My best friend comes from an abusive upbringing. Later she was in an abusive marriage. Now in her 50’s her parents who treated her so poorly lean on her to help them. Her and her siblings all have had different systems of processing their childhoods and some have made bigger strides than others. Because she is the oldest, she was often put in charge of her younger siblings and today many of them still call her for the support typically bestowed on a parent.
I told her I was writing about forgiveness and how I was trying to bridge the gaps in the process. As we talked and told stories about how we came to navigate different situations in life. The concept of boundaries became very clear.
And as the conversation continued on, I eventually wrote down the following:
Boundaries>Dormancy>Forgiveness or Letting Go
As we talked, each of our stories had clear boundaries that needed to be formed to distance ourselves from the situation so we could remove the constant presence of stress and live more peacefully in the world. We had to change our own patterns of behavior to create the boundary and once it was up, make adjustments for any gaps we couldn’t see without it there.
The boundary created some safe distances. If the situation was still active, then the boundary holds and maybe gets updated with time, but if the boundary helps the situation to go away, then it just lives there in the distance and we don’t have to think about it anymore.
In some cases, it might be appealing to take the boundary down. Maybe the time and distance allowed the noxious energy to drain from body and mind allowing the person to become more sensitive to it in the future.
Either way, the distance is the goal for cleansing, clarification (of self) and personal well-being. This can make the situation go into a place of dormancy-it can come back, but with the lapsed time there has been processing and wisdom developed.
It is these required two pieces: boundaries and dormancy (or time) that seem to get overlooked on the topic of forgiveness. By removing them and trying to force forgiveness, the person is still full of guarded energy. Forgiveness implies an openness that needs time to manifest. Maybe it’s not even forgiveness the person is trying to achieve, maybe they are just wanting to let it go- forgiveness isn’t required to move on from it.