CHOICE FEEDS

  " The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers. ”   I used to handle hurtful situations in relationships the same way. I’d get angry, shut down, get irritated, or just give my partner the silent treatment. This just led to more of what I didn’t want—separation, loneliness, and frustration. So one day I made up my mind. I was going to change my approach and try something different. Cause we’ve all heard that famous saying from Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I was tired of not getting the level of intimacy in my relationships that I longed for. I was tired of feeling alone, frustrated, and separated from my partner, especially during the moments when I felt most hurt. It all turned around in one single moment. People think that change happens incrementally over time, but in my experience it’s often a defining moment in time where you make a new decision that chang...

What happened to you wasn’t fair. But “why?” is a question you could be chasing to your grave. Why torture yourself trying to make sense of what didn’t make sense? You already suffered through what actually happened to you. Why keep feeding the story with endless possibilities of terrible endings? I wasted a lot of time wondering why. I wanted it all to somehow make sense. If it wasn’t my fault, it had to be somebody else’s. Because what’s more pointless than thinking that I sacrificed my entire youth for absolutely no reason at all? Finally, I gave myself my own reason. I needed a reason to live now. If I was going to live, I was going to love living. The day I gave myself a reason to live was the day I stopped looking for the reason my youth had died. That was the day that I became free. Freeing yourself from the burden of “why?” sets you free from an eternal blame game with no end in sight.

Truth: Forgiveness doesn’t give others what they deserve. Forgiveness gives you the only chance of ever getting what you truly deserve—your freedom. Freedom means you let go of hurting and decide to take the good stuff for a change. Letting yourself feel better takes a lot of trust. Trust that there’s enough good stuff out there for you. Trust that even if the bad guy gets some, there’s still always plenty for you. My early phone chats with Mom always ended badly. She’d start in with, “Remember when you guys used to—” And I’d cut in that, “No, Mom. I don’t remember. I never lived in that house. I was in a convent.” As soon as she’d come back with, “Well, I hope you don’t think that was my idea!” the F-bombs would hit the fan. I thought I never could forgive her if she wouldn’t admit all that happened to me. Truth is, I don’t think she’ll ever understand all that happened to me. And eventually, it didn’t matter. I stopped waiting for her to deserve it and just gave myself the good stuff...

One of the biggest truths I learned is that forgiveness heals me. I can’t do someone else’s healing for them. The only time my mother ever asked me to forgive her was late at night, in the privacy of her own living room, at the bottom of a bottle of Sandeman’s Port. “Will you forgive me? For everything?” “Sure. Yeah. Of course,” I’d say. But next year would only find her crying at the bottom of another bottle. I wanted her to be happy. But I couldn’t go there for her. Setting people free to walk through their own darkness is the truest test of your own freedom.

Forgiving someone takes a lot of honesty. Honesty about yourself and how you deserve to be treated, and honesty about  the one who hurt you  and how they’re inclined to act around you. You don’t cause the way someone else acts, but you can invite them to act differently with you. If they don’t want to play nice, you get to change the way you show up around them. When my brother texted me that they all changed their minds about picking me up at the airport, I got frantic. It was Christmas. Mom’s house was an hour away. And all the rental cars were taken. When you trust people to be exactly who they are, you can adjust your expectations of them accordingly. I told my family that I wanted control over my travel arrangements and would get my own room and join them for dinner. The long drive gave me time to think and see them honestly after they let me down. Right then, I decided that I wouldn’t rely on unreliable people any longer. Suddenly, I wasn’t expecting them to rescue me. A...

Truth: Remembering how you got hurt empowers you to forgive and create the life you deserve. When I got home, I tried to forgive my mom for making me grow up isolated and alone. I thought I had to forget that I’d never been allowed to talk to a guy who wasn’t a relative. The one awkward time I got asked to dance at a happy hour, I freaked out and started picking an imaginary bug out of my drink. Right then, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into that cup and float around with the ice cubes. Acting like the convent never happened was like walking through a minefield with my eyes shut and a great big target on my back. When you forget, you don’t know how to navigate. When you can’t navigate, you fake it. Faking it is not forgiveness. Faking it does not set you free and keep you safe. That’s why it’s important to remember. Remembering what happened gives you a compass for where you want to be. It lets you go easy on yourself while you design how it’s going to be from now on. Remembering...

Compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves. Loving someone should not mean getting hurt time and again. There will always be need for forgiveness, but not at the cost of healthy boundaries. Here, love might mean taking a step back. I’ve realized that sometimes, forgiveness is not about absolving someone of their actions—it means we have given ourselves permission to move on with our lives, deciding “what you did no longer holds power over me.” It’s okay, necessary even, to set up firebreaks, to say, “Enough.”