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It wasn't easy, but I finally found a way to heal the hurts of the past by expressing forgiveness and gratitude to someone who had hurt me badly in the past.
It wasn’t easy, but I finally found a way to heal the hurts of the past by expressing forgiveness and gratitude to someone who had hurt me badly in the past.
I had been very particular of what choices I make during this lock-down. Slowly and gradually I was becoming clear in my mind that lock-down is not a vacation time but a time where you can invest time on yourself and your family. Though some people may say it’s a forced vacation but to see it from a different perspective, it’s a time to renew yourself when you have nothing much to do at home.
Investing time in self has been a very sensitive concern for me because I was sure that what goes in my mind, my soul and my body has to be positive and healthy. Thus I made intentional choices of reading, writing, getting involved in more cooking, more time with family, having leisure tea breaks with family, laughter, exercising, painting to be part of my routine.
Meditation is something, I had always been fascinated with but I had always felt that my mind had never been able to locate a sweet spot to undergo meditation successfully.
2 weeks back a friend proposed that I do independent meditation through a 21 days Abundance meditation program. I took that up but I was sceptical if I would be able to continue and complete that.
However, I have been doing it successfully till now along with the tasks which the meditation guru asks us to complete on a daily basis until today when the task was not an easy task to perform.
Today’s task was little different and when I read that, I felt my heart getting filled up with agony and I felt restless. The task was to write a gratitude letter to a person who had hurt you in your past.
“There seems to be a typo error with the task,” I thought and I was sure about that. Considering this as a mistake, I decided to read the details again and understand if it’s a task of putting out all anger on the sheet of paper for that person who hurt you or is it actually a letter to thank him for what he did.
On remembering him, I was filled with anger and agony of what I had gone through and I was full of confusion about how can I say a “thank you” for whatever he did. The condition mentioned to write that letter was that I should ensure that I don’t carry any resentment when I start writing a letter to the person who had hurt me in my past.
This was another impossible thing which I had to do- To write a thank you letter and that too without having any grudge against that person. I was perplexed and felt that today I would be breaking the chain of task completion. But then my mind was working consistently understanding that there would be some logic behind that task.
I start meditating and I thought about what ever happened with me, the wound of which I had been carrying since so many years.
After I could complete my meditation, I took up my pen and my diary and started writing that letter and surprisingly I was not carrying any resentment in my heart against him.
Thank you for hurting me because it was that day when I took my first step towards “self love”.
Your love for me blindfolded me so tightly that I had somewhere forgotten to respect my own self. I had become secondary for myself; I guess it is the worst thing anybody can do to own self.
It was the most awaited and crucial decision making moment of life when you hurt me by indicating that you would not prefer me because you don’t think I fit in those ‘physical attributes’ you wish to have in your partner, which was very hurtful for me at that moment. But now I realize that your clarity of thoughts helped me clear the fog of my vision, and made me learn that one who cannot respect me for what I am is absolutely not a right person to stay with. I realized that you were a narcissist and I being an empath, we would have never been able to get along in life together.
I took a long time though to understand, but I understood that you never deserved me because a person who would deserve me would be as good as I am. I am happy that we are not together because somewhere you would have been instrumental in destroying my self confidence, and that is not something I had expected from my partner.
While I was writing this letter, I realized it made so much difference within me while I was forgiving him and thanking him. He had a role to play in my life and he played that which pushed me to learn a very important lesson called ‘self love’. It took a long time though but it was him who helped me to step in the world of loving and respecting self.
It was as if my anger and my pain vanished, and I realized the truth that gratitude and forgiveness is definitely a healing therapy.
Identify one person from your past who had somewhere hurt you and try to do this exercise. It may not affect that person but it would definitely bring peace within you by freeing you from the wounds you have been carrying through out your life. The one thing which is important to start this is “an intention to heal yourself”.
If you want to carry the wound lifelong and be vindictive, this may not work. But since life is short and priceless, heal yourself and move on.
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Ruchi is a new person who has dared to break all walls of monotony in life, a dreamer, a learner and likes to derive inspiration in all situations she is into. Recently plunged into a read more...
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