I can answer as a poet that often the forgiveness comes through the writing, unbidden. There is something about delving into one's memories with all their smoke and mirrors that changes a person. I began this poem thinking only of my father's selfishness, but it ended in a very different place. From the journal Plume :
I'd been struggling for years to forgive my mom for not protecting me from my abusive father. While writing the section of my memoir about my own depression and inability to care for my kids during the worst of it, I was confronted with the fact that what, in my mom, I'd seen as a monumental parenting fail, was actually something she had absolutely no ability to do differently. This led to a new understanding, which is what I think forgiveness is.
I had always bristled at that vacuous phrase "they did the best they could." Then a friend added "and you needed so much more." That acknowledgement was healing for me.
They did the best they could and you needed so much more.
Thanks Ruth. Love that additional phrase. It returns the conversation to the person trying express, understand, and process the lingering feelings. Yeah, the person may have done their best. So what? The consequences exist. Forgiveness is different from erasure.
I have written many stories over the years about my family- myself, my two older sisters our parents. A complicated family… isn’t every family complicated?!!
What learning flowed through these stories was compassion for my very imperfect parents, shaped as they were by their imperfect parents. And onward. This helped me forgive myself for my major imperfections with my own parenting of three children. I have made amends to my three for ways that I let them down- emphasizing I have done my own work to forgive myself - to make it clear I am not begging for their forgiveness but rather to say I’m sorry they did not have more stability in their chaotic childhood years. Mostly they look at me and laugh.. we were fine..
I think having a broader perspective is useful. We are all shaped by forces out of our control and pass that shaping on to the next generation. Writing stories has been so useful in seeing a full picture- and in developing compassion and forgiveness toward self and towards others.
I have a problem with that phrase still, "they did the best they could."
Too often it sounds like a pass for bad behavior. It also ends the discussion.
How do we ever know someone did their best anyway?
I think it's a big question. How much do we need, how much do we expect, or should we get from other people? Is there ever enough from the outside? And to what extent do we learn to live with less than we might want.
I agree Todd. I’m always uncomfortable with that phrase and the way it excuses behavior and ends the discussion. Of course they probably did their best, or maybe not, but that’s not the point. The point is the exploration of the effects, the lingering feelings, and how we deal them going forward.
Right. And, keeping in mind the discussion might be painful , perhaps ending the discussion is the desired result. Also, the phrase itself might be an expression of forgiveness, but if it is it's a sorta sideways way to say it.
That phrase is from DBT, and I think it’s less about trying to erase people’s responsibility (even if you’re doing your best you are still on the hook when you fuck up), and more about accepting that when people are hurting others, and themselves, it’s usually because they are suffering
When my mother thought she was going to die, she told me why she couldn't protect us from my father. But I already understood. I appreciated both of them for what they were and how they got that way. They gave us athletics and love of nature. They had ideas about what they were supposed to be. I think I loved them. At least, I tried to help them be happy. But I did not trust them.
This is so wonderful. I recently was asked by my daughter to write the obituary of her father, a man truly toxic to me, in our marriage and our divorce. Indeed, he kidnapped my daughter while I was in the hospital and took her 1000 miles away to his mother's house. It took several years for me to regain any relationship with her. I love my daughter and she was in pain over her father's death, so I heard myself agreeing to write the obit. And I did. And the writing somehow washed me clean. I don't forgive him. Actually I don't know what forgiveness is. But in writing a portrait of his whole life, I found peace. I think the man who could forgive the person who murdered his mother is surely blessed, as both men seem to be still alive? That's extraordinary. I can't seem to get access to the recordings, but I'm still trying.
I cannot imagine how you were so brave, However I can imagine how you were in peace afterwards so I just want to say. I understand. thanks for sharing such a personal story.
Well, I love my daughter fiercely. I didn't expect to feel peace. i expected to be clobbered with fury and bad memories! So I got a wonderful unexpected gift!
i couldn't either! But I did it and everybody loved it and somehow in the writing. my distress vanished. Doesn't change what he did or how it affected my life and my daughters. But - I was at peace.
I hate typing on my iPhone because I always make horrible typos. My fat fingers and my bad eyesight. What I wrote and deleted was that the story would make an excellent one because it is full of surprises and completely different.
