FORGIVING YOUR FACTIONS

I talk with people all the time who are going through deconstruction.

One of the things I’m passionate about helping people process is the forgiving their former selves.

We know the only way there will be peace on earth is if we learn to love one another and accept the human universe as wonderfully diverse.

But the same principle applies to our personal selves: the only way we will experience inner peace is if we learn to love all aspects of ourselves and accept ourselves as wonderfully diverse.

This, I claim, includes loving our former selves.

I just finished reading Melinda Gates book, “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World”. I highly recommend it. You can order it on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Z7TDOi

Later in the book she says,

“Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem” (p. 259).

I agree. But I also believe this applies personally. We must figure out ways to, as Melinda Gates wrote, to include the excluded, “going to the margins of society and bringing everybody back in” (p. 50).

Even though I accept there are stages to processing our deconstruction that include anger, bitterness, denial, and shame, I suggest it’s healthy to move beyond these to a place of self-acceptance, including former-selves-acceptance.

This includes forgiving ourselves. This is how war is ended forever rather than temporarily… not through a complete annihilation of the enemy, but through repentance, forgiveness, reparation, and reconciliation.