Forgiving Yourself

Have you noticed how self-forgiveness asks you to set down a habit you have had for a long time? The habit of holding yourself responsible for things that were not yours, or that were not yet in your power to see. Setting it down does not happen all at once. It happens in moments, gently, over time.

You cannot truly forgive yourself for things that were not your fault to begin with. Most of what you have been blaming yourself for falls into that category. You did the best you could with what you had at the time. You did not have, then, what you have now. You could not have known, then, what you know now. None of that is a failure of yours. It is the honest shape of being a person who is still learning.

What you can do, today, is offer yourself the same understanding you would offer anyone else who had walked through what you walked through. You can say, quietly, that you forgive yourself for being human inside an inhuman situation. You can say that you forgive yourself for the responses your body had when there was no good response available. You can say that you forgive yourself for the pace of your healing, which is not on anyone else's schedule.

This is an ongoing practice, not a one-time decision. You will need to forgive yourself again, for the same things, on different days. That is alright. Forgiveness is a current — not a single act, not a finish line — and you can keep returning to it for as long as you need to.