I’m going out on a limb here. I’m a non-commenting Story Club lurker, but this post compels me to share. I’m starting draft five of a/my/our (I can’t leave the muse out of the equation) novel. Way back in draft one I asked/insisted my fucked-up protagonist go back to the place that wrecked him. Then it occurred to me - how can I ask him to do the thing I’m not willing to do? (I’d sworn I’d never step foot in that state or that town again.) I couldn’t. So after I wrote The End on Draft 1 (May 2021) and got vaccinated. (We all remember that summer, right? The one when the world opened back up?) Alone (and shitting my pants) I got in my car, drove eight hours to the place that wrecked me and faced my past —my failures—and started the process of forgiving myself. The story is better—truer—for that experience as am I. Ok, I’m holding my breath and pushing the blue arrow.
Well done for making that journey. I swore, early last year, that I wouldn't return to my childhood home again. My brother had just died in that house. At that stage, I hadn't stepped into that house in over 18 years, as I was estranged from my mother. She had died 5 years previously, but the house held so many distressing memories.
Last weekend, I did return, needing to get things moving re selling the house. My brother left no will. Things had fallen apart with my three surviving siblings, and I've had to take legal routes to communicate (all about people not wanting to share painful stories and heal).
Visiting the house after some time distance, and having written, told, shared my painful stories, was actually OK. I have got closure of a kind.
I have come to forgive my parents and my siblings. It's the only way to get some peace.
At the house, there was an envelope with my name on it, in my sister's handwriting. In amongst the photos were some of me with my baby daughter (she is now early forties). My mother had cut me out of them, some just my head. One had three cut marks across my face. My sister had left them for me to see. My husband was shocked, I was not. It was like touching the scar without pain. Hurt and resentment pass down the generations. It stops with me. My daughters, my granddaughter will not be like that
Thank you again for this wonderful site and sharing Ben Arthur's incredible experience in Rwanda. I'm currently working on a project that deals with grief and forgiveness and I found all of this so helpful and insightful. I'm discovering that grief is not a problem to be solved but a process to be lived through, in whatever form it may take. And same with forgiveness - so many hold onto it like a key to a treasure that they withheld from others only needing to realize using that key frees them - holding onto to resentment is so toxic - like that Malachy McCourt quote "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
I had to forgive a mosquito. In 2012 I left my job to return to my writing career. At last I had time and resources to focus on fiction. I wrote and revised a novel and a bunch of stories. By 2015, I believed I was ready to submit some of that work. But a mosquito drank my blood to feed her babies and infected me with West Nile Virus. Unable to walk, talk, dress myself, or write a sentence, I mourned the loss of my writing life. Add to that, I would never again hike or backpack. Near the end of six months in rehab facilities, a kind nursing home caretaker challenged me to read a chapter of a book. It was a Friday. I cried. I stared at letters that meant nothing to me because of my damaged brain. I don’t remember how or what word triggered my brain but by Monday morning, upon his return, I had finished the book. I had hope to be a writer again. I went home, bought a new desk, sat in a wheelchair and revised the novel. Anger and cursing that insect was a constant companion, partly because I could no longer drive due to slowed reaction time. That turned into my blessing and the way to forgiveness. Freed from distractions, able to order whatever I needed online, able to meet with other writers online, I began a new novel and more stories. I even flew to NYC to give a reading. Just a few days ago, I met with my beta readers for their take on the newest novel. When George asked about forgiveness, I realized I needed to forgive that mother mosquito who was only feeding her babies. Because of her, I became a more disciplined writer, eager to revise this novel and have it become my best work….until I write the next story. Thanks, George!
Thank you. This is an amazing story of recovery and creation. I do believe that constraint acts as a catalyst for creativity and have, in other contexts, quoted Stravinsky:
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.''
Stravinsky wrote that in The Poetics of Music. "In art,'' he continued, "as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation.''
Your "resisting foundation" was intense. And you didn't build it, or impose it, it happened. It's beautiful that you forgave the mosquito. Which might be another way of saying you relinquished control of your fate, or any ideas of such. You forgave the cosmos. But I love the focus on the mosquito. Talk about specificity! A mother mosquito, no less.
