Forgive, but never forget

Emotionally healing is a complex and confusing journey. It does not have a linear process and it’s definitely not a one-fits-all approach. There are times when you think you made it to the other side only to get dragged right back into the tangled web of your own consciousness. A lot of this back and forth behaviour says a lot of where one stands in this emotional healing process. ‘’Letting go’’ is a phrase I’m sure lots of us have heard about. In order to move on with life, one needs to let go. But let go of what exactly?

Once you start to heal, you will travel back into your own past life, seeing fragments of your past playing out before you. Especially and sadly, only the fragments that have been traumatizing and haunting you until this day. Those fragments you still remember vividly, including all the dialogues that have been said or not have been said that have partially led you in this today’s state of mind.

What we deem to do what seems logical to heal from those experiences, is to erase those fragments forever out of our system.

Been there, done that. However, that’s not and will never be an approach that will help yourself to heal from your wounds.

Because we have lived in the past, we have experienced those things in reality. We have been at those moments, microseconds away before it made permanent damage to us. It has been intertwined with our lives, it has been connected to us at some point. Which means we can’t deny that it never happened to us. You can’t possibly live a life erasing things on your way when things or people don’t go your way. Pretending everything is okay only goes so far as your body remembers trauma. It remembers every fibre of fear that has ever been triggered. Healing starts when you allow space to lay out all the fragments of your life and being okay with it. Yes, even the bad ones.

Healing goes further into another layer that requires the act of forgiving.

It’s not the first thing what comes in mind when let’s say some people of your past were once hurtful towards you, then why would you ever be so kind to them by forgiving them? Because forgiving is not per se an act towards others, in this case, it’s an act of kindness towards yourself. You owe it to yourself to forgive and to let go. The emotions that keep us from healing are those that keep interfering with us if we don’t forgive those who are still has a say in distressing us at the most random moments in our day-to-day life.

It’s anger that keeps us from healing. It’s the sadness that keeps us from healing. It’s the feeling of disappointment that keeps us from healing.

Most importantly, it’s the wrath that keeps us from healing and keeps us from living in the present.

It goes without saying that this also implies forgiving yourself. We are always hardest on ourselves, beating ourselves up for even the most mundane mistakes.

If we try to forgive, we allow ourselves to enter into a space of inner peace. Within that space, we can see the days ahead of us as an opportunity to heal and evolve, rather than to get stuck in the past, reliving the moments that have crushed us.

Forgive, but never forget.

From the girl who rambles through life