What I Know of Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Within with my loving-kindness work, I have and continue to endeavor to understand the notion of forgiveness. As a child I learned “forgive and forget” and it was easy enough to say the words of forgiveness, but I could never let go of the hurt in my heart. I felt that I failed in being a good person. I was also taught to “turn the other cheek.” I tried to live by those principles, but found myself taken advantage of, over and over. My heart was bruised and untrusting.

Years ago, I went to a workshop where I brought up how I felt foolish for letting people hurt me over and over again, citing the forgive and forget motto. My teacher looked at me, confused, and said, “Why would you forget? You don’t forget. You’d be foolish to forget.” It was a life altering moment for me. No one had ever said that to me before.

This post is not the answer to forgiveness as if there is only one answer, only one way, only one path. There are many paths and many ways and not all of them will work for you. This is the one that is working for me. This is my path to forgiveness. I share it in case any of my words can be of help to anyone else, in the way that it was to me.

I had it all wrong, thinking we were meant to “forgive and forget.” We are made to forgive, because people make mistakes, because we make mistakes. We are not meant to forget, or else how will we hold the person accountable when they repeat their hurtful behaviors?

I repeat, if we forget, how will we hold the person accountable if they repeat their hurtful behaviors? That makes sense. Then why forgive?

We don’t forgive someone because we’ve been taught it’s the right thing to do. We don’t forgive someone because other people are pressuring us to. An empty gesture is an empty gesture.

When we forgive someone, it is not about them. It is about us. We forgive them because we are ready to let go of the hurt in us. We forgive when our hearts need us to, when the hurt we hold onto hurts us. It doesn’t excuse the other person for their behavior. We don’t even have to tell them we’ve forgiven them. Because it’s about us.

If we wait for an apology before we release that pain, we anchor ourselves in it. What if the other party is never ready to apologize?

Apologies

For me, apologies are not about solidifying who is right or who is wrong. At least, they shouldn’t be. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I am a huge fan of agreeing to disagree.

So if it’s not about someone being right, what is it about? Needing an apology is about needing the other person to acknowledge that they hurt you. Delivering an apology is about acknowledging that, whether intended or not, something you said or did hurt someone you care about.

If I offer an apology, I mean that I genuinely feel bad that I hurt someone and I acknowledge that the behavior was not appropriate for my relationship with that person, and I make a promise not to repeat it. At the same time I ask the other person to hold me responsible in case I do by pointing it out to me when I do it. Re-patterning doesn’t happen overnight.

When someone apologizes to me, I make sure I explain to them what it means to me. I offer them time to think about it and come back to me. I have learned my own worth and no longer say “It’s all right,” in an effort to make the person who hurt me feel better. The apology isn’t enough. Their actions afterwards matter more than their words.

Moving Forward

The last time I had to confront someone about how they hurt me (again), he offhandedly apologized so that we could “move on”… I told him that if he apologized to me, it was an agreement that he would never treat me that way again, that by apologizing he was acknowledging that his behavior was bad for our relationship.

I threw him off by not just saying “It’s all right,” like I had every other time. But it offered us a real moment of connection. I don’t know if he’ll follow through on his end and I have no control over that. But I feel like, for the first time, I have laid the groundwork for not accepting that behavior from him again.

Forgiveness will happen when I am ready to give it. I have forgiven the dead for hurts done to me, without regretting that they were not still alive to hear it. I have also made apologies to the dead, without condemning myself for not being able to put it into words sooner.

I have forgiven people I hope to never see again, because the trust they broke can never be repaired. And yet, for the actions they took, I have found a way to forgive them for the pain they caused, in order to free myself from the feeling of being victim, to take any power they held over me back for myself. No amount of hate can undo the past, but I do not have to live in it.

If you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you have to trust them again. And just because someone apologizes, it doesn’t mean you have to forgive them. If you are still sitting in your hurt and your heart has not softened towards them, it’s not time yet. Forgiveness will happen when you are ready to give it. Just remember that our hearts are not meant to stay hard forever. 

To Honor the Recent Dead

When working with spirits, I don’t call upon those who are recently deceased. It feels cruel to call upon a soul that may be struggling to let go of it’s human skin. Or maybe it’s cruel to the human grieving. Maybe the more that time passes, the less human their spirits seem to us, and the easier we can open to them. Whichever side of the living or dead needs the time to heal, I don’t call upon or attempt to work with a spirit who has been dead for less than a year. In fact, with spirits who died unwell, I may wait many years before trying.