I’m writing a memoir about taking care of my dad in the last 6 months of his life. We were mostly estranged and I held my grudges with fervor. In caring for him, and then reliving the experience by writing about it, I’ve found more compassion for my dad. It’s hard and I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling forgiveness, but it feels better than it did, when I think of him.
Kimberly - you are a wonderful daughter and in caregiving the world changes you and forgiveness to us who have careven to a human being fogginess will be joyful.
Well I guess one of the reasons a story has the potential to open up hearts is because it isn’t the same thing to all its readers. I don’t know if I’m being coherent, but the way I see it, a story has as many lives as it has readers, and in the same vein, what seems to be a single story, has the power to generate all sorts of discourse around it. And I use the word discourse intentionally- the conversations surrounding it don’t have to be positive/negative or even neutral, they can be all three things or exist in some happy in-between space.
I guess the harder question is figuring out how to write a story that is content with being more than one thing! Respect definitely plays a huge part here- respect for stories, but also for that elusive nugget of truth that the best stories somehow succeed in holding a mirror to. (I sagely type, while desperately avoiding my novel manuscript)
I wonder about this also. It feels like opening oneself to the story more and more might be the only way. A good story is really a living thing, though it might seem static at first glance. The open heart and the music of language give it life.
That’s so true! A story is a living thing, and I feel like it’s always a surprise to both the reader and the writer when you first glimpse life moving under the words. I think there’s an element of mystery to the acts of writing and reading that one needs to respect, and that’s why I love George Saunders because I feel like even when he’s taking a story apart piece by piece it’s with full acknowledgment of that mysterious Something that makes the story more than just a bundle of words.
One of the most joyful places I’ve ever seen was a long term inpatient drug rehabilitation unit where people essentially told stories and shared food then went for walks all day long, sometimes for months. They argued and laughed and sang and cried together, staff and patients. It didn’t look like science, but it worked. This was how they learned to forgive others and themselves, and to live with the consequences of not being forgiven, and to move forward with their lives. By lights out they were all exhausted.
The place was run by people who themselves were in recovery and who maintained a culture of radical openness that took a little getting used to for me because I lie like a rug, especially about taking sick days when I feel just fine. We only get so many days on earth, you know? I felt like a weasel for lying to these people who had opened themselves up to me about how they ended up both in and then out of a gang, why they work on Christmas, their brother’s suicide, and their mother’s pimp, broken hearts, babies, and everything they ever stole (and how they did it and why). They told me thousands of stories. It worked for them, but it was exhausting for me. Most of them turned out fine. I’m still a liar, though.
I'm a domestic violence survivor and can totally relate to Ben's work with genocide survivors. I'm glad Ben discovered that those of us who have experienced the worst of human nature want to be asked about the details. In developed countries it's common to forget - or sadly, to deny - that humans are capable of committing ghastly unprovoked violence against both innocent loved ones and innocent strangers.
Regarding forgiveness, fiction is obviously the best - and only? - place to enter another person's mind. And when we do, we enlarge our ability to understand the human condition. My ex-husband and I both grew up in homes of domestic violence, but since I'm the stronger person, I was the victim (who eventually got the courage to leave), whereas he was the abuser, consigned to repeat the hateful cycle. Ursula LeGuin greatly helped me understand him. Of a similar type of guy she wrote, "What once had once protected his ego and inner self had grown to consume it entirely." (or something like that!)
This is very inspiring to read! I have recently completed the first draft of a personal story about the breakdown of my marriage and the abusive relationship I was stuck in. It was a difficult write, but I went into it with love. I came out of it with more love (after having shed many tears). I had already forgiven my ex husband before writing the draft, but now I feel more gratitude and lightness being on the other side of this. And, I have two truly incredible daughters, so that really helps with the healing.
Ah, forgiveness. I call it the F word. For many years I resented those who insisted or implied that I’d only find healing by forgiving my abusers, even though they never apologized. Shakespeare says, via the character Portia, “The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” I understand my favorite poet to mean that forgiveness is not an act of will. True forgiveness cannot be constrained, that is, forced. Forgiveness can only bring healing if it arises naturally, that is, if it bubbles up from the unconscious. A daily writing practice unlocked something in my subconscious. Before I started writing things down, all my dreams were bad dreams—of violence and fear. But after I spent four years writing every day about my trauma, exhaustively rewriting and reshaping until it began to feel like an honest story, my dreams began to soften and become more complex. And I interpreted two dreams in particular, one about a panther and one about my grandmother, as small but genuine steps toward the healing of forgiveness.
