Why forgiving the enemy was never going to heal me..

How did I learn to forgive after I was raped by a man who showed no remorse?

And why was it so important that I didn’t forgive him?

I felt jaded, I was angry, it was a random act of violence. Brutally raped.

My world had been forcibly changed, I tried meditation, yoga, I walked, I gardened, I took a six month sabbatical from life. I had no idea who I was, how I was going to mother my son, be a friend, live again. It took all of my energy to just survive.

For a very long time I felt like I couldn’t survive.

I turned to alternate healing modalities and I booked myself in to a Buddhist retreat, I was a passive aggressive angry ball of energy, I really believed that doing a silent retreat at a Buddhist temple was going to fix me, what I didn’t see coming was that the experience was very different to how I imagined.

Flashback to the moment where I stood arguing with a monk about forgiveness, a silent retreat, a Buddhist temple, right after another student had declared that she was indeed enlightened, I argued with a monk.

I was drowning in my own ugliness of this very moment.

This priest was a beautiful monk, she had lived her whole adult life in a temple, she was teaching forgiveness… at this point, I knew I had to forgive the man who had assaulted me, and I intrinsically knew it would release me from the torture, pain, suffering, anger and fear that I was living with. What I didn’t understand, and no one could really explain to me, was why? Why do I have to forgive the man who hurt me? How was that going to heal me?

Why would forgiving him bring me peace?

What I learnt was that when I left the meditation room, silently berating myself, feeling like I was a failure, tears rolling down my face. A soft, hesitant knock on my door, found two people from the retreat, holding a note for me, and indicating that they would like to hug me.

Inside the note was an explanation, It read “we see your pain, you are looking for answers in the wrong places. This monk has not experienced your extent of pain and the life you have had. Her advice comes from a place of education. Reach out and read books on forgiveness and most of all forgive yourself. You are loved”

Forgive myself? For what? and as I stood there in the doorway waiting for my rage to engulf me, what i noticed instead was an outpouring of grief that came tumbling out of my eyes and rolling down my face, and for the first time in months a slight pause in the feeling of relentless fear as I felt that I had just discovered a piece of gold.

I didn’t have to forgive him.

I had to forgive myself.

For every book and every religious belief that I had read none of it had internalised forgiveness – it was all about an external act. The Oxford dictionary meaning of forgive is to “Stop feeling angry or resentful towards (someone) for an offence, flaw, or mistake” I didnt need to educate myself, i needed to forgive myself.

The abuse that was done to me –it was premeditated, I didn’t do anything wrong, I was not wearing inappropriate clothes (like that should even matter), I didn’t have too much to drink, I can justify it all and tell myself all the beautiful stories in the world. What mattered was on that night my inner voice was telling me not to go out, I went out and I didn’t listen, I prioritised the voice of friends over my own inner voice.

I betrayed myself, my own intuition out of a need to please others..

He may have done a terrible thing, he violently abused my body that to this day still has left its battle scars, but worse than all of that was that I betrayed myself…

The change within me from this horrific incident was enormous. I learnt that I needed to forgive myself, and that wasn’t easy. I learnt to forgive myself for not listening to what I needed and wanted that night.

I learnt to listen to my intuition and my softer inner voice.

I forgave myself for being out that night when I didn’t want to. My forgiveness to myself was a beautiful ritual, a deep promise to myself, a heartfelt apology. I grieved, I noticed and paid attention to what happened inside of my body. As I accepted my own apology, and the oceans of tears flowed – the most extraordinary healing happened … I felt peace and calm, and I left like me.

And since that moment I have created a life I adore. I say no, I listen. I pay attention to those silent whispers and every day I thank the universe for my own sweet soul that is driving my life and the lessons in the power of forgiveness.

I am thriving, not surviving.

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