I keep that in mind in my daily practice, and again at Samhain and Halloween, when the everyday spirits who walk among us are more easily perceived. I make myself still my grief’s desire to call to those who have not been dead long. In my work, I refer to the spirits who die, from Samhain to Samhain, as the Recent Dead. This is the time when I call on my ancestors and ask them to help welcome and shepherd over the Recent Dead, specifically those spirits who might not yet have realized it is time to cross over.

I light my ancestor altar and call my ancestors, the lines of Eaton, Riddle, Ruston, and Art. I call out the names of some of the ancestors I have found on my family tree, calling in the ageless time that is the ancestral pool: Sibilia de Lea, Sir Henry Norreys, Captain Roger Clapp, Waitstill Wyatt, Heman Sears, Hattie Eva Dutcher; Gwethlin Wensliana, Robert Moulton, Rev. William Gylette, Freeborn Wolfe, Isaac-Etienne Paquet de Lavallee, Annatje Goedemoet, Thomas Ridel, Rosella LaRoche; Barnardus Jacobus Turner, Dafydd Riggs, Hester Mathieu, Albrecht Zabriskie, Emma Angeline Whitcher, Hiram King Wicker; Mary Dowd, John F. Pils, Katherine Maria Schmeelk, Margaret Loretta Burke.

I am because you were.

I call the names of my Beloved Dead, of those known in this lifetime, known and loved by me. They are the names of those I think of often and fondly, and though I miss them, I celebrate their memory in the act of reciting their names: Ruth Ruston Eaton, Harold Riddle, Mark Dutcher Eaton, Melinda Tanner, Elizabeth Fricke, Jeff Patterson, Willie Lingenfelter, Elsie Durant Riddle, Gabe Reynolds, Joel Pelletier, Victoria Eaton, Edward J. Jerge, II, Trent Illig, Donna Riddle, Jurgen Banse-Fey, Charles “Sienna Fox” Duvall, Jack Singer, Tommy Amyotte, Paul Seeloff, Richard James Riddle, Brett Elsess, Andrew Begley, Susan Alvarez-Hughes, Coswald Mauri, Norm Herbert, Jad Alexander, Dr. August Staub, Princess Leather Falcor, Martha Dayton, Melvin Chausse, John Croom, Karl Weber, Luna Jackalope, Thomas E. Malinowski, Albert Gritzmacher III, Luna the wolfe, Joshua Verity, Freya Moon Greenleaf.

            I am the better for having known you.

I pour water into a glass, offering a libation to my honored guests. I ask them to watch over and welcome our friends and loved ones who have died in this last year, and then I speak the names of the Recent Dead, known to me and my loved ones, lighting a candle for each person:

John M. Rosenburg, Jr.

Gary French

Patches

Joshua Fingerhut

Barbara Jean Schiffert

Bella, our beloved bear-cat

Russell Whitmire

Ken Koch

Soja Arumpanayil
Meow

After the candles are lit, I sing, because it makes me happy. I sing and I think about all of the warm, joyful memories I have with each of those I lit a candle for. I think about how much they meant to me, and my journey, and I let my heart fill. My heart becomes the focal point for the energy I radiate into the universe. Even in my grief, what I send out is love.

Afterwards, I thank the Ancestors with a Dumb Supper, a Feast for the Dead. We dine in mirror to what the spirits remember, from dessert to appetizer, offering them the first and best of each dish, our honored guests. What is left from the feast is offered to the animals of the natural world, as an offering to the living from the dead.

I owe my breath to all those who came before me. Good or bad, they are branches of living energy that feed down into me. I am because they were. My nieces and nephew are because they were. I honor and I remember.

What is remembered lives. What is remembered never truly dies.

Miss you and love you, Bella Bella.

Experiencing Death VIII: Choosing the Moment

We have an ornament that we hang on our colorfully-decorated tree, in memory of our cat Luna. This is our third holiday season without her. The ornament is a little cream-colored cat with wings and dangling legs. At this time of year, I still find myself looking for her sleeping form beneath the tree. But already the grief has ebbed to longing. That ornament reminds me of the joy Luna brought to our house and that’s what I remember.

The night before she died it was obvious that she wasn’t all right. We had kept an eye on her all day and besides seeming overly tired, the main concern was that she seemed to have difficulty breathing. When I got ready for bed, she was on the couch and she barely responded to me, which was abnormal. Every night before, she would follow me in, and climb on top of me. That particular night she didn’t even twitch as I passed. I didn’t even hesitate. Moved by something greater than me, I lifted her gently and eased her into my lap, noting her whimper when I lifted her. No, she was not all right, and though we would try to convince ourselves she would be okay, I think in that moment, I knew something I couldn’t put words to. I knew our time was precious.

