When you lose someone, your relationship with that person sometimes changes. It is important to your own health to forgive the person you are grieving but forgiving someone doesn’t mean forgetting a person’s flaws and idealizing the relationship.
In unhealthy relationships, people who seemed like bad guys might start looking more innocent which causes you to doubt your feeling of anger and hurt. You might even displace some of the blame you felt towards that person on yourself. This doubt may leave you wondering whether you really need to forgive this person or of if it was your fault or just in your own head.
In the book The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, instead of dwelling on the ways her father disappointed her, Walls chose to appreciate the things he did well. In situations like permanent loss where a person cannot make amends for what they’ve done, it can be difficult to move on. Choosing to hold onto our bitterness from the relationship is only hurting ourselves, so it is important that we find a way to move on. In forgiving her father, Walls and her siblings were able to create a future that was unbound by the hardships of their past.
In unhealthy relationships, people who seemed like bad guys might start looking more innocent which causes you to doubt your feeling of anger and hurt. You might even displace some of the blame you felt towards that person on yourself. This doubt may leave you wondering whether you really need to forgive this person or of if it was your fault or just in your own head.
In the book The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, instead of dwelling on the ways her father disappointed her, Walls chose to appreciate the things he did well. In situations like permanent loss where a person cannot make amends for what they’ve done, it can be difficult to move on. Choosing to hold onto our bitterness from the relationship is only hurting ourselves, so it is important that we find a way to move on. In forgiving her father, Walls and her siblings were able to create a future that was unbound by the hardships of their past.