offense would have. Resentfulness makes you feel vulnerable, fragile, weak, and insecure. Being stuck in long-term patterns of pain, anger, and depression about your past will only cause you more pain along the way. It is not worth it. You deserve to be happy and free from any negative memories that reduce your power of control. Resentment brings you down, it’s fruitless, it’s not uplifting at all, and certainly does not contribute to better living.
How can you find happiness when you have something filling up the space to create beauty, abundance, and a new love? Keeping resentful is still giving your power away to the person that hurt you. Stop ruminating and duplicating old wounds, it’s past! After all you went through the minimum you can do for yourself is to avoid reliving those bad experiences. The beauty of forgiving is that, even if it doesn’t come out rosy with everyone hugging and kissing one another, it will make you feel better. You are in a better place now, with a long life to live and many beautiful things to experience. Be free and start living in harmony and happiness, and weave a new life into existence – the life you absolutely deserve!