I didn’t sleep. I didn’t even nod off for a second. The spirit world was so ripe to me it was viscous and I was scared to leave Luna unattended. I remember every minute, every labored breath in, every whimpering exhalation and every second-too-long between them, when my heart caught in my throat. I remember the hot heat that emanated from her, like the last coal burning out in the fireplace. The entire night she never tried to move from where I had propped her on my lap. She never shifted her position, and neither did I. Not even for a moment.

I could feel how important each second was, in a bordering-on-obsession way. But as a highly-sensitive person, I have always stopped my world for these moments- the ones I know we can’t do over. Only that night could I feel the full force of how much weight she had so recently lost. I was still awake when my partner woke for work and we agreed we should take Luna to the vet as soon as we could. I fed her a bit of water with a pipette which she seemed thirsty for but soon wouldn’t take more of. I tried to offer her some wet food and she wanted it, crying at me, but she seemed to know better than to eat it. We took her to the walk-in vet.

We weren’t prepared to be forced with a final decision less than three hours later. I wasn’t prepared for the answer to my question of “How long before she’s in pain and it’s too cruel to wait?” to be “Oh, honey.” She only had hours left and her pain wasn’t going to stop.

In that moment, there is no decision to be made. It won’t stop you from second guessing later on, but in the moment it is the only choice available- end the pain. Luna seemed far readier than we were, perched like a rabbit on the floor of the exam room, content and unafraid (totally unusual for her) while we waited for lab results. But after forcing an x-ray on her next, she couldn’t breathe and was in apparent agony.

The reality still stands that we chose for her to be ready to die. And that is not an easy thing to swallow. We women, who can gift life into the world whether we choose to or not, we women who bleed every month for that right and that chance, we women are capable of gifting that kind of mercy death and carrying the burden of that choice. I cannot speak for men because I am not one, and I do not know where the strength for such mercy comes from in them.

I held Luna’s face in my hands and I didn’t look away from her eyes. I told her what a good girl she was and how much we loved her. She was the best girl ever. When the poison was injected, her eyes widened with… fear, pain, fire? Who knows. She had lost so much weight that it barely took a second. I barely had time to breathe in. And then she went limp. Her eyes dulled with the sparkle life gives them. She was gone.

I don’t care what anyone thinks. I ripped her out of the plastic bag they put her in and carried her home in her blanket, the weight of her suddenly so heavy in my arms. She was lighter than a feather in life and heavy as bricks in death. Is it our soul, our spirit that lightens our time upon the earth?

I would not take back sharing her death with her, even though the memory of it causes me pain. It was pain she experienced so that she could finally be at peace and I believe it was important that I share in that truth. In our society, we have trouble letting go, and as long as that is an issue we face, our cultural relationship with death will not change.

I think that one of the hardest life lessons we can make is that sometimes, we have to tell death it’s okay. No one should have to live in pain that’s caused by their body either slowly or quickly shutting down in a way that makes it impossible for them to have any quality of life- unless they want to and choose to ride it out. I could have made the choice to watch Luna slowly die in agony, unable to drink or eat, because I wasn’t ready. That would have been horrifically unfair.

It’s something I think about, watching people with terminal illness in the news, trying to fight for the right to choose their own moment of death, rather than spend their last days unconscious on medication because otherwise they could not tolerate the pain. We are so willing to put down our four-legged friends because it’s the humane thing to do, whether they can consent or not, but we don’t give consenting adults who have been given a death sentence the right to die in peace.

I can’t imagine it would be easy to accept that choice from a loved one. But I think I could come to terms with respecting it. Personally, it still doesn’t feel easy to say, “I opened the door for death to enter.” I still miss Luna terribly, but even looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Relevant Posts:

The Beginning I Saw in the End (published March 23, 2011)

Eulogy I Wish I’d Given (published March 14, 2012)

Experiencing Death: The Unborn Baby (published May 16, 2012)

Experiencing Death II: My Father’s Father (published June 13, 2012)

Experiencing Death III: Squirrel in the Road (published July 11, 2012)

Experiencing Death IV: The Body at Daggett Lake (published August 15, 2012)

Experiencing Death V: Suicide (published September 9, 2012)

Experiencing Death VI: Alone with the Dead (published October 17, 2012)

Experiencing Death VII: There in the Room (published November 14, 2012)

Answering for Our Ancestors

What happens when you discover an unsavory character attached to your family tree? It’s a topic that comes up during discussions about ancestor work, as if that discovery re-colors the shade of who you are. It doesn’t. Who you are hasn’t changed. What it does do, is add depth and dimension to your family history, of who your people were, and how they evolved over generations. How would we see the light without the darkness, too?

