I think there is a lot of wisdom in all of the comments. On all sides of the equation.

Many people benefited from this dialogue.

So, I thank you all!

I don’t have the answers to anyone’s problems. I barely have some of the answers to my own. Each person must find their own answers in their own way. Positive action is a good way to get yourself working through emotions.

My comment was about allowing ourselves to feel our emotions, especially anger when it’s appropriate, and letting go and moving on. Many people get stuck in the grieving process because they won’t allow themselves to be angry and move through it. I don’t believe forgiveness is necessary, but anger is essential. The steps of grief are anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Acceptance is the point at which we let go. Grieving may take years.

I agree with Patricia. Anger itself is not bad. I hope you will allow yourself to be angry until you are no longer angry. Repressing anger is definitely harmful and will lead to severe depression. It will also come out at others who don’t deserve our wrath. Anger and sadness require our honoring of them and proper release of them. The key is releasing them and moving on.

I don’t claim this is easy or that our life situations are isolated points in time. As time goes on we may find that we only put a band-aide on a wound and it pops up on us unexpectedly.

When we laugh, we laugh and enjoy the moment, and when it is passed we easily let it go and remember how good it felt. With negative emotions most of us don’t do the same thing. We try not to cry, and not to get mad and punch the pillow or punching bag. If we would release the negative emotions in a similar fashion as we do positive ones, we would all be much healthier.

You don’t have to express your anger at the person who caused it. That’s great if you can, but it doesn’t stop you from feeling angry if you can’t.

Being angry is our emotional response to someone else’s or our own actions. Someone leaving us or dying are outside actions to which we feel something. If you want to have a continued relationship with someone, expressing anger to them is important for conflict resolution. If a continued relationship is not desirable or possible, then anger needs to be released in some other way that is not harmful to ourselves or others.

The one teaching I find universal through thousands of years and by many avatars is the importance of letting go of our attachment to emotions and situations. Until we let go we harbor anger and pain. We only let go when we are ready.

I’m not a mental health professional. I’m a patient. I’ve lost close friends, been through a very nasty divorce and custody battle after 15 years of marriage with a child, and lost my dad. My father was mentally and psychologically abusive and my mother taught me to repress anger completely. Anger repression was the most harmful thing I ever learned and did. I had to be hospitalized for depression after attempting suicide at age 20. By then all the anger over all the years of my life had finally gotten too big. I’m 47 now and have spent a huge amount of my adult life in therapy. I have to continue on medication the rest of my life because my brain chemistry changed from the repeated trauma over the years.

I don’t have your answers or anyone else’s. Only you can find your answers. It sounds like you are not ready to let go yet. Honor that, keep working through it, and you will eventually come to a place where you can let go. I don’t know where that place is or when you will find it, but if you continue to work on it, I hope you will find it and make peace with it. It took me 27 years to get where I am today.

Sherri

This comment is a remarkable contribution to the conversation on this topic.

I so appreciate the care and time you took to give such a complete answer - including your own experience.

This is an example of the support the bloggers in the personal growth community give to each other. We are not competitors - but complement each other in so many ways.

You thanked me for a “thought-provoking” post. I am returning the compliment to you.

Please stay in touch!

I’ve found that with some of the biggest, most difficult things, it’s not about forgiveness, but about letting go. Sometimes I tell myself if someone needs to be forgiven for something then they need to ask God for it. I’m not God, and it’s not up to me.

I usually think this when I’ve been hurt badly and it helps because it takes me out of the cycle. That person probably doesn’t care if I ever forgive them, if they even think of me at all. So why should I spend precious energy and time hurting, hating and harboring pain for them?

Instead of being hurt and ashamed, finding your anger about what happened is a good way to look at something. Stop asking yourself why someone would do something to you and start saying how dare they do that to you or anyone. Get mad!

Sometimes there is no understanding something, and I think in the modern world we try to understand a little too much. Like the drive-by shooting you used as an example, how dare someone do that? They need to be hunted down and brought to justice. No reasonable explanation is possible. Only excuses for reprehensible behavior exist. It doesn’t matter why they did what they did. It’s inexcusable. In that case one might ask why me of God, but asking the person who acted in such a way? It likely has nothing to do with you. You were a convenient target.

Then I can work on moving beyond the person, situation and pain. Once I can get on with my life, forgive someone or not, I can eventually get to a point where the pain they caused doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not back there and I won’t go back there. I no longer hate them, hurt because of them or even think about them at all. I become indifferent.

There are situations I can see this may not work, like someone murdering your child in a drive-by shooting. But that’s an extreme case. From parents I know who have lost a child for any reason, there is no comfort in knowing why.

Getting beyond an abusive parent or incestuous family member after you are grown is very possible. Getting beyond an ex-spouse or ex-partner is definitely doable.

Thanks for a very thought-provoking post!
Sherri

Thank you for your contributions here. I think that many people benefited from your discussion.

Much love to both of you -

Corinne

Thank you for your affirmation of my article. Sounds like you have gone through it and come to the other side.

Congratulations!