The power of forgiveness

Lately I’ve been challenged by my own internal struggle over forgiveness.

I have been seeking my own ability to move past a number of events in my life. As I have gone on this journey to understand forgiveness and learn how to truly practice it; It has frequently occurred to me how the process of forgiveness applies to our ability to recover from an eating disorder.

We frequently are “angry” or “resentful” of ourselves for having bodies that are “imperfect” or “not good enough”. We seem trapped in the idea that if only our bodies were better, that somehow our lives would be better. We take out this anger of our imperfect body on ourselves. We cast our bodies (and our traitor selves) as the enemy and distance ourselves from our bodies, because it is our bodies that are doing so much wrong in our lives and that with which we must do battle with.

When we are hungry we are angry at ourselves for being unable to control our appetite. After we have eaten we are angry at ourselves for having eaten “too much”. When we look in the mirror, we are angry for not having done enough to have the perfect body at this point in out lives. We are irrationally angry and bitter at ourselves for things over which we have no control, and are perfectly normal human ways of living and being. The ways that we are meant to be.

It seems that simply forgiving ourselves, our lives, and our DNA is in order.

Recently this was shared with me:

http://learningtoforgive.com/9-steps/

It seems to have implications for our battle as well. I am going to learn how to say to myself

“I forgive you” more often. If we forgave ourselves our imperfections in the FIRST PLACE, perhaps we wouldn’t find ourselves trapped in the position to forgive ourselves for relapse as often as we do.