Thank you for asking! At the time I wrote down the panther dream. This was February 15, 2020: << Last night I dreamt of a panther but it never threatened me. It was in a cage in our backyard, and there was something in the cage I needed (it might have been my laptop) so I opened the cage door to get it. It crossed my mind, the panther will probably get out, but I opened it anyway. The panther left the cage and headed away, large and beautiful, not too slow and not too fast. I thought at least there’s a fence, so the panther will stay with me and then I thought, it’s a cat, it can climb over the fence. And then it climbed over the fence and was gone. Instantly John and I were no longer in California but in New York City. I couldn’t see the panther any more but I knew it was out there somewhere, roaming the city. I was worried that people would be mad at me for letting the panther out but the concern was less that the panther was dangerous than that it was valuable. I wished I could have a picture of the panther but I knew it was a dream. >>
It’s been incredible, reading the posts this evening. I struggle with this topic every day. The grudges that drain color from the world.
I loved East of Eden. The question in the last part of it, whether or not a father could forgive his less-loved son for contributing to the demise of the most-loved. So much hung in the balance.
Also Chaim Potok, The Chosen. A less-dire situation, perhaps. Until you realize, they are all dire.
I love this reflection on storytelling as part of the healing process. It reminds me of something a friend shared from the book, Women Who Run With Wolves, about a tribe who lets you tell your sad story three times. And for three times the entire tribe is there with you, crying with you, listening and engaging and holding space for you. But, after three times, you're not allowed to tell that sad story anymore. I do think there's such power in being witnessed as part of our processing, letting that truth be real. And there's that fine line where forgiveness and processing can turn into spiraling- a picking at the scab once the wound has healed.
An artist from Rwanda (Samuel Kambari) visited our home years ago, and one of the gifts he brought were these little woven baskets, three of them. I have to look it up online (although human answer is always better) to get the exact meaning, but we are to put our pain in them as some kind of release/forgiveness or something like that. If anyone knows these little baskets, I'd love to know what you know.
Love this Sea it reminds me of a beloved man from Rwanda who worked for the hospice Agency that took care of my husband during his final days. The kindest man I have everknown in my whole life. My husband helped him bring some of his family members here. I wish I could remember the stories but I was in such sorrow I forgot everything.
I can answer as a poet that often the forgiveness comes through the writing, unbidden. There is something about delving into one's memories with all their smoke and mirrors that changes a person. I began this poem thinking only of my father's selfishness, but it ended in a very different place. From the journal Plume :
Revisiting San Juan Capistrano
The place would have been a mess
with so many birds, but what I’ve kept
is my mother in her picture hat
like a halo, the newest baby on her hip.
And I’d swear to bougainvillea, tumbling
in pink torrents over walls halfway to ruin.
It turns out there isn’t a vault in the brain
where memories are preserved like relics;
they assemble afresh each time,
like swallows flocking
through shadow and sun. My father strides
forever ahead, flourishing
his cigar as he extols beauty and proportion.
But who’s to say he wasn’t kind?
That he didn’t sit beside me on the ride home
while I settled to sleep on his shoulder.
Gorgeous! I think for you forgiveness may simply be reliving, with the possibility of gentleness.
this got me in the chest. Thank you <3
Thanks
Just watch them fly on their return every Spring^^
Love this poem. I see him smoking that cigar.
Thanks
Got me right in the feels
Beautiful, and moving.
Thanks
Thank you I felt your story.
Wonderful poem.
Thanks 🙏
Lovely poem-- thanks for sharing. Things were complicated with my father too.
Thanks
Thanks
I'd been struggling for years to forgive my mom for not protecting me from my abusive father. While writing the section of my memoir about my own depression and inability to care for my kids during the worst of it, I was confronted with the fact that what, in my mom, I'd seen as a monumental parenting fail, was actually something she had absolutely no ability to do differently. This led to a new understanding, which is what I think forgiveness is.