The reality is that many of us, were we able to trace our family lines fully enough, would find ancestors who fought against native peoples, owned slaves, fought against the suffragette movement, treated their wives and children like possessions, signed documents telling the local Jewish communities to move on, spent time in prison, etc. Serial killers have families, too. Everyone’s family history is riddled with ne’er-do-wells, because once upon a time, those things were the way people were in the world. They were accepted and normative of society. Slavery existed long before people started using other cultures instead of the weak and poor of their own. It doesn’t mean it is okay. But the fact that we believe slavery to be rightfully wrong now, doesn’t re-write how it was or what happened. I would love to believe that my family members have always been righteous, good people, who weren’t afraid to buck a bad system, but it’s just not true.

I expect to find some black sheep, and there probably are more than a few among the names I know already, but census reports and land deeds don’t tell you about the quality of a man. I know that if I were to discover, for example, that one of my wayward ancestors was a soldier who carried out the massacre at Wounded Knee, I would be heartbroken. I would feel as if some of that wrongness was part of me, in me.

That’s what makes free will so important. Our days are filled with choices and actions we take that could lead us along the light path or stray us towards the dark side of being human. Sometimes people fail and their presence in our family tree serves to remind us of that truth- sometimes people fall. And they encourage us to be the best version of ourselves we can be, now and here.

That’s the line of thinking that shapes my ancestor work. I believe that the early colonial settlers were wrong to come over, treat an indigenous culture like they were inferior, and take their land. Simply because my pilgrim ancestors believed they were appointed by God to be here, an entire indigenous population was almost exterminated. In this era, I would never agree with something like that. So what I take away from that chapter of my family history is that I shouldn’t treat other people like they’re beneath me or inferior to me just because they’re different. And I shouldn’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me just because I want it.

I honor those ancestors who came before me. But how do we accept these blemishes from the past and move forward?

I would hope that in this day, we would all agree that slavery is bad. The first slaves white men used were other white men who were poorer than them. And then when they started travelling and discovered white men who looked different from them, they became preferred resources for slaves. And then they found men with other skin colors and they became a preferred resource. And so on. Our ancestors used to treat people as less than them, just because their skin color or belief systems were different. That’s a very simplistic view of all of that history, but if we can look back on it and see those actions as faulty, as a wrongness that shaped Western thinking, we need to bring more tolerance and understanding to our cohabitation on this planet. That’s something we can do as individuals and as a people.

I don’t believe that we, personally, should take on guilt for the choices our individual ancestors made. That would be an exhaustive wave of guilt that would drown most of us out of living our own lives. We’re supposed to be living to make this world a better place. So if you have an ancestor who did a deed so horrible that it makes you feel ill inside, do something for yourself to find closure with that act if that’s what you need.

No one wants to know the blood of a murderer flows in them. Maybe the knowing suddenly feels like a curse. If it does, do something in your life for the world that feels like an appropriate counter-curse. Think about it like relieving that specific spirit of their burdens- whether that ancestor felt guilt over their own actions or not. Break the blood spell and put that family baggage to rest. Do something to better the planet as a means of learning from the mistakes of those who came before you.

The Bigger Picture

We can look at history and see patterns of behavior repeating over and over again, with different groups of people on the receiving end of discrimination and oppression, and in some cases murder and genocide: anyone who wasn’t Roman, Jews, Native Americans, Africans, Japanese-Americans, Jews again, Women, African-Americans, Interracial children, Homosexuals, etc. We slowly move through the pattern of understanding that our way of thinking is wrong. Slowly. I believe that by now we should be much more tolerant of the fact that we all share this world together and trying to force anyone to believe exactly what we believe is futile. Why do we need others to believe what we believe in order to believe it ourselves? We have to stop using what is different than us to define who we are not. Learn who you are, instead.

            I can also apply this pattern-weaving to my own family tree, watching the generations follow their forefathers and then suddenly make a change, move a great distance, switch vocations completely, or something that alters the static course of my bloodline. I am Sarah, born of English Kings and Knights, born of Norman Invaders and Viking warriors, whose own lines faded into merchants and tailors, woolcombers and carpenters, who merged with Irish farmers and Polish woodsmen to break ground in a new world. I am Sarah, born of English Kings, born of indigenous men living in caves in France, whose lines blended with the English and Dutch as refugees fled France, whose lines faded in the growth of a Canadian country and merged with indigenous blood, whose lines later merged with German and Irish immigrants, canal workers and day laborers, breaking their bones to build a new world. All of them, trickling down through the years, leading me here, in this space and time, sharing my work.

May we break the cycles of dis-ease with our fellow men, and find a way to peace and tolerance, that we may all work together to heal the earth that provides for us, without which our lives would fade into nothing more than memory.

