April: Self-Judgment and Self-Forgiveness

It's Wednesday April 7 and I'm crying as I drive down Highway 32 to pick Lexi up at school. Not sobbing or anything, just silent tears sliding down my face. I have a vague sense that I did something really, really wrong but I don't know what it is and I feel like damaged goods. I can't love and accept myself, I have this terrible flaw. This is the third time this week that I've found myself feeling this way.

I flash back to my first weekend at USM: a woman was trying to share some awful thing that she had done that she wanted to forgive herself for, but she couldn't say the words out loud. Ron, one of our teachers, gently told her that there was nothing that she could not say here. He was so gentle and accepting in the way he spoke with her that I feel the tears well up inside me again. I want this kind of unconditional love and acceptance even though I'm afraid that I've done something terrible in the past.

I get my opportunity on Sunday afternoon. It's the third day of our weekend class and we arrange ourselves into groups of three to practice counseling. As I start talking, I mention this vague feeling that has been stalking me all week, as scary as it is nebulous. Gradually I sink into the feeling first, before understanding and words come to me. Emotionally, I feel deeply sad and very confused. Physically, I have a stomach ache and tension in my arms. I follow these sensations deeper and deeper until I realize where they come from: this is how I felt after I got spanked by my parents as a small child.

An image pops into my head: I am four or five years old and I'm running from the family room through the kitchen to my bedroom. I've just been spanked and I don't understand why. I don't understand how this could be happening to me. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. There had to be - otherwise they wouldn't do that. I'm so confused. What could I have done to warrant this? These are the people who are supposed to love me and take care of me but they are hitting me and hurting me. What did I do? I feel so alone and unloved, I want to run away.

This is what had been bubbling to the surface all week. This was the terrible thing that had happened. This is why I am clearly flawed, imperfect, unloveable. I had been afraid that I would uncover something much worse. I feel a little bit relieved that something so simple could have such a big impact on my psyche. Then I realize that I may have found the root of my longstanding feelings of betrayal. I see the threads from this event to many later events in my life, to many misinterpretations that I couldn't trust people, that I would be betrayed.

My realizations naturally lead me into self-forgiveness. I forgive myself for judging myself as flawed, damaged, unloveable. My thoughts drift back to myself as a young girl and a wave of compassion and appreciation washes through me. I was so sensitive. I may have been a rough and tumble kid physically, but spiritually and emotionally I was delicate. My sensitivity always seemed like a weakness to me before, something to cover up, but now I see it as a gift and as a defining characteristic of who I am and who I have always been. My sensitivity allows me to be a gentle and caring parent to my kids, a loving wife, a compassionate friend, an intuitive and intelligent teacher. This is the gift that allows me to have psychic awareness beyond what most people can sense. This is just part of who I am. I love and appreciate myself more fully.

I forgive myself for judging myself as imperfect, bad or wrong, and for believing that it wasn't safe for me to be myself. I know now that it's okay (maybe even great!) to be me. I can relax. I can let my guard down.

I can just be myself. I'm perfect just the way I am.