Navigating Grief: The Path to Forgiveness

summary

In this episode, Susan Andersen discusses the intricate relationship between grief and forgiveness. She shares her personal experiences with guilt and anger following the loss of her son, emphasizing the importance of self-forgiveness and the process of letting go of negative emotions. The conversation explores practical steps to achieve forgiveness, both towards oneself and others, and highlights the value of understanding one's feelings and motives in the journey of healing.

takeaways

• Forgiveness is a deliberate decision to let go of anger.
• Anger is a strong emotion that needs to be resolved.
• Forgiveness is about you, not the other person.
• Holding onto resentment can affect your happiness.
• Letting go of emotions opens space for joy.
• Forgiveness takes time and is a personal process.
• Guilt can have value in the self-forgiveness journey.
• Remember your motives and don't let hindsight cloud your judgment.
• Writing letters can be a powerful way to make amends.
• Actively deciding to forgive yourself is a crucial step.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.382)

Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Hello and welcome back to this episode. Sue Andersen here, welcome. And thank you for joining. Thank you for tuning in. Today's topic is about forgiveness and grief. And I find this topic to be really interesting.

And something that you know, I struggle with and especially after my son died in the early years. It was really I felt really. I felt that it was really hard to forgive myself. You know, I was blaming myself for what happened and it takes a long time. To really process all of this because a lot of its anger. You know, you could be angry at the person who died. You know, maybe they didn't take care of themselves. Maybe in your circumstance, you're angry at what happened in your relationship. Maybe you're angry what happened to your home.

There's anger that comes out and it's a strong emotion. It's a strong emotion and we have to work it out. We have to get it out of our system, so to speak. Let's define forgiveness and then talk about forgiveness in the context of grief.

Susan Andersen (02:41.781)

So forgiveness is about letting go of anger and resentment about something that occurred in the past. So here's a definition that I like from the website Very Well Mind. 

“Forgiveness is often defined as a deliberate decision to let go of feelings of anger, resentment, and retribution towards someone who you believe has wronged you. However, while you may be quite generous in your ability to forgive others, you may be much harder on yourself.”

Susan Andersen (03:22.486)

So think about that for a minute, right? I just mentioned that I was much harder on myself in terms of forgiving myself and I never was angry at my son in this case. So it was really all about forgiving myself in my case.

But you know, forgiveness is really about making yourself better. Forgiveness is about you. It's not really about the other person. And you know this intuitively, I think. know, think about people, and maybe you're one of these people who has held on to resentment and hurt over something that occurred to them in the past.

I've known people like this and they are not really happy. They're not happy people. They've got that anger, they've got that resentment. It's stuck inside of them. And as I've talked about before in this podcast, keeping those emotions inside is really not good for us.

It really is not. We need to release emotion, open up space for the good that will come, for happiness, for joy, for other things in our life. We need to let go of it. So it doesn't affect us physically.

So letting go of those emotions releases you from the past and allows you to build a happy life in the future. So it's all about letting go of what happened in the past, releasing those emotions. In the context of grief,

Susan Andersen (05:28.032)

I like this article. It's a two-part article from the website, What's Your Grief? And I'll post a link in the show notes. https://whatsyourgrief.com/grief-and-forgiveness/ It's about forgiveness of others and forgiving ourselves.

I mentioned earlier that anger is big emotion in grief and it can be directed in many ways. We may feel anger towards the person who died or anger towards another person. So maybe it's a doctor or again even towards ourselves.

A reminder, the important thing here is that anger needs to be resolved. Anger needs to be resolved. We need to release so we can move forward. We need to find ways to resolve it.

Susan Andersen (06:34.889)

So here's the other thing that's important and mentioned in this article from What's Your Grief? Even if you forgive someone, even when you release the anger and you let go of the resentment and the hurt, that does not negate the wrongdoing.

So if someone has wronged you and you have forgiven them, you have released your anger, you've let go of resentment, you were still wronged. You were still wronged. And that is important to note here. We're not getting rid of or brushing under the rug, sweeping under the rug, that wrongdoing. No, that wrongdoing happened and it's still here. Doesn't negate it.

This article also provides a model to use as a guide to reaching forgiveness. And I really encourage you to check it out. And the other thing that's important about this that the authors mention is that forgiveness takes time. Could be years.

