Are You Strong Enough to Forgive?

Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” In some ways, it is so much easier holding onto anger, bitterness, and grievances. And yet, whom are we hurting? No one but ourselves.

The following has been excerpted from Chapter 8 of Stop Eating Your Heart Out: The 21-Day Program to Free Yourself from Emotional Eating. Although it addresses overeaters, it applies to everyone:

In general, emotional overeaters hold a lot of resentments and grudges. Maybe you remember being snubbed in the third grade or are still incensed about the way so and so treated you.

“Resentments rot the container they’re in” is a powerful statement that I heard and took to heart years ago. The people we resent might be blissfully living out their lives, with no idea how their actions, inactions, thoughts, or behaviors are eating away at us like a corrosive acid. In the tons of books written on the art and process of forgiveness, the authors all make the same point—forgiveness is for you, not the individual you are forgiving. The internationally renowned speaker Caroline Myss wrote in her best seller Anatomy of the Spirit:

When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person’s emotional resources. The challenge . . . is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness (84).

Forgiveness is tough. Many of us hold on to our old wounds, hurts, and resentments until they fester and turn us sour and bitter. We refuse to forgive because we have been so wronged. As we remember old hurts, we hope that those who wounded us will eventually wake up and apologize for their grievous behaviors. Too often, we are unmercifully hard on ourselves and need to ease up and forgive our own selves. It’s been said that having resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. When we refuse to forgive, whom are we really hurting? And can we let go of the bingeing and emotional overeating if we are carrying scads of resentments?

Forgiveness does not mean liking the person who wronged you or condoning the behavior; it means understanding the other person’s humanness and releasing the rock of resentment in your heart. Forgiveness is part of self-care—it is an act of freeing one’s self. There are a lot of behaviors that seem unforgivable, including rape, incest, murder, and abuse. When atrocities occur, we can choose to hold on to our anger and rage, let them burn a hole inside us, and keep us chained to food and binges. Or we can, at some point, move into the spiritual act of forgiveness.

Think about your past. Who are you still angry with? Who have you not yet forgiven? In what ways do you need to forgive yourself? Mary Manin Morrissey said, “We all have forgiveness work to do. If you’re wondering if this is true, ask yourself, ‘Am I breathing?’ If the answer is yes, the answer is yes. Ask Spirit, ‘Who would you have me forgive today?’”

How do you release anger and resentments? My favorite way is to use SourceTapping, a mind-body-spirit rapid release technique. You can download the script and diagram by going to SourceTapping.com. I’d love to hear, in the comment section below, how you manage to forgive those who seemed to have wronged you.

Wishing you much peace and many blessings,
Meryl

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