Since I am already out of my comfort zone with this blog, I feel like I might as well move onto a personal topic: Holding onto anger and forgiveness.

I am a pretty fun-loving person and I work really hard at being positive. I like to accept people for who they are, to appreciate and focus on their good qualities. This works for me really well. Over the past year, I have been really struggling with letting go of anger towards one person. No matter what I do, I can not seem to let it go.

I have a little bit of experience with this. In the past, I had to forgive and let go of my anger towards my ex-husband. He had done some things that took me a long time to let go of, so I was very angry for a very long time. One day, I realized that he did not know I was still angry. He did not care that I was angry. The only person the anger was affecting was me. The anger I was feeling had negatively impacted me but not him. It prevented me from being happy and caused negative thoughts. At this time, I let the anger go. I have forgiven him, but I will never forget it. I moved forward away from anger, so I could be healthy in mind and spirit.

Now this particular person I am working hard to forgive hurt my children not me. This person caused enough harm that my daughter has PTSD. I feel anger towards this person daily when my daughter is hiding in a closet screaming in fear. I feel it when she is crying in my car or worrying about her future.

My first barrier with forgiveness is that she hurt them and not me. I worry about the future, how this has affected them and what will happen in certain scenarios. I worry how their experiences will affect other relationships in their lives. I could forgive and let go of the anger easier when it was me someone hurt but it wasn’t. I feel very protective of my children.

My second problem with forgiveness is the constant reminders from my children of what she did and how deeply it has affected my children. There are melt downs and then they just need to talk about it, a lot. These kids have suffered, and she keeps moving merrily on with her life. It is hard to let something go when others bring up the subject every day.

So this leads me back to the beginning. How do you let go of your anger towards someone and forgive their actions? In my mind, I know I have to do this, I know this anger is harmful. Unfortunately, I have not accomplished it. I am working on it…..

I have shared these very personal feelings in hopes that it opens a conversation. I would love to hear your thoughts or solutions to forgiveness.