People are doing the best they can, which sometimes is not enough. It’s hard. I’m sorry for what you went through
I had always bristled at that vacuous phrase "they did the best they could." Then a friend added "and you needed so much more." That acknowledgement was healing for me.
They did the best they could and you needed so much more.
Thanks Ruth. Love that additional phrase. It returns the conversation to the person trying express, understand, and process the lingering feelings. Yeah, the person may have done their best. So what? The consequences exist. Forgiveness is different from erasure.
I have written many stories over the years about my family- myself, my two older sisters our parents. A complicated family… isn’t every family complicated?!!
What learning flowed through these stories was compassion for my very imperfect parents, shaped as they were by their imperfect parents. And onward. This helped me forgive myself for my major imperfections with my own parenting of three children. I have made amends to my three for ways that I let them down- emphasizing I have done my own work to forgive myself - to make it clear I am not begging for their forgiveness but rather to say I’m sorry they did not have more stability in their chaotic childhood years. Mostly they look at me and laugh.. we were fine..
I think having a broader perspective is useful. We are all shaped by forces out of our control and pass that shaping on to the next generation. Writing stories has been so useful in seeing a full picture- and in developing compassion and forgiveness toward self and towards others.
I have a problem with that phrase still, "they did the best they could."
Too often it sounds like a pass for bad behavior. It also ends the discussion.
How do we ever know someone did their best anyway?
I think it's a big question. How much do we need, how much do we expect, or should we get from other people? Is there ever enough from the outside? And to what extent do we learn to live with less than we might want.
I agree Todd. I’m always uncomfortable with that phrase and the way it excuses behavior and ends the discussion. Of course they probably did their best, or maybe not, but that’s not the point. The point is the exploration of the effects, the lingering feelings, and how we deal them going forward.
Right. And, keeping in mind the discussion might be painful , perhaps ending the discussion is the desired result. Also, the phrase itself might be an expression of forgiveness, but if it is it's a sorta sideways way to say it.
That phrase is from DBT, and I think it’s less about trying to erase people’s responsibility (even if you’re doing your best you are still on the hook when you fuck up), and more about accepting that when people are hurting others, and themselves, it’s usually because they are suffering
I wonder if the phrase should be, They did what they did. Just like the weather.
Well said! And thank you.
That’s an incredible moment, when the light hits in just the right way and you see the torment of the one who once tormented you.
When my mother thought she was going to die, she told me why she couldn't protect us from my father. But I already understood. I appreciated both of them for what they were and how they got that way. They gave us athletics and love of nature. They had ideas about what they were supposed to be. I think I loved them. At least, I tried to help them be happy. But I did not trust them.
"This led to a new understanding,. . ."
thank you for this, something I'll think about!
This is so wonderful. I recently was asked by my daughter to write the obituary of her father, a man truly toxic to me, in our marriage and our divorce. Indeed, he kidnapped my daughter while I was in the hospital and took her 1000 miles away to his mother's house. It took several years for me to regain any relationship with her. I love my daughter and she was in pain over her father's death, so I heard myself agreeing to write the obit. And I did. And the writing somehow washed me clean. I don't forgive him. Actually I don't know what forgiveness is. But in writing a portrait of his whole life, I found peace. I think the man who could forgive the person who murdered his mother is surely blessed, as both men seem to be still alive? That's extraordinary. I can't seem to get access to the recordings, but I'm still trying.
I cannot imagine how you were so brave, However I can imagine how you were in peace afterwards so I just want to say. I understand. thanks for sharing such a personal story.
Well, I love my daughter fiercely. I didn't expect to feel peace. i expected to be clobbered with fury and bad memories! So I got a wonderful unexpected gift!
That is something I’d never imagine, the situation you were in.
i couldn't either! But I did it and everybody loved it and somehow in the writing. my distress vanished. Doesn't change what he did or how it affected my life and my daughters. But - I was at peace.
I love hearing this story— it’s amazing. And writing obituaries is harder than we realize, even if the deceased was a superstar.
Thanks! I'm now trying to write the story of writing the obit!
