I want to talk a little bit more about forgiveness and what I believe it means in the context of child abuse survivors.
In my previous post, Fatherless Child, I stood up with a megaphone and made what is a startling announcement for many abuse survivors - you do not need to forgive your perpetrator; it is not necessary for healing; if there is forgiveness to be offered, extend it to yourself.
BlogHer founder Elisa Camahort mentioned my take on forgiveness at the estimable BlogHer site. She commented in response to Contributing Editor Mata H.'s post, What Does it Mean to Forgive Your Father. Mata, a graceful and thoughtful writer, described her father "wound" that was inflicted upon her by a raging man who terrorized his family as a place she does not want to dwell. Forgiving her violent father was the way out of that wound:
Forgiveness (at least in part, the part I understand) is the putting
down of a burden of bad feeling. It is a Great and Holy Unraveling. It
is saying "I will no longer see the world through this piece of pain."
It is, for me, a way to freedom.
Though I appreciate this theme, it does come down to this - forgiving the perpetrator is a necessary step to liberation. As implicit in my Fatherless Child post, I disagree as does Elisa:
From my perspective, this requirement of forgiveness is just another burden we ask the survivor to carry, a responsibility I don't think is necessary or fair.
Further to forgiving the perpetrator, commenter Emma presented another angle to forgiveness in my Fatherless Child post. Excerpted from her commentary:
"I dunno, I don't quite agree with this...once you fully heal (i.e. feel everything and integrate everything that happened), forgiveness is all that's left.
And I think it does matter to fully heal. Reaching that place of
full healing is a place of true liberation. It's not defensive. It's
not "I can go live a fulfilling life in spite of you, ha ha". Whenever
freedom is accompanied with defensiveness, the work isn't finished.
Which doesn't mean you should beat up on yourself or hold yourself
to a standard of perfection. But I do think it means you shouldn't stop
there, if what you want is really to heal. Of course living your life,
forgiving yourself, is a huge part of healing. But there is more, there
is integrating all of the pain and resentment and anger and fear and
helplessness and despair until you really see that the pain that you
are in is the same pain that your perpetrator is in. And that doesn't
come easy, and it doesn't come quickly, but it is worth going for, and
it is different than stopping short of that.
To me the goal of healing is not just to "live a life", but to be
fully free, to return to Source, to live from a grounded sense of
OKness that is so spacious that it can encompass true compassion and
forgiveness.
I appreciated Emma's thought that one may come to that place of loving kindness and compassion and that in such a place one can forgive. And, that one could strive to achieve love, compassion and kindness for all including one's abuser and that this is "worth going for."
But, for the child abuse survivor, this is not the goal for healing, even for complete healing. The healing that's worth going for is another story altogether.
To continue, it's useful to define forgiveness. Clearly, there are differing interpretations of the concept. For survivors of abuse, I defer to two authors, Ellen Bass and
Laura Davis, who gave me and thousands of survivors the will to live
when their book, The Courage to Heal, was published in 1988. They provide a definition of what forgiveness means and
how a survivor can integrate this perspective:
To find out exactly what forgiveness is, we looked in
the dictionary and found these definitions: (1) to cease to feel
resentment against an offender; (b) to give up claim of requital from
an offender; to grant relief from payment.
There are, then, two elements in what we
call forgiveness. One is that you give up your anger and no longer hold
the abuser to blame; you excuse them for what they did to you. The other
element is that you no longer try to get some kind of compensation from
the abuser. You give up trying to get financial compensation, a statement
of guilt, an apology, respect, love, understanding – anything. Separating
these two aspects of forgiveness makes it possible to clarify what is and
what is not necessary in order to heal from child sexual abuse.
It is true that eventually you must give
up trying to get something back from the abuser. This process need not
be hurried. It is appropriate and courageous to fight back any way you
choose. However, at some point, trying to get from abusers what they aren’t
going to give keeps you trapped. There comes a time when what you feel
about the abuser is less important than what you feel about yourself, your
current life, and your future. The abuser is not your primary concern.
