Letting Go into Forgivenes

Saturday, April 8, 2006 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

More than 12 hours have passed since a friendly phone conversation with my ex-wife, during which she joyfully shares with me an impending success.

At first I'm proud of her and of the incredible breakthrough it represents for her. In the moment, I'm genuinely pleased.

But the moment passes.

When it does, anger seeps in to replace it, for her accomplishment could be seen to justify her break-up of our six-and-a-half-year marriage. How dare she experience anything that could vindicate her actions? my still-hurting pieces cry out.

Before long, love, fear, resentment and sadness have joined the seasonings in this edgy emotional stew.

It simmers all day, sparking fatigue and introducing delays into what, until then, has been an effortless day of Albuquerque appointments and errands.

It's only now, as midnight pulls me into Sunday, that I realize what our conversation triggered: the realization that I have neither fully let her go nor fully forgiven her for leaving me 17 months ago.

That's a good realization, though not a particularly comfortable one.

Even though a healer friend whose sensings I deeply respect said as much on Thursday, now I feel it.

Since Thursday, I've been visualizing being cleansed of the energy of enmeshment and have been speaking words of release.

But although it has been a powerful exercise, it did not reach its full potential until today. I knew the truth intellectually but hadn't yet felt it.

Now I do.

I don't like the feeling, even as I'm grateful to put a name to today's emotional upset. But I recognize (however reluctantly) that I can't move into my next level of release and forgiveness until I first free myself into my next level of feeling, however uncomfortable that is. Nor can I ask of her what I haven't been ready to do myself.

Today I move into that freedom and readiness, into that release and forgiveness. I do so painfully yet lovingly - feeling all that I feel as I honor who we were as a couple and who we are now as individuals.

Tomorrow I continue the journey, as I will the tomorrow after that - each day carrying me deeper into release and forgiveness, each moment freeing me more fully into love.

(In one of life's brilliant synchronicities, I find myself editing a book on forgiveness this weekend. The manuscript arrived Thursday, the same day my healer friend and I had our chat.)