I hate typing on my iPhone because I always make horrible typos. My fat fingers and my bad eyesight. What I wrote and deleted was that the story would make an excellent one because it is full of surprises and completely different.
Sometimes we need reminding that there are things more magical than fiction!
I’m going out on a limb here. I’m a non-commenting Story Club lurker, but this post compels me to share. I’m starting draft five of a/my/our (I can’t leave the muse out of the equation) novel. Way back in draft one I asked/insisted my fucked-up protagonist go back to the place that wrecked him. Then it occurred to me - how can I ask him to do the thing I’m not willing to do? (I’d sworn I’d never step foot in that state or that town again.) I couldn’t. So after I wrote The End on Draft 1 (May 2021) and got vaccinated. (We all remember that summer, right? The one when the world opened back up?) Alone (and shitting my pants) I got in my car, drove eight hours to the place that wrecked me and faced my past —my failures—and started the process of forgiving myself. The story is better—truer—for that experience as am I. Ok, I’m holding my breath and pushing the blue arrow.
Well done for making that journey. I swore, early last year, that I wouldn't return to my childhood home again. My brother had just died in that house. At that stage, I hadn't stepped into that house in over 18 years, as I was estranged from my mother. She had died 5 years previously, but the house held so many distressing memories.
Last weekend, I did return, needing to get things moving re selling the house. My brother left no will. Things had fallen apart with my three surviving siblings, and I've had to take legal routes to communicate (all about people not wanting to share painful stories and heal).
Visiting the house after some time distance, and having written, told, shared my painful stories, was actually OK. I have got closure of a kind.
I have come to forgive my parents and my siblings. It's the only way to get some peace.
At the house, there was an envelope with my name on it, in my sister's handwriting. In amongst the photos were some of me with my baby daughter (she is now early forties). My mother had cut me out of them, some just my head. One had three cut marks across my face. My sister had left them for me to see. My husband was shocked, I was not. It was like touching the scar without pain. Hurt and resentment pass down the generations. It stops with me. My daughters, my granddaughter will not be like that
This was what came up in conversations with lots of Rwandans. Sacrifice now, for the next generation
Oh my heart reading about the photos. Your strength is inspiring dear Maria.
This is a great example of art and life working in tandem. Forgiving oneself feels like the final hurdle. Thank you for sharing all of that.
Thank you again for this wonderful site and sharing Ben Arthur's incredible experience in Rwanda. I'm currently working on a project that deals with grief and forgiveness and I found all of this so helpful and insightful. I'm discovering that grief is not a problem to be solved but a process to be lived through, in whatever form it may take. And same with forgiveness - so many hold onto it like a key to a treasure that they withheld from others only needing to realize using that key frees them - holding onto to resentment is so toxic - like that Malachy McCourt quote "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
I love Malachy! He was so brilliant. I was glad I got to do an episode with him before we lost him
Great quote….
Now that's a quote🧿💞
Agreed. I had not heard that McCourt homily. I intend to apply it to my psyche henceforth.
I had to forgive a mosquito. In 2012 I left my job to return to my writing career. At last I had time and resources to focus on fiction. I wrote and revised a novel and a bunch of stories. By 2015, I believed I was ready to submit some of that work. But a mosquito drank my blood to feed her babies and infected me with West Nile Virus. Unable to walk, talk, dress myself, or write a sentence, I mourned the loss of my writing life. Add to that, I would never again hike or backpack. Near the end of six months in rehab facilities, a kind nursing home caretaker challenged me to read a chapter of a book. It was a Friday. I cried. I stared at letters that meant nothing to me because of my damaged brain. I don’t remember how or what word triggered my brain but by Monday morning, upon his return, I had finished the book. I had hope to be a writer again. I went home, bought a new desk, sat in a wheelchair and revised the novel. Anger and cursing that insect was a constant companion, partly because I could no longer drive due to slowed reaction time. That turned into my blessing and the way to forgiveness. Freed from distractions, able to order whatever I needed online, able to meet with other writers online, I began a new novel and more stories. I even flew to NYC to give a reading. Just a few days ago, I met with my beta readers for their take on the newest novel. When George asked about forgiveness, I realized I needed to forgive that mother mosquito who was only feeding her babies. Because of her, I became a more disciplined writer, eager to revise this novel and have it become my best work….until I write the next story. Thanks, George!