Mythological Deities as Doorways



Tlazolteotl, by Susan Seddon Boulet



Like many children, I learned life lessons from the storybook fairy tales I read. When venturing into an unknown wood, leave a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way back out. When strangers stop you on your journey, don’t tell them intimate details of your life, like where your Grandma lives. Don’t break into other people’s houses and take what isn’t yours, even if it is ‘just right’. Don’t give up who you are for a man, because trading your fins in for feet won’t make him love you. Beware your desperation in the solitude of night and what you call to your aid to save you. It would be better to learn to live with darkness and fend it off for yourself, for the small man will save you, but he will come later asking a cost you cannot yet comprehend. And still, in his lesson, we learn that the power of naming a fear can and will illuminate where you stand in that dark.

            For me, it wasn’t much of a stretch to look at the stories of mythological deities for lessons of a spiritual nature to aid in my personal growth. Now, I don’t believe that deities personified in cultural myths and religions were once living beings that walked the earth. Before the Romans came to Celtic lands, the indigenous people did not personify their deities. Danu was not a woman but the mighty river of the same name. The river was deified, for the people lived at its mercy. More than that, they could feel the energy and spirit of the river and honored it in the form it took. It intimates to me that they lived alongside the natural world around them, without putting themselves above it. When the Romans came to their lands, they were the ones who decided the Celtic gods should have human faces.

I see the compendium of deities as a multitude of archetypes that define specific energies. Through all cultures there are gods and goddesses of love, wisdom, fertility, healing, death, war, arts, etc. Each individual deity represents an aspect, a lesson, of how we define our humanity as it relates to divinity, from within the context of a specific culture, largely determined by its geography. To me, all of the female deities are facets of the core group of feminine energy, which is just half of the core of divinity, made up of both gendered energies. And this core is just a pebble in the energy well of all living things.

In opening doors towards my ancestors, I used the tools of mythological archetypes to reach a deeper understanding. There are lessons to be learned in the attributes that our forefathers gave to their deities and the associations they ascribe them with. It’s a way of fleshing out the emotional connections they had to their spirituality. In opening myself to the energy of the natural world, and seeking guidance from it, sometimes that energy finds me, shows me a path to take.

Two years into my pagan practice, at Equinox, I jumped into a dance around the fire, letting the drums speak to my bones. My body felt not entirely my own and there was a freeness to it. Instead of resisting, I opened. And as I fell into the dance, the smell of the autumn air grew thick and heavy with strange perfume. It was a jungle heat, wet and dark. I was flooded with emotions and images, flowers and birds, with songs and visual colors and I felt like someone has stretched a layer of soft light cotton over me and I relaxed deeper into the moment, letting the dancer do the dance.

I looked up at the others dancing around the fire and I knew their faces, but over each of them I saw shapes and images of other beings, dancing in tandem. Some had swords flashing, arms akimbo, masked faces, and some were crushing sea shells underfoot. I knew we were in a moment of ecstatic grace, touching that primal energy and being gifted with a direction. I later wrote down everything I experienced and researched goddesses, narrowing the list with the sensory experiences and visuals I had to South America, and out of my element, as far as pantheons I was familiar with. And then I found her, Tlazolteotl, an Aztec Goddess of Sex and Excrement.

            I believe my initial response was, “What?” It was a pantheon with such bloody connotations and I was seeking to heal the anger inside me, not give it purchase. But I kept researching. She was all things. Prostitutes given to the soldiers during training were dedicated to her (and later sacrificed for being tainted). She ruled the ninth calendar month and a festival of brooms was performed in her honor, where the city itself was ritually swept and cleansed. Once a year, men could visit her priests and be cleansed of their sins. She was the great cleanser… something else I was seeking.

I knew it was important when, in my research, I came to know that Tlazolteotl had been with me the whole time, waiting for me to stumble into her path. Fifteen years ago, I bought a print of the artist Susan Seddon Boulet at a yard sale. I wasn’t familiar with the piece but was beautiful, and I was happy to have one of hers. An image search I ran brought up a copy of that print. It was Boulet’s depiction of Tlazolteotl and the picture was hanging in my living room.

She is a balancer. You cannot enjoy the sensual pleasures of love and sex if you cannot also accept the releasing of the toxins in your body through defecation. Her medicine, her lessons are about seeing with both eyes clearly. It’s about accepting someone’s flaws as part of the whole of the person that you love. And it’s about forgiveness, but forgiveness of self. Why Aztec? Why this legendary bloody pantheon? I think the primal nature of the culture, that base energy of survival, is what I needed to realign myself with my intuitive body… the very basic questions of was magic real and was I capable of touching it? And through my meditations on taking the pain with the pleasure and the dark with the light, I found my answer was yes.

