Forgiving What You Can’t Forget

Lesson 1. Reclaim your memories

We all go through life dealing with a lot of pain. Human emotions and relationships are delicate and intricate, and different situations affect people differently. Someone may have physically or mentally harmed you, or perhaps you've been through some stressful event—a natural tragedy, a flood, or an armed robbery. Maybe you've just gotten out of a difficult situation, and even though you know you'll eventually get better, you're already in excruciating pain. The situation might be that you've been scarred, and you've carried the scar along with you for a long time.

Almost all of us relate to these feelings in some way. Even those who excel at accepting personal responsibilities have at least one personal experience of being wounded. Though some of us have dealt with more instances of pain, the mental distress caused by them is impossible to measure or compare.

People at work, in the coffee shop, and also in your family are totally oblivious that a triggered memory could occur at any time, leaving you feeling as if the earth has run out of air to breathe. When you're in pain, certain people can advise you to "let it go," as if that is a viable option. They will say, "It's all in your mind," and believe that this will take the pain away. None of this, though, will assist you in healing and finding peace on a daily basis.

Staying here, accusing them, and deciding your life solely on the basis of what they did would only make it worse. If you don’t fix yourself, it will continue to project into others. Our pain will have more power over us the more we let it affect us. Sadly, those who least deserve to be affected will be the ones who suffer the most as a result of our unresolved suffering.

The person or people who hurt you, Lysa says, have caused enough suffering for you and those around us. There has been enough harm done. They've had their fill. You don't have to give up what was valuable to you and dismiss all of your experiences as painful. You get to choose how you want to proceed.

Completely sterilising your life from the physical presence of reminders will not remove the pain. You can’t edit reality to try and force healing. You can’t convince yourself into being okay with what happened. However, you can decide that the one who hurt you doesn’t get further control over your memories. 

Lesson 2. Understand why you can’t forget

Lysa talks about the soldiers of unforgiveness