What a fabulous story, Mary Lou! Thank you!!
Thank you, Megan.
Thank you. This is an amazing story of recovery and creation. I do believe that constraint acts as a catalyst for creativity and have, in other contexts, quoted Stravinsky:
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.''
Stravinsky wrote that in The Poetics of Music. "In art,'' he continued, "as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation.''
Your "resisting foundation" was intense. And you didn't build it, or impose it, it happened. It's beautiful that you forgave the mosquito. Which might be another way of saying you relinquished control of your fate, or any ideas of such. You forgave the cosmos. But I love the focus on the mosquito. Talk about specificity! A mother mosquito, no less.
I’m writing a memoir about taking care of my dad in the last 6 months of his life. We were mostly estranged and I held my grudges with fervor. In caring for him, and then reliving the experience by writing about it, I’ve found more compassion for my dad. It’s hard and I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling forgiveness, but it feels better than it did, when I think of him.
Kimberly - you are a wonderful daughter and in caregiving the world changes you and forgiveness to us who have careven to a human being fogginess will be joyful.
Well I guess one of the reasons a story has the potential to open up hearts is because it isn’t the same thing to all its readers. I don’t know if I’m being coherent, but the way I see it, a story has as many lives as it has readers, and in the same vein, what seems to be a single story, has the power to generate all sorts of discourse around it. And I use the word discourse intentionally- the conversations surrounding it don’t have to be positive/negative or even neutral, they can be all three things or exist in some happy in-between space.
I guess the harder question is figuring out how to write a story that is content with being more than one thing! Respect definitely plays a huge part here- respect for stories, but also for that elusive nugget of truth that the best stories somehow succeed in holding a mirror to. (I sagely type, while desperately avoiding my novel manuscript)
“The story has as many lives as it has readers.” I love this. I’m going to steal.
I wonder about this also. It feels like opening oneself to the story more and more might be the only way. A good story is really a living thing, though it might seem static at first glance. The open heart and the music of language give it life.
That’s so true! A story is a living thing, and I feel like it’s always a surprise to both the reader and the writer when you first glimpse life moving under the words. I think there’s an element of mystery to the acts of writing and reading that one needs to respect, and that’s why I love George Saunders because I feel like even when he’s taking a story apart piece by piece it’s with full acknowledgment of that mysterious Something that makes the story more than just a bundle of words.
"...more than just a bundle of words." Yes.
One of the most joyful places I’ve ever seen was a long term inpatient drug rehabilitation unit where people essentially told stories and shared food then went for walks all day long, sometimes for months. They argued and laughed and sang and cried together, staff and patients. It didn’t look like science, but it worked. This was how they learned to forgive others and themselves, and to live with the consequences of not being forgiven, and to move forward with their lives. By lights out they were all exhausted.
The place was run by people who themselves were in recovery and who maintained a culture of radical openness that took a little getting used to for me because I lie like a rug, especially about taking sick days when I feel just fine. We only get so many days on earth, you know? I felt like a weasel for lying to these people who had opened themselves up to me about how they ended up both in and then out of a gang, why they work on Christmas, their brother’s suicide, and their mother’s pimp, broken hearts, babies, and everything they ever stole (and how they did it and why). They told me thousands of stories. It worked for them, but it was exhausting for me. Most of them turned out fine. I’m still a liar, though.
Love this!
I'm a domestic violence survivor and can totally relate to Ben's work with genocide survivors. I'm glad Ben discovered that those of us who have experienced the worst of human nature want to be asked about the details. In developed countries it's common to forget - or sadly, to deny - that humans are capable of committing ghastly unprovoked violence against both innocent loved ones and innocent strangers.
Regarding forgiveness, fiction is obviously the best - and only? - place to enter another person's mind. And when we do, we enlarge our ability to understand the human condition. My ex-husband and I both grew up in homes of domestic violence, but since I'm the stronger person, I was the victim (who eventually got the courage to leave), whereas he was the abuser, consigned to repeat the hateful cycle. Ursula LeGuin greatly helped me understand him. Of a similar type of guy she wrote, "What once had once protected his ego and inner self had grown to consume it entirely." (or something like that!)
