Featured Article

Becoming Strong Enough to Love

"How can I forgive my parents when they were so abusive to me when I was growing up?"

"How can I forgive my spouse for cheating on me?"

"How can I forgive my best friend for abandoning me?"

"How can I face and forgive unforgiving abusers and manipulators?"

"How can I forgive myself when others do not forgive me and throw my past in my face every chance they get?"

These are some of the questions about forgiveness my clients have asked me over the 37 years that I have been a counselor.

We have all been told that forgiveness is good for the soul, and it is. Yet forgiveness cannot be forced. We cannot will ourselves to forgive, because if we try to deny the anger, blame and judgment that may still be there, it is likely to come out at some point. So how do we reach forgiveness?

Forgiveness toward others is the natural outcome of forgiving ourselves and of taking loving care of ourselves. When we judge ourselves, we will have a tendency to project that judgment onto others, no matter how much we tell ourselves that we have forgiven them.

Let's start with the first statement, "How can I forgive my parents when they were so abusive to me when I was growing up?" My experience is that as long as you continue to treat yourself in the abusive ways your parents may have treated you, you cannot reach forgiveness. It is your lack of self-care that perpetuates the anger toward others.

As adults, we each have a wonderful opportunity to learn to treat ourselves with the love, respect, caring and understanding that we may have lacked as children. When we don't do this, the past becomes the present as we continue to abuse ourselves in the ways we may have been abused, and then continue to blame others for how we end up feeling as a result of our lack of self-care.