How fitting to publish this piece on forgiveness on February 3rd 2011, which is our Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit.

This is a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves.  So needed in the world at this time. It is a time for negotiation.  Don’t try to force issues, because if you do you will ultimately fail.  To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children.   Make it a goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problem that may arise.

The Chinese believe that in the days before the New Year, we clean house, literally and figuratively. We do away with that which no longer serves us, to allow room the new to come in with the advent of the new year.

Ending the old year with forgiveness seems to be exactly what I  and the world need at this time.

What does forgiveness really mean? For most of the world, it means that we’re supposed to excuse another person for harming us. Let them get away with the hurt they’ve caused. No wonder it’s so hard to forgive!

At the same time, according to Caroline Myss in Defy Gravity, not forgiving allows us to feel angry, wallow in self-pity, all with the intention of justifying self-righteous indignation.  This type of indignation gives the person the right to seek recrimination in the name of justice, an eye for an eye, et al.

That is but the ego speaking.

It wants us to believe that, if we forgive, then we are seen as weak.  We place the responsibility outside of us, “What will people think”? That is false  pride speaking; it doesn’t allow us to “turn the other cheek”. To forgive, then, is an anathema. And, unfortunately, our entire justice system is set up to perpetuate the rightness of “getting even”. A telling example of this is in the back logs our courts have due to so many unnecessary lawsuits.

Even though I no longer believe that forgiving is letting someone get away with hurting me, I still find it so difficult to do so.  Why?

Forgiveness is major soul work, where one must really dig  deep into the core for this one. One must let go of “being right”, must let go of hubris, false pride, must be humbled and “turn the other cheek”.

Yet. knowing I need to forgive my mother, I am at a loss to know what I need to do to carry out this task. Still disoriented from issues popping up so fast, especially this one of such long-standing,  I decide to go about mundane activities and leave the rest to Spirit. “God”. I pray, “I want to forgive my mother, not for her but for me, and I don’t know where to go with this. So, I leave it in your hands. Please help me”.

After returning from the public internet shop and eating lunch, I am still restless. Turning on the computer in the room, I spot a folder on Caroline Myss.  I randomly click onto her Defy Gravity CD that talks about forgiveness.

I know this is the answer to my prayers.

Caroline is giving her own personal example of a time she finds it really difficult to forgive a person. So much so, she prays for God to set up a situation wherein she is “forced” to forgive him. She knows that this is for her release, not his. Shortly after that, she gets upset about something a company does with her work. She calls them up and gets on her high horse. Who should come on the line but the man she has so much trouble forgiving, and he makes a comment about how she just can’t let some things go.

This is the answer to her prayers! Realizing this, she excuses herself a moment to reflect on the awe of God’s response. She gets back on the phone, and because her forgiveness is not instantaneous, she admits that she cannot forgive him and asks that he help her through this, not for him, but for her. They speak at length, and she finally hears his version of what happened between them. It is only then that she is able to forgive him.

Her point in sharing this is: you can’t forgive someone unless you put yourselves in his/her shoes. You must be willing to listen to someone else’s point of view other than your own. You must be willing to admit that you may not be “right”. Even before Caroline finishes speaking, I am already crying. My mother’s spirit appears and, just like my father when he came after Christmas, she speaks to me in the language of my childhood, Cantonese.

Once again I am transported back in time, even while my mind is noticing how fluently the words flow in a language that I don’t often speak anymore:

I love you best, you are my darling girl, always trying to help me. You are my firstborn I carried to term. You gave me the joy of being a mother.

I grew up a very sickly child, and your grandmother spoiled me. I couldn’t go out to play with the other children, so I was always at her side. She protected me, loved me above all others, because she didn’t’ want me to die. She pampered me, as both she and your father did when we married. I knew no other way.

Until we were forced to stay in America, and I had to do something. Your father was devastated. He not only lost his entire fortune, also his family and the high status in which he was regarded. He never recovered, and the only way I knew to feed us was to do what all Chinese girls are taught – be a good wife and good mother.

The good wife had to come first. I believed, right or wrong, that if  I acted like his employee and not his partner, he would be able to “save face”. He would not lose all pride, which was the only thing he had left. Perhaps not consciously then, I fed his fantasies so that we would survive. If anything were to happen to him, I would not have had the skills to continue. I must also admit that I too wanted to still see him as the brilliant man I married, and not the shell he had become. Forgive me because this took all my time and energy away from you.

It was not that I didn’t love you, it was because I loved you that I did this. And, perhaps it is what I wanted to see, but you were always so independent, I didn’t think you needed me as much. Only now do I see that you were only trying to make things easier for me. You were always such a perceptive child, knowing things beyond your young years.

I did what I knew how to do, willing to take the lowest pay during the bankruptcy, so that we could eat and so that, whatever money you made, would go towards your college. I hurt when you had to help feed us. I never wanted you to have a life of want, to replay the patterns of poverty and scarcity that you have lived with, on and off, during and since your marriage and divorce. That’s why I went out to work, even when my body betrayed me. I was willing to go out to do the work your father was too proud to do.

When I got older and your father passed away, I was scared and lonely. Never before had I been alone in life, until the age of 81. That is why I hung onto him even when I knew he was not himself. I had spent so many years taking care of him, I didn’t know what else I would do when he left. Make no mistake, he was the love of my life and I treasured him above all men. I could never have let him down.

When he died and we reconciled, I wanted so much for you to take care of me. I had reverted back to the beliefs of our culture. that the young take care of the old. Not understanding, neither gave to the other. The day you came to tell me you were moving to Hawaii, I knew I had lost you, just like I knew that when I left China, I would never see my mother again. And, when I realized that I would not see you before I died, I had no other reason to live.

I know you regret not taking care of me or seeing me before I died, and I forgive you. Please forgive me and yourself, so that you can move on with your life. My heart cried out for you as I saw your long grief and suicidal thoughts when I died.

As a mother, I know you now know how it feels to love your children no matter how angry they are at you. And, how much that breaks your heart. I stayed in bed for 9 months so that I could bring you into this world. And, when we had no money, I put on a back brace so that I could work to feed you.

How could I not love you?

Tears gush down my face like a waterfall, soft mewing sounds mixed with loud wails come from a well deep inside me. I feel like a little child again as I hear these words spoken in my mother’s tone. Gasping deep breaths between fresh tears, I hear her broken sobbing voice telling me how she has sacrificed for me, all because she loves me. I cry a daughter’s tears as I finally open to hearing her side of the story. I cry a mother’s tears as well, for I have my own grown children who have been so angry at me these past years. I feel her sorrow, her suffering and her pain as I realize how great her love, a mother’s love, is for her children. And, I feel her hurt anew, as I feel my own.

We are forever linked across generations in this eternal dance of mother-daughter, daughter-mother, mother-daughter. I am gently held in God’s arms, as I feel all the anger, resentment, hurt, and pain leave with every breath I take. In its place comes a sense of timeless awe. And, I am humbled as I join this universal spiral that all women walk before me and that all women will walk after me.

I am moved beyond words, although my mind feels like mush. I can’t form a single rational thought in my head. It simply cannot take in all that is happening so quickly. Yet, my soul soars, already feeling the love that is flowing out and back to me. I am free. I am healed.

THIS IS FORGIVENESS!