Prime Time - Jane Fonda [62]
Use doing a life review to poultice the wounds of youth with the forgiveness of age.
Understanding comes first, before forgiveness is possible. Before letting go is possible. Understanding requires honesty, and honesty requires courage. So with honesty and courage, in the spirit of forgiveness, as you feel your way through each stage of your life, think not only of the difficult experiences, but of the people who touched you and guided you with kindness and love. Acknowledge them and thank them, in your heart, your body, your writing.
Remember the ones who hurt you, the way Nat did when writing his book. This will not be easy, and you may find yourself forgetting to breathe. Breathing keeps your body open, your muscles relaxed, so that understanding can come. When your body is tight, new realizations and developmental breakthroughs will be harder.
This is why meditation can be so helpful. While you’re doing some deep breathing, try, without forcing it, to imagine the pain that those who hurt you must have experienced in their own lives, the self-hatred that may have led them to hurt you. Try—again, without forcing it—to open your heart and send forgiveness their way. And then commit yourself to never doing these same hurtful things to others—or to yourself. Be the one to break the cycle!
In his book A Year to Live, the poet and teacher Stephen Levine wrote, “Even an unsuccessful attempt at forgiveness has the considerable power of its intention. We cannot force forgiveness because force closes the heart, but we can explore its possibilities, its capacity to heal the forgiver, and sometimes the forgiven.” Levine also said that forgiveness “is mercy in action in the same way that compassion is wisdom in action.”2
The author James Baldwin wrote, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once the hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” Some people also cling to their pain. It defines them. Who am I if not a victim? Such people do not do well in their Third Acts.
A life review can be a way to shed both hate and victimhood, to let the pain out, and to uncover one’s true identity.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi vividly describes what it does to us when we are unable or unwilling to forgive:
For example, when I refuse to forgive someone who has wronged me, I mobilize my own inner criminal justice system to punish the offender. As judge and jury, I sentence the person to a long prison term without pardon and incarcerate him in a prison that I construct from the bricks and mortar of a hardened heart. Now as jailor and warden, I must spend as much time in prison as the prisoner I am guarding. All the energy that I put into maintaining the prison system comes out of my “energy budget.” From this point of view, bearing a grudge is very “costly,” because long-held feelings of anger, resentment, and fear drain my energy and imprison my vitality and creativity.3
If one or both of your parents are alive, sit down with a tape recorder and notepad (don’t rely on just one or the other) and interview them—separately. If they are together, they may tell you what’s comfortable, the standard, bought-into script of their lives that they are both familiar with. Your goal is to gently nudge them beyond their comfort zones. They may actually welcome this interest on your part, and they are at an age when there’s little to lose and much to gain from finally revealing (to themselves, as well) memories that hold the key to who they became.
Ask them about their parents: Did their parents love each other? Were they loving or cold and strict with their children—that is, with your parents? Try to tease out painful things your parents may have buried, such as abuse, rape, emotional distance, failures, deaths, addictions, depression, or guilt. All these things may have affected how you were treated, how you felt growing up. And, if you are like most people, you probably thought it was your fault. Now is the time to separate who your parents