What To Do When Forgiveness Feels Impossible.
(The baby step that changes everything)
When I married my second husband, Umberto, and moved to Venezuela, my son Rob was only 4. My first husband had a deep addiction to alcohol that kept going throughout Rob’s formative years. After years of unpaid child support, I finally took him to court. By this time Rob was in high school, and my ex was married to wife #3. He had six weeks sobriety, total.
To my horror, the judge was influenced by my ex-father-in-law, a prominent attorney and trustee of a premier boys’ day school in Nashville as well as that school’s headmaster. The judge peered down at me in the courtroom and asked, Why is a little American boy going to a school in a foreign country when he has such an opportunity here? She would only award the unpaid child support if I agree to let Rob go live with his father.
Although we had planned for Rob to go to prep school in the States, living with his father, who had been a dysfunctional alcoholic for years, had not been on the list. But, if I refused to let Rob live with his father, the judge said she would entertain a motion for change of custody.
Devastated, Umberto and I left the courtroom. My feelings of powerlessness against the unfairness of it all, combined with my sense of loss, drove me into a rage. I vowed never to forgive my in-laws. How could they use my son and their grandson as window dressing for a situation that was tenuous at best, given Rob’s father’s history?
With heavy hearts, Rob was sent to live in Nashville. Though we came to Nashville for visits, and he spent vacations with us in Caracas, a year after Rob’s move to the Nashville, we decided it was time to leave Venezuela and take up residence in Nashville.
When Rob told his father and stepmother that he wanted to come live with us, they threatened to send him away. He had shown early aptitude and interest in theater, but they forbid him to be in the school play. When Rob went to his paternal grandfather to seek his support and intervention, his grandfather declined to get involved.
Like a mother lioness protecting her cub, I called my former father-in-law — a man I had once loved and respected, who had accepted and embraced my new life, and yet who I thought was now betraying both me and his grandson. On the phone all I could emote was anger and disgust.
And then Rob’s father died at the age of 49. Rob had since left the house and was on his way to being a very successful young man. I went to sit with my in-laws, and that day I was able to tell them about all the good things that had come into my life because of their son, and to ask their forgiveness for the harsh and hurtful things I had said in the past.
What had changed?
I had.
The anger I felt toward my in-laws plus my vow to never forgive them and even to “get even” had not been a new emotion. The common theme that fueled my anger and my wanting revenge had been feeling both powerless and unfairly treated — a lethal combination. For many years, I had still held resentment against the woman who refused to hire me when I was the most qualified candidate, the insurance company I finally had to take to court after my house burned down, the girl who stole my boyfriend in high school.
But somewhere along the line, I had realized that feeling resentment wasn’t helping me. It was hurting me. There was a tremendous amount of energy being consumed in maintaining my anger. And I understood I could use that energy for something else and refuse to let these situations and people steal it.
With my in-laws I wasn’t able to go straight to forgiveness, but I found I was willing to forgive. And that’s where it started, a willingness. That was enough. Because one day I realized that in some mysterious way, I had forgiven them, and I’d forgiven myself for all those times I’d held onto the anger that held me back and kept me stuck.
So, if you are holding onto anger, try to take that first step — be willing. It is the most generous and self-serving thing you can do for yourself.
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