More personally than that, my work with Tlazolteotl taught me that it’s all right to love something and want something, even though the act was once tainted through violence. She teaches me constantly that more than one thing can be true and that if I believe that, I cannot hold my truth as more important than another. These lessons transformed me, and transform me still.

I have used other deities’ stories for personal growth and transformation and my inner amateur anthropologist is always eager to understand what lessons the deities held for the cultures that revered them. I also endeavor to study deities of death and dying, of gateways and crossroads, as a means of understanding the way my ancestors related to the idea of an afterlife, as a way of constantly reassessing my own beliefs.

Experiencing Death V: Suicide

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. In this time when our society is still laden with bullying and inequality, it’s important for us all to recognize that for some people, this door may feel like the only help left to them. I don’t say that lightly. Suicide is a choice that has touched the lives of most of the people I know. It’s a choice we don’t talk about. It darkens our days and we hold it at bay, unwilling to face the truth of a decision our loved ones made.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is a wonderful organization that attempts to aid those left behind in the wake of such a misunderstood choice. Choice… decision… action… it feels hard to pick the right word on this subject. Bear with me while I navigate through this. In my own life I have lost nine friends to suicide. That’s nine family, friends, and classmates over the course of twenty years who have chosen to take their own lives. Three more who have passed from shady drug overdoses that may or may not have been purposeful, but that answer was lost with them. Some days, that is too many for my heart to bear.        

I have tried to write different posts on this topic but it is such a dangerous one. I cannot speak specifically to any suicide that has touched me, for the others who have been left behind still feel those wounds deeply and I would not cause them more pain. The things we cannot face become sharp instruments that wound us in their memory. And to those of you who understand that sentiment, I say from my own experience, face the memory and see its truth. Once through the pain, there will be peace.

The first suicide I faced was when I was 14. One of the reasons I exited the institution of the Catholic Church was because the priest could give me no comfort. I was trying to understand the mindset of my friend, who sought me out after months of no communication just before he took his life. I didn’t understand and I blamed myself. What I thought was him reaching out to me was him putting affairs in order. Not that either of us could have known that at that age. But the priest gave a young girl who needed guidance dogma, and buried the hilt deeper into my chest.

There is always anger with suicides. There should be. But for me, under the mountain of loss, I come back to compassion. Anyone who has known their own darkness, anyone who has stood at the edge of such madness and felt the desire, even for a moment, to drop over the edge, must be the shepherds of compassion in the wake of suicide. For we have all been there. But those who take action are those who fell over the edge of madness into despair.

On the other side of that line, what we see as rational is colored differently and changes shape. I believe that some suicide is chosen out of a wish for peace, for quiet, for relief. I don’t believe suicide is about anyone but the person who takes that road. It’s not done to hurt anyone left behind. At the point of falling over the edge, it’s not about anyone else. I imagine it’s like tunnel vision. The people I have been close to who took their lives were all in a spiral of chaos beforehand. Even if we couldn’t see it until afterwards.

I believe that if they thought of us at all, that they believed they were doing us a favor by removing their chaos from our lives, so that it wouldn’t touch us anymore. But more importantly, I think to their sickened minds, it was the only door left to them that promised a measure of peace. It’s what I hold onto at night, when the darkness comes. In the silence of the night I wish them peace.

There is no way to ever prepare yourself for the loss of a loved one to suicide. I think the best thing you could do is accept that there wasn’t anything you could have done. Don’t torture yourself with what you could have/should have done, for we can never go back in time and change what has occurred. Honor their memory and their struggle against their darkness. Love them. Move forward in your own life and live. Each breath you take is for them. Each joy you feel is in their honor.

According to the AFSP website’s recent statistics, a suicide occurs in the U.S. every 14.2 seconds and almost a million people attempt suicide every year. Men commit suicide four times more than women, yet women will attempt suicide three times more than men. They occur most often in adults between the ages of 40 and 59.

Reasons for suicide can include a known psychiatric disorder (depressive disorders, schizophrenia, alcohol or drug abuse, post traumatic stress disorder, and personality disorders), a past history of attempts, a family history of suicide, and individuals with impulsive behaviors. There can also be a state of suicide crisis, where there is a precipitating event, like some kind of severe loss, whether personal or financial. There can be a sudden and abrupt change in behavior including things the person says, actions, and the loss of their ability to function.

Warning signs include consistent low moods, pessimism, hopelessness, desperation, anxiety, psychic pain, withdrawal, sleep problems, increased alcohol and drug use, a rise in unnecessary risk taking, wishing to die, giving away prized possessions, and unexpected rage or anger. According to their website, the AFSP says that most suicidal people have some form of depression, which can be described as severe and consistent sadness. It can also be described as a withdrawal from things that once brought the person joy.

