I’ve been sick: terribly, terribly sick. Between Google and my imagination, in the last two months I’ve had skin cancer, lung cancer (which would make me a major medical phenomenon because I convinced myself that I had caught it from my mother), pneumonia, and shingles. And, obviously, a pretty serious auto-immune disorder at the root of the aforementioned illnesses.
What I actually had were relatively superficial illnesses: a major, (okay, maybe not major, but moderately major) sinus infection, bronchitis, pink-eye (no, I’m not 12 but I sure felt like it), and hives. Oh yeah, and my tooth fell out. For real. I was finally on the mend and having one of those, “Great, I’m out of the woods” moments and then my tooth fell off. Actually, it was one of my front veneers and the dentist just glued it back on, but still. Finally, I had to ask the Universe, “Okay, what exactly is going on here?”
I’ve been sick off and on since about three months after my mother passed. It’s been one thing after another and sometimes on top of each other. I thought I was doing pretty well given the circumstances but then I was talking to a friend about forgiveness, specifically, forgiving others and being forgiven. “And, how about forgiving yourself?” she asked.
“Uh-uh, I don’t believe in forgiving myself. It’s too self-serving. Besides, I deserve to feel bad and what would I do without all that guilt, anyway?”
Enter the hives. A couple of days later, in one instant, my back became insanely itchy. Right within my desperate reach, was a sharp, pointy stick. I went after my back with it and got sweet, instant relief from the itching, oblivious to the pain that would soon follow from the deep welts I inflicted upon myself. After Googling my symptoms, I thought it was shingles. Well, I didn’t have all the symptoms but I had the screaming pain. That’s the one that counts, right?
“It’s not shingles. It looks like hives.” My friend gave me an allergy pill and sure enough the hives disappeared but I still had extremely painful welts on my back. Almost unbelievably, it took another day or so for the awareness to dawn that I had flogged myself. Yes, for me, there’s nothing like a little (a LOT) of physical pain to get me to pay attention. I made a list of all the things that I’d like to forgive myself for right then and there.
So, how does one forgive oneself? Basically, pray to a loving God when you feel like beating yourself up, either literally or figuratively. I love this Buddhist prayer, reprinted from a fellow blogger, Good Things Remembered.
“If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.
And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself
through my own confusions
I forgive myself.”
So, now that I’m feeling better, I Googled the word, “forgiveness.” One of the first few links that comes up is an article from The Mayo Clinic relating forgiveness with good health. Message received.
The State of Motherhood 