Saving the daily meditation for the last act of the day was deliberate. I knew that tonight’s practice was in part to revisit the events chronicled in this morning’s blog post – to revisit and to move through them in mindfulness, acknowledgment, kindness, and forgiveness. There was still a lot of anger and bitterness there – feelings of being unprotected and abandoned when I needed support most – and then the feelings of guilt for bringing it all up again. I let each of those thoughts present themselves, then move away. Inhabiting those moments of long ago – and all that I felt as they played out – and then examining what I felt, how I felt it, and how it lived inside me for all these years – that is how I am attempting to resolve the dilemma.
Writing about things helps – I’ve kept a lot of backstories hidden, as much to protect others as to protect myself – but there is something powerfully freeing about putting it all down at last, and then letting it go. Once it’s here, it doesn’t need to take up space in my head or heart – I can revisit any bottled-up anger or betrayal, while also realizing that I shouldn’t be bound to that anymore. The healing – and the possibility of forgiveness – is in the meditation that follows, in seeing things through my family’s point of view, seeing things through other points of view, and seeing myself with a bit of leniency too.
No one and everyone is to blame.
And so I breathe in and visualize those days, and then I slowly breathe them out – the exhale a relief of body and mind and heart. I do this over and over with each moment of pain, each moment of hurt, turning them into moments of clarity, moments of truth, and ultimately moments of forgiveness.
And the work continues…
