Forgiveness

I forgave my mother on Sunday.

I realized she was broken too, and I forgave her. Yes, in many ways, she wasn’t the mother I might have wanted, but by holding on to ever single thing she ever did and said, I made it all worse. As I re-lived each “wrong” over and over and over and over, I experienced each miserable experience over and over.

In a way, I loved my resentments. They were what I knew, they kept me righteous and they gave me purpose. Poor me, what an awful childhood – I need a drink. Poor me - let me pop a pill to space out the world

But the drink, the pills, the binging, the purging, the starving -- they made me miserable and took away my chance to move forward and to be free.

My mother had a difficult life, my mother was broken too - i forgive her.

My mother was a beautiful pianist. Her parents wanted her to be a secretary, but my mother paid her way through Juilliard by teaching piano lessons. At 16, she moved to New York and supported herself living on the Upper West Side. Mom was so smart and charismatic and engaged in life. When my mother got her Parkinson's diagnose, she went to Thailand and rode a camel.

I look like my mother and smile when people tell me that.

For most of my life, I forgot all these lovely things and only remembered all the negative and lived the hurts over and over and over.

I forgive her as so many have forgiven me.

I loved my mother.

Do try this exercise at home.