Susan Andersen (08:02.417)

Each individual person has to work through this process of exploring what the anger is all about, deciding to forgive, letting it go, and coming to peace. So it's a process, it's a process of exploring what you're angry about. So there's a lot of ruminating there, right? You're thinking about, you know, why are you angry? Who are you directing this anger to? And that exploration is internal. That's not necessarily external. That's not movement or writing or trying to get it out. It's a process. You're processing that. And then there's a decision about forgiving. There's a decision. You decide that you want to forgive and then you let it go and you come to peace. So this is a process to help yourself to process a hurt process a wrongdoing, forgiving and coming to inner peace.

Now the part two of this article from What's Your Grief is about self-forgiveness and they've got 12 tips for self-forgiveness.

So the first one, and this resonated with me right away, is embracing guilt. And here's a passage from that article. “It's important to know that guilt has value and that self-forgiveness does not mean you will no longer feel remorse or guilt. You can forgive yourself releasing the feelings of resentment and negative judgment while still having a healthy level of guilt that stays with you.”

Susan Andersen (10:27.518)

This resonated with me, number one, embrace guilt, because I feel it every day, every day. And not just from or after the death of my son, but other people in my life that died that I feel guilty about something I did or did not do. And, you know, these things just pop in my head. It's not like I'm ruminating about it, I'm thinking about it. They just pop into my head.

What could I have done better for my son? Why didn't I take this particular action for this person? Why did I hesitate? Why did I just wait, procrastinate, and now they're gone and I can't do this thing for them or with them?

Susan Andersen (11:20.743)

The other, another step here is number four. Remember your motives. Remember your motives - hindsight. I'm sitting here now and I'm saying, when Ian was younger, I should have kept him in counseling. Well, guess what? That's hindsight. At the time, I was also grieving because when Ian was young, his dad died. So I was also grieving that death. And I did the best that I could at that time. Remember your motives, so don't let hindsight get in the way.

Don't let hindsight get in the way. 

And how do you hold yourself? Do you hold yourself to a different standard? So number seven of this list. Consider if you are holding yourself to a different standard. When I speak to friends or acquaintances about some of my guilt, they always remind me that this is hindsight, you did the best you could and you're holding yourself to a different standard than what you have shared with me or how you've helped me.

So I might say to one of these people, hey, hey, you did the best you could at that time. You didn't realize what was going on. But I didn't give myself that grace, right? how are you holding yourself to it? What standard are you holding yourself to? You can forgive others, you can let help people forgive themselves but you can't forgive yourself for a similar thing. So we need to remember that we need to we need to think about that.

Susan Andersen (13:52.229)

Another thing here is to make amends. This is number 10. So make amends. Well, if there is a person who died and you cannot actually talk to them and make amends, what can you do? Well, I found what helped me was writing, writing a letter and then maybe burning it or throwing it away, tearing it up. But writing a letter was helpful for me because I couldn't obviously speak to my son or other people and I needed to make amends. I needed to let them see how I felt sorry about this.

Now other people that I feel that I have wronged, I have been able to make amends. And that's been very helpful for me and also for them. Doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to accept. When I, you know, my you know, my realization that I had hurt them. But I can try, I can try.

Susan Andersen (15:27.869)

Here's another one, this is number 11. Actively decide to forgive yourself. This one really speaks to me in terms of a ritual. A ritual to let go. And that's one action. And if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I like doing rituals. I like the action of writing something down and then burning it or throwing it in the water or tearing it up and let it go into the earth that physical act feels very cathartic to me.

And that allows me to forgive myself and remember, I'm still going to, you know, feel some of the guilt. I'm still gonna embrace that guilt because it's gonna pop up every now and then. But I don't have that emotion attached to it because I've let it go. I've let it go. So think about that as an action.

Now if you are listening to this episode during the holiday season, consider giving the gift of forgiveness to yourself. Maybe start the process by reading the two articles that I mentioned and I will post the links in the show notes. Or give yourself permission to sit with your anger and with your other emotions - sit with it, understand why you feel angry and what that anger is. Is it towards yourself? Is it towards someone else? And then gradually make the decision to forgive yourself. Find ways to release anger that you might be feeling. And by reading these articles, you may also begin to recognize where you are in this process of forgiveness.

Susan Andersen (17:59.431)

So I hope you found something helpful in this episode and if you did, we'll share it with other people in your life who need to hear this message. Also, I would appreciate any feedback that you have or posting a review on Apple or Spotify.

Until next time, I wish you a good day and I leave you grace and peace.