You say, 'I am my primary concern. Whether the abuser rots or not, I’m
going on with my own life.'
When a friend inadvertently hurts our feelings
and apologizes, we forgive her. We no longer blame her. The relationship
is mended. We are reconciled and we continue with trust and respect, without
residual anger between us. This kind of forgiveness – giving up anger and
pardoning the abuser, restoring a relationship of trust – is not necessary
in order to heal from the trauma of being sexually abused as a child.”
If at some point in your healing, you come
to feel compassion or understanding for your abuser, that's fine. It's
a personal decision, not the goal of healing. It is not essential to your
own recovery.
This is what I mean by forgiveness, this is the concept of forgiveness that must be presented to survivors, if it's to be presented at all. I question that the subject can even be brought up, as any talk and effort in forgiving the abuser distracts from what we must do to honor ourselves, to honor life itself - and that is to work towards getting our life, our selfhood back.
I refer to the Buddhist teachings of losing self and made an amendment:
One must lose self, let go of self, in order to move beyond human pain and
suffering.
But, one cannot lose the self unless one has a self.
Those who were abused had been robbed of self.
Thus, attaining self is the ultimate goal.
You can stop there. Everything else is optional.
In discussing forgiveness, this all important element of coming to selfhood is often missing. It's a glaring omission and implies to the survivor that once again, you have to put yourself aside and think of others.
If there is forgiveness, it might, as Mata and Emma suggested, show up as a result of recovery. I contend that it should not show up at all as part of the curriculum. Think of it this way - would you ask a survivor of the Holocaust to work towards forgiving Nazis? Never, it's just not done. Surviving child abuse is the same, though charged on another level as the abusers are, in most cases, a member of the family. That's what makes it devastating, the betrayal of family and the reduction of home not as refuge but as dungeon and torture chamber.
Did I forgive my father? Yes and no. If one believes that forgiving means comprehending the roots of his perversions and violence, then I forgave him. But, this understanding came from the perspective of my adult self, the one who has the tools and resources to arrive at this understanding, the one whose family and home life is finally safe and nurturing. It took me three decades to be able to do this. I don't think that I'm special because of it. I do not tell survivors that this is where they need to go.
As my adult self, I forgave him, the sinner, but not his sins. I am not in the business of forgiving sins, I leave that to God.
However, I do not forgive him for what he did to my child self, the one who is still alive and hurting within. I have done years of therapy to alleviate some of her pain and suffering. But, she still screams in the middle of the night. She has been crippled and isolated, battered, used as the family scapegoat neglected, shamed and humiliated. In my EMDR therapy, I''m rewriting the script so I can rescue her, take her away to a place where she is safe, unconditionally loved and not diminished as a mere sexual receptacle and the object for rage and violence. This is an incredible journey which leaves me no time or energy to spend on forgiving my abuser. In fact, forgiveness is not even on the radar and, quite frankly, I am indifferent to the notion.
My girl self within, like the Holocaust survivor, does not have to work on forgiving those who did this to her. We do not ask that of children, that's just not done.
I realize there may be some who want to present another way to look at forgiveness or challenge my beliefs, but I decided to close the comments because I want to have the last word on my blog about forgiveness. It is a subject that will not be approached here unless I need to attend to my brother and sister child abuse survivors and then I'd probably end up re-publishing the Fatherless Child post.
Anyway, I have more vital, self-affirming things to do like yoga, going shopping with Molly, hanging out with our kids and their kids, laughing with my husband and getting my life back.
Oh, forget my lowly barfly ways. Kepler's is a cozy, wonderful setting and tonight, I will be there, sitting behind a table with women with whom I'm humbled to call my esteemed co-authors: 
PRESIDENT BUSH: Madam President, it is a pleasure to welcome you back
to the Oval Office. We have just had a very constructive dialogue.
First, I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a
nation that -- in which there's a lot of Philippine-Americans. They
love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President
that I am reminded of the great talent of the -- of our
Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House. (Laughter.)
Recent Comments