While one statistic said that a majority of people who commit suicide have a diagnosable psychiatric condition when they take their life (of which depression is included), another statistic says that most people being treated for a diagnosed mental illness do not die in suicide, insinuating that with proper care and treatment the suicidal thoughts will go away.

If you believe a loved one is in danger, get help. Talk to them if you feel you can. Give them examples of behaviors that are concerning you. Let them be honest and don’t judge where they are emotionally. Try to avoid cliché statements like “You have so much to live for” or “Think of what that would do to the people who love you.” Anyone in crisis is in a fragile place and adding guilt and pressure to them could just make them shut down.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, tell someone. I would encourage you to be honest about where you are. Don’t be afraid. If those thoughts persist, get help. You are not alone.

·         If you or someone you love is in an immediate and dangerous crisis of taking their life, call 911.

·         If you or someone you love is having serious suicidal thoughts but is not in immediate jeopardy, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). It is available 24 hours a day, toll free and confidential.

·         Specifically for the LGBTQ community, call the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386 to speak with a trained counselor. The line is open 24/7. All calls are confidential and toll free.

To those of my heart who are no longer with me because you took a door that only you could see, I may not understand, and I accept that I may never know why. My anger does not diminish the joy you gave me or the love we shared. I remember the good times and the laughter and the beauty in you that you might have seen if things had been different. I call on that light to outshine the unknown that clouded your mind and as I step into the world, I carry you with me, always.

May it be so.

Relevant Posts:

Experiencing Death: The Unborn Baby (published May 16, 2012)

Experiencing Death II: My Father’s Father (published June 13, 2012)

Experiencing Death III: Squirrel in the Road (published July 11, 2012)

Experiencing Death IV: The Body at Daggett Lake (published August 15, 2012)

Making Amends with the Dead

Death doesn’t always give us time to get affairs in order before it comes and more often, when it does, it leaves behind things unfinished for both the dead and the living. There are conversations we needed to have that are no longer possible in the physical world. In my own life, I needed forgiveness from one of my ghosts. I had a friend who ended his life, and my last words to him were said in anger, out of a place of being wounded. In a place of pain, I blamed him for an assault that happened to me and refused to speak to him. And then he was gone.

I never saw his pain. I never knew how deep his wounds were until it was too late and I tortured myself with the guilt I carried. When I eventually came to a place of believing I was worthy of happiness, and needed to take action, I did it for me. Because I was killing myself inside by hanging onto that old wound.

It’s not that I expected him to manifest from ether before me. It’s not like I expected to hear him say he forgave me. But whether we are seeking forgiveness or we are being asked to forgive, I do believe it is the humbleness of being in that moment that is more important than the outcome. If we are forgiven or not, whether we choose to forgive or find we are not ready to, at least the seeker can say they tried everything they could. At the very least, they can forgive themselves and move on. And that is what I needed to do.

I picked a dark moon, when there was no light in the sky but the stars, when the black around me was inky thick. I sat in a place of fear and allowed myself to face it and found that the guilt I carried was heavier than the dark around me. It was long past time to seek peace.

I burned some sage and copal to clear the space around me and call in protective energies to my heart. I called to my friend, using words that would pull his spirit, memories that only his ghost would answer to. I did this until the air around me felt thick with his presence. Whether he appeared on his own like a true spectre or it was my memories that wove him out of the air, the desired outcome was the same. I felt like I was standing in the grove with him.

I cried first, before my voice could find its footing. It felt familiar, the two of us stealing moments to analyze the chaos around us. The familiarity was painful in how pleasant it was. I told him how much I missed him. I asked him to forgive me for not seeing beyond my own pain. And I told him my secret, the one I had kept from him all those years ago.

I finally put words to the event that happened to me. I explained why I blamed him for not being there to protect me. I apologized for my anger. And in the weaving of words previously unspoken I was forced to see my life with clear eyes.

I had made a poppet out of red fabric. I held it in my hands, pouring pain into it as I spoke. When I had no more words to say I told him that I loved him and that I wished him peace. I threw it into the fire and watched it burn. And it burned through me for a moment. I was time travelling backwards to the moment of my past when I chose to lash out at him rather than tell him what had happened to me. Only this time, at that edge, I made a new choice.

It didn’t change the past. It didn’t rewrite history. Somewhere in my heart, I felt the change in me. I felt the pain of then and knew with certainty that today, even facing that same pain, I would never make that same choice. With that knowledge, the past wound was salved and began to heal. So in a sense, I was able to step back in time and make a different choice. That healing work, once finished, rippled outwards through my core, altering other places that had been affected by that pain.