Ursula LeGuin nailed that one…and so did you. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks Cody for sharing. I love Ursula LeGuin and who reminds us of our humanity.
This is very inspiring to read! I have recently completed the first draft of a personal story about the breakdown of my marriage and the abusive relationship I was stuck in. It was a difficult write, but I went into it with love. I came out of it with more love (after having shed many tears). I had already forgiven my ex husband before writing the draft, but now I feel more gratitude and lightness being on the other side of this. And, I have two truly incredible daughters, so that really helps with the healing.
Ah, forgiveness. I call it the F word. For many years I resented those who insisted or implied that I’d only find healing by forgiving my abusers, even though they never apologized. Shakespeare says, via the character Portia, “The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” I understand my favorite poet to mean that forgiveness is not an act of will. True forgiveness cannot be constrained, that is, forced. Forgiveness can only bring healing if it arises naturally, that is, if it bubbles up from the unconscious. A daily writing practice unlocked something in my subconscious. Before I started writing things down, all my dreams were bad dreams—of violence and fear. But after I spent four years writing every day about my trauma, exhaustively rewriting and reshaping until it began to feel like an honest story, my dreams began to soften and become more complex. And I interpreted two dreams in particular, one about a panther and one about my grandmother, as small but genuine steps toward the healing of forgiveness.
would love to hear more about these dreams - what they unlocked a d freed in you.
Thank you for asking! At the time I wrote down the panther dream. This was February 15, 2020: << Last night I dreamt of a panther but it never threatened me. It was in a cage in our backyard, and there was something in the cage I needed (it might have been my laptop) so I opened the cage door to get it. It crossed my mind, the panther will probably get out, but I opened it anyway. The panther left the cage and headed away, large and beautiful, not too slow and not too fast. I thought at least there’s a fence, so the panther will stay with me and then I thought, it’s a cat, it can climb over the fence. And then it climbed over the fence and was gone. Instantly John and I were no longer in California but in New York City. I couldn’t see the panther any more but I knew it was out there somewhere, roaming the city. I was worried that people would be mad at me for letting the panther out but the concern was less that the panther was dangerous than that it was valuable. I wished I could have a picture of the panther but I knew it was a dream. >>
This is amazing, Judith. And it feels so right.
It’s been incredible, reading the posts this evening. I struggle with this topic every day. The grudges that drain color from the world.
I loved East of Eden. The question in the last part of it, whether or not a father could forgive his less-loved son for contributing to the demise of the most-loved. So much hung in the balance.
Also Chaim Potok, The Chosen. A less-dire situation, perhaps. Until you realize, they are all dire.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you David I read The Chosen such a long time ago so I will revisit him again. I guess I have to forgive myself for not remembering Chaim Potok.
I loved that book. Also, The Promise (same characters a few years later). But there are others I have not yet gotten to.
Sorry. I can't resist. George are you an angel?
These questions and scenarios you raise are too much in line with the need for humanity to find another path.
Maybe it the martini speaking.
https://images.app.goo.gl/aqokwY56FyHqvKtN9
I love this reflection on storytelling as part of the healing process. It reminds me of something a friend shared from the book, Women Who Run With Wolves, about a tribe who lets you tell your sad story three times. And for three times the entire tribe is there with you, crying with you, listening and engaging and holding space for you. But, after three times, you're not allowed to tell that sad story anymore. I do think there's such power in being witnessed as part of our processing, letting that truth be real. And there's that fine line where forgiveness and processing can turn into spiraling- a picking at the scab once the wound has healed.
An artist from Rwanda (Samuel Kambari) visited our home years ago, and one of the gifts he brought were these little woven baskets, three of them. I have to look it up online (although human answer is always better) to get the exact meaning, but we are to put our pain in them as some kind of release/forgiveness or something like that. If anyone knows these little baskets, I'd love to know what you know.
Love this Sea it reminds me of a beloved man from Rwanda who worked for the hospice Agency that took care of my husband during his final days. The kindest man I have everknown in my whole life. My husband helped him bring some of his family members here. I wish I could remember the stories but I was in such sorrow I forgot everything.
Hospice workers are amazing, sounds like this man went above and beyond. What a gift your husband gave him.