As I re-read my first post of the year on forgiveness, I realized one of the ways I didn’t cover to better develop a forgiving heart is that of letting go. We so often want to hang on to all those things that hurt us.
Why? Perhaps, so that we can see when it’s happening again and be prepared to run the other way.
The thing is, though, we are quick learners when it comes to injuries to and of the heart. We remember how we felt, who hurt us, how it happened, and even when and where it happened.
Yet, despite this, we continue to not let go of the hurt attached to the deed. We keep reliving the hurt as if, by doing so, we will be magically healed or have a different outcome.
We have to realize that, by not letting go, we are giving permission – not just to the perpetrator but also to our own ego – to being hurt “a thousand times over” for only one action – that is now in the past and cannot be undone.
We must come to terms with the reality that the deed already happened. What happened, how we got hurt, is not only a thing of the past, it’s also only existent because of the significance we give it.
Sadly, in our minds, we keep reliving the incident again and again; thereby, reliving the hurt and, thus, causing injury to our loving and kind heart over and over and over.
The only way to not let this repeatedly happen is to let go of the hurt which occurred in the first instance. When we can do this, we can then be wiser. We can be prepared for future occurrences, knowing that we may be hurt but that forgiveness and love is what will bring healing and peace to everyone involved.
When we fail to let go of the hurt, we continue to blame. We continue to suffer. And we cannot start fresh each day.
If we are to start each day anew, without injury, remorse, or even the tiniest of grudges, we have to learn to let go and let God, or our higher power, handle the things we cannot.
We cannot spend our time plotting to get even – or simply to keep track of who did the hurting – without it affecting our daily frame of mind.
What are some things we hang onto and find letting go of difficult? Here’s some of mine I’ve struggled with over the years:
- Family members not inviting me to something important, assuming I would know I was invited.
- Family or friends not sharing with me about important life events that I end up hearing about from someone else.
- Certain family or friends not remembering my birthday.
- Not being told an event was cancelled or family not saying they’ve changed their mind about visiting after all.
- Someone being upset about something I did and expecting me to know what that thing is, yet I have no clue what it could be.
Notice I didn’t mention colleagues or strangers in my list? This is because most of our hurts come from slights by those closest to us or those who mean the most to us.
How did I handle these situation? Not well at all when I was younger. I would mull over and over why wasn’t I more important to those I cared about. I would question if I was being too sensitive. I would ponder over how I could get over my hurt and move on, even if the other person(s) didn’t seem to understand why I was so upset, and how if I had reacted differently then, perhaps, there would be better communication.
Eventually, I learned to let go of the grief I was feeling over realizing a certain relationship wasn’t as important to the other person as it was to me. I learned that some miscommunications would never be sorted out. And I came to understand that everyone feels about everyone else differently. Just because I care immensely about a person doesn’t mean they don’t love me if they show their caring in a different way. And whether or not I like someone or not has nothing to do with forgiving them. We don’t have to like someone to show forgiveness. We can forgive someone and still choose not to like them – or to keep loving them.
Life became so much easier when I learned to let go and just forgive. Forgive the misunderstandings and miscommunications. Forgive the missed events and how I viewed their importance. Forgive outright injury caused by poor word choice, failure to show up when someone had committed and were being counted on, and the sharing of private information without permission to give it.
What are some of the things you are holding onto and can’t seem to let go of? What is one thing you can think of that you can practice letting go of now? The more we learn to let hurt go, the easier it gets to forgive ourselves and others. And the freer life becomes.
Start today and see if you can pick one thing to forgive each week. Also, practice mantras to help you forgive in the moment, so future hurts don’t start storing up in your memory bank of hurts.
Good mantras to practice and help you let go may be ones I’ve used over the years:
- Be kind and forgive anyway.
- Let no hurt affect me negatively today.
- Observe the feeling of my hurt, then let it go.
- Smile anyway, maybe the other person is just having a bad day.
- Embrace peace of mind and heart over being hurt.
- Choose to let go and be healed.
- Forgive and let go anyway.
These work really well for day-to-day slights. The family and friends hurts take some special willingness to heal, mend, understand, repair, forgive, seek peace, and let go. But it can be done.
May we all choose to let go and to not fill our memory banks with more hurt. We are our best and true self when we are loving, kind, forgiving, and willing to let go of what is usually poor judgement on someone’s part. We need to remember that we all are human and that no one is exempt from hurting in some way from things, most especially disappointment.
Until next time, keep lovin’, keep smilin’, and keep choosing to let go hurts which keep us from our best self.
Love & hugs, Virg
Thank you for reading this post. If you’d like to read more of what I write about, you can find my book, HONOR ONE ANOTHER: The ABCs of Embracing Our Spirit Within, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org. Just search my full name, Virginia Alice Crawford.
You can also follow me on Instagram at @virginia.alice.crawford.
Virginia Alice Crawford 