I sought forgiveness for me. Even if he were alive, my guilt and shame might not have been enough to revive our friendship after all this time. But it still would have allowed me the experience of knowing I had changed enough to mean my words. That they were not born from guilt, but of repentance. I would have known that I was a new person who deserved to free myself of such incredible guilt. Even if he were alive and still hurting, I could have allowed myself the freedom to move on, and hope that eventually he would be able to as well.

My friend is still dead. My last words to him were still in anger, but it was a learning experience and a choice I have proven I would not make again. Since that dark moon ritual, I have not been plagued by the nightmares of guilt that I had been. I remember him fondly, without that pang of culpability I would feel over his death before. It was his choice that he made, for no one but himself.

What I can and have done, is to be careful of my words. I choose not to speak words that I may not mean after they burn through me. I have decided that the cycle of anger and hurt will end with me. I will not perpetuate it further.

This is how I made amends with a loved one who is no longer living. Had the rolls been reversed, I might have called on him to forgive him for his words to me as well, again so that I might move on. Life lessons mean nothing if we learn nothing from them. All our magic is for our own healing and growth and if we open ourselves to the larger world around us, we can find peace from those unspoken things that haunt us.

The Notion of Forgiveness

There is something in the air right now. Ghosts are rising within me, and together we are revisiting old wounds. Many around me are experiencing a similar space for themselves. Old unresolved hurts may rise from the ether, but it’s never too late to heal them. Yet how do we heal when the one who hurt us, or the one we hurt, is no longer living?

If there’s anything my work with the spirit world has taught me, it’s that we put too much weight on the need for a physical body in cases where our journey concerns the emotional one. If what you want is for the other person to physically apologize to you or accept your apology and that is the only thing that will give you closure, you may be sitting in that pain for a very long time. Especially if they have passed. That is not healthy.

Whether or not you sit there is your choice. There are always choices in difficult situations. Choices to stay or go, to forgive or forget. Choices to accept or deny. To hold onto or let go.

The notion of forgiveness no longer has the shape that my early religious beliefs taught me. I took a four-day class in the Buddhist philosophy of LovingKindness as a means of healing my inner anger ball. I almost skipped the day on Forgiveness because my resentment towards it was so strong. When I told Whispering Deer that I thought it was foolish to forgive someone, as if you are supposed to forget what they did to you, she looked shocked that I would even consider it.

“Why would you forget what they did to hurt you?” she asked, and then she explained that you don’t forget. It happened. Forgetting what they did as if it didn’t happen is rewriting history, changing your experiences, and ignoring a painful lesson you learned.

We forgive others when we need to forgive them because the weight and anger of what we are holding onto is still harming us. Us. We do not forgive someone because they need it. It is not our duty to forgive those who have hurt us, for they can seek forgiveness without the weight of their actions evoking any true change in them. When it’s needed, we find a way to forgiveness so that we might rise ourselves out of the hurt that was done to us. We forgive, but we do not forget. And we forgive with the understanding that the other party must hold our relationship to a higher standard. By forgiving them we are telling them we believe in them. It is not an excuse to allow them to repeat the hurtful pattern.

Sometimes we can’t gift forgiveness because we are still trying to work past the event. Any forgiveness given before we’re ready would be false and the hurt would lay quiet, festering within. This is when we unleash the event like a weapon over and over again. Sometimes the path to forgiveness means removing ourselves from the situation, disconnecting from the hurtful party when that person shows no change. Staying to be hurt again would be the more foolish option. It’s important to always be honest about where you are in your process.

Reversely, when we seek forgiveness, we do it with the understanding that we wronged someone. Whether we believe we were wrong or not, we accept and feel regret for the hurt we caused. By seeking forgiveness we recognize a need for change in ourselves, perhaps within that specific relationship, and we are promising that other person that we will rise to meet that need. If we do not take responsibility for what we did, and change the behavior, our words are empty.

If we ask someone for forgiveness, we cannot be mad at the injured party for remembering what occurred. Forgiveness is not an eraser. It is not a clean slate. We have to earn it by not repeating that pattern.

If we seek forgiveness and it is not given, even if we have truly seen a change in ourselves, we have done all we can do. That has to be enough for our own healing. If we were honest in its seeking, we are at a place to accept that we may simply have to continue to show that we have changed and be patient while the one we hurt heals.

What if the person we injured is the one who has passed on? In some ways it may sound easier to forgive one who has died than to seek forgiveness from them. But they are two sides of the same coin. If one can be done, so can the other.

The answers lie within you and healing can be found. Ritualizing the action of it can be the structure we need to feel the shape of the magic of release. Making Amends with the Dead, coming next week, will speak more to manifesting forgiveness through personal ritual.