Forgive, but Don’t Forget

Beth – no, not her real name — came over for dinner and as we sat and talked she started to cry. She was so, so sad. Her life was, as she described it, “a hot mess.” She was in a bad relationship, had a teenage daughter she adored who didn’t adore her back, and was thinking that maybe the career she had chosen wasn’t the right one after all. As she talked, every mistake she had recently made came bubbling up.

“What the hell brought this on?” I asked, incredulously. I had not been expecting this because as far as I knew, everything was honky-dory. I was completely taken aback.

“Carlie told me I’m the worst mother,” she sobbed, “and then told me the nine hundred things I’d done to screw up her life.”

“Geeze, you took her seriously?” I asked. Carlie is 14 and at the stage where no adult knows anything and every adult is a barrier to her doing what she wants.

But this wasn’t really about Carlie. This was actually about Beth, who had a very forgive and forget attitude towards her life while piling up her shame, her horror, her terror at the missteps she had made.

She shouldn’t have called Carlie a bitch. True nuff. And she probably shouldn’t have let her husband talk her into that vacation last year that she could ill-afford. Yeah, that’s was true too. And maybe when her boss suggested she take on that extra project because things were tight and they couldn’t replace the manager who had just retired, she should have said no. Maybe.

That’s the way we people are. Every mistake we have ever made is firmly engraved on our consciousness, much more so than all the things that we have done right. And when life feels crappy, all those failures, things gone awry, silly or serious mistakes come back in gangs to taunt us.

You have to forgive yourself. Whatever you have done, you must say sorry to yourself, to the universe, to whomever you affected, and then you must forgive yourself.

Did you know that every seven years you are a whole new you? That’s how long it takes for every cell in your body to die and be replaced. Are you still carrying around negative thoughts from years before all those cells in your current body ever existed? Really?

Did you learn the lesson(s) that came from whatever it is you’re beating yourself up over? Our blunders reaffirm that we are human. Learning from our mistakes is the way to avoid falling into the same pothole again and again. So, for heaven’s sake, learn the lesson and then move on. Self-recrimination and penance won’t get you to the next place you want to be. Forgiving yourself, accepting that what is done is done, and taking steps forward will.

The old saying, “Forgive and forget” has got it wrong. Yes, you must forgive. But don’t ever forget. To forget means you have not learned the lesson; you’re so wrapped in the pain of your failure that you won’t deal with it; instead you push it to a place where you don’t have to think about it. That’s not good.

The memory of your misstep may be painful. But you must deal with it, must get to a place where you can forgive yourself, before you’ll really heal. Take that memory and wrap it in tissue paper and tuck it in a box in your mind. But don’t just leave it there. Every now and then take it out, unwrap it, and have a good look at it. One day you’ll unwrap it and the pain will be gone. You will have forgiven. You can move on.

If you find your mind filled with things like, “I’m such an idiot,” or “I ruined everything,” or “I’m so stupid,” or “I can’t,” you are running the tapes of the unforgiven. Time to figure out what you’re mad at yourself for and do some forgiving.

Are there things for which you need to forgive yourself?