Forgiveness, actually

There is a lot of guidance floating around the internet and self-help spaces about how to deal with the shock of a life-crisis… the initial blow-up and rebuilding phase that’s forced upon you when the life you signed up for is pulled out from under you. But I haven’t seen much written about the way that newfound happiness after the storm can be its own sort of life crisis. One that can feel like regression.

In my life, I’ve experienced several types of loss… The death of a parent, the end of an engagement, the complete disintegration of an identity built on shifting foundation… and what I know is that the period that comes after is an inner battle between being pissed off and miserable as a sort of rebellion to life’s way of forcing you to go in a new direction, and the desire to reinvent and find a new level of happiness that was previously inaccessible.

Much therapy in the wake of these major life shakeups focus on forgiveness as an essential pathway to happiness, but in my experience, it’s the other way around. After weeks/months/years of forging our new selves in the dumpster fire that was the ending of our old life, we wake up one day to realize we are under threat of becoming happier than we were in the before times. Maybe we met a new amazing person that feels fated, even though we swore we’d never find another… or a new job opportunity that never would have come through if we’d stayed in the old one… or we realize we could just go out and adopt a dog right this second if we want, because we are no longer obliged to a partner who pretends to be allergic but really just doesn’t like them.

These all signify threshold moments. Part of us wants to resist the new awareness that a big happy life is at our fingertips because it might mean that the shitty thing that happened was somehow in your best interest. Say you were married to someone who you really loved and were happy to spend the rest of your life with, and then you find out they’ve been cheating on you and actually they’re glad you brought this up because they want out, like, yesterday. This is a very shitty thing to have happen to you. You will be very hurt/angry/shocked/confused/sad and for good reason.

Time passes and you move forward. Life is not the same and it still feels like there must have been a glitch in the system that catapulted you into this new unfathomable future, but you decide you’re going to try to make something of it, even if it’s not what you thought you wanted. So you go to therapy, you dive deeper into the things you love, your community, a spiritual practice perhaps. And then you meet someone, completely out of the blue and without searching for them, and it feels like arriving in some destination you’ve never traveled to but instantly feel alive and at home there. Suddenly and without warning you are grateful for everything that happened that led you to this spot. It’s a shocking revelation, and actually maybe the sheer expanse of it is all too much and you really don’t like it and can it please back the fuck off???

Sometimes, the markers of transcending a loss can trigger their own sort of grief and indignation. If our new life turns out to be much better than the previous one- more aligned and expansive- does that mean we owe a debt of gratitude to the person or entity that set us on this new path? Well… yeah. It does actually. And- hear me out- I believe that the more comfortable we become with this realization, the happier we can allow ourselves to become. It will just cost us our indignation and resentment. Is it not worth the price of admission?

This concept is a lot easier to accept in terms of a breakup or a job loss… not so much a terminal illness or death of a loved one. But I think it holds up regardless, and I feel that the more justified our pain, the more profound and unshakable our happiness once we can surrender to it.

When we re-frame past hurts, slights, injuries, and losses as the very cause of our newfound wisdom, expansion, sense of possibility and wonder, we can begin the process of forgiveness in earnest. And beware the pull to keep the wound alive and well, of blocking new love, new life, and fresh experiences as a way to stave off forgiveness. I think that sometimes when people feel stuck, it’s a fear of forgiveness rather than success that keeps them in a holding pattern. If we want happiness, we have to pay the price.

I’m here to tell you that it’s totally worth it. Forgiveness is everything it’s cracked up to be when it is total. It is not a sacrifice. It won’t leave you with less, broken and betrayed. It is a complete denial of your brokenness, and isn’t that the definition of wholeness? There’s no point in forcing it. The way to forgiveness is through the determination to become happy, and that conviction will cause all blocks to surface, as well as the tools to break through them. By this process, happiness and forgiveness are made one. I mean how cute is that? Life, you guys.