Billy Chapata once said, “Healing is not an overnight process. Wounds will reopen, wounds will close, but always allow yourself to feel what you feel, it’s okay.” We are consumed by the idea that negative emotions aren’t conducive, that we must suppress darkness, but growth comes from uncomfortability. You may have to take a few steps back to move forward, open old wounds to make way for new memories, this is necessary, trust your process. For a year I found myself battling with the same issue, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t move on and just completely let go. I was a praying woman and knew that forgiveness was an act that I had to do, but why was it hard for me to look past what I had experienced and the pain I was feeling at that time? Even though I was looking at things through my Christian lens, I realized that pain is pain, regardless of your religion, regardless of who you are. At some point in our lives, we will all experience pain and disappointment. This pain and disappointment can be from people we love, people whom we have no close relation to, or a complete stranger.
During my time of trying to deal, I thought about how as people we put such high expectations on others, and when they disappointment us our world crashes. As I mentioned earlier, I said that we need to come to the realization and understanding that people will hurt and disappoint us at some point in our lives. If you think about when you were growing up, when you asked your mom whether you could sleep over at your friend’s place, or whether you wanted a sweet, sometimes the answer to that question was a simple no, and disappointment was all over your face.
With my particular situation I wondered if it was because of the fact that I was not capable of hurting people intentionally, and I thought that they intentionally caused me pain. I believe in Billy Chapata’s quote, that wounds will reopen, but I also believe that we control how we allow yourself to feel in those various moments. When your wounds reopen the mind is going to be a vital organ of how you are going to trust the process, and how you are going to manage during the process. If you sit and constantly look at the “what ifs”, we won’t heal, we simply won’t grow. We will stop looking at the lessons learnt, and how you can actively move forward. I had to remove all elements of hatred and anger because I was going to end up being very remorseful towards that person, and I was not going to end up seeing the beauty of my reality. The most harmful thing that I was doing, was developing feelings of hatred towards myself. I couldn’t look at myself for too long in the mirror , I couldn’t fall in love with myself any more, I just couldn’t recognize the woman staring back at me. I told her so many lies about herself that she believed them. What I’ve learnt is that forgiveness does take time, it is not a rushed act, but when we are in the process of forgiving we must not forget, that people make mistakes, it’s all part of growing up. You too may have wronged someone.
Despite how you are feeling, love is the only medicine that will help you not be full of hatred. Forgiveness is allowing what happened to you, it is about allowing yourself to feel what you feel during that moment. During the process you must not give up on yourself, free yourself from feeling betrayed and understand that everyone is human. Most importantly don’t hate yourself through the process. Know that everything is a lesson.
Take Care.