Dr. Maya Angelou lesson on forgiveness helped to free me

Last night after a totally beautiful Bermuda day with my family, I sat down when my children and their friends were off playing to watch Oprah and Maya Angelou on an old SuperSoul Sunday. And was I glad I did. Because watching these two powerful, inspiring and enlightened women helped me to come to terms with a lesson I have been grappling with.  A lesson I have been struggling with but did not know if I was dealing with it in the manner I was meant to. And these two ladies helped me to bring some closure to a situation involving forgiveness and broken trust.

I am a person who is willing to forgive. A person who tries to see things from all angles and tries to put myself in the place of whomever it is that is attacking me. Recognizing that often when I am being attacked, the attack is not about me but rather about the person who is attacking. Very easy to see and understand when the person attacking is not someone who was very special to us. Very easy to do when we have no close connection to the attacker.

But when it is someone that was very close to us, it is very hard to just turn our feelings off. It is very hard to just close the door without feeling some pain and hurt having to make that decision. It is on those occasion that we have to dig very deep and go through the pain and hurt and separation in order to accept as Maya Angelou said so eloquently last night, “When someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them.”

It is not for me or for anyone else to change anyone else. The only person we have control over is ourselves and the way we respond to the attack. And sometimes that means just closing the door. Further enforced for me when Oprah asked Maya Angelou what is one of the greatest  lessons she has learned and Dr. Angelou responded, her mother told her to forgive.

It was then that I realized I was being led to the conversation by the Force greater than me who was leading me to the answer I was seeking.  Particularly when Dr. Angelou said, “I forgive it. I don’t anoint it with anything. I just forgive it.”

Oprah then asked Dr Angelou when you forgive someone,  does not mean you invite them into your house after that?

To which Dr. Angelou responded with conviction, “No not at all. When I forgive you, it means I am done. I am finished with you. Go away. Not go away and harm someone else. I do so because I have to protect myself.”

To which Oprah said, " I have to be willing to take care of me first then I have enough to take care of myself first.”

And that’s when it all clicked for me. I have been thinking that forgiveness means then I open the door again when in fact it does not. Forgiveness means I hold no malice to the person or people who have wronged me and I don’t.  It does not mean I have to open my heart again to allow them in. I just have to simply be comforted in knowing it is time to move on and let go. And that is exactly what I have done and will continue to do.

When someone betrays trust and crosses a line in a relationship it is up to us to decide if we can invite them back in and if we can’t we forgive their transgression with love and let them go. To live our lives separately and they can live theirs separately.

Forgiveness means honoring the place in us as we honor the place in others. Freeing us both from guilt and allowing us the space to move on with our lives with love and respect.