Re: Forgiving others

That reminds me of one of my personal experiences with forgiveness.  At about age 13 my 25 year old sister-in-law (who I related to more as a sister than an in-law) falsely accused me of sexually molesting her 5 year old daughter.  At that time my SIL was divorced for about a year from my brother who was serving in the Navy in the Pacific in WWII, and his daughters - the 5 year old and a 3 year old, were living with my parents and myself because my brother had gained custody of them in the divorce.  The accusation was made in about 5 pages of a hand written note that was personally delivered to my father, who after reading it in explicit but false detail handed it to me to read.  I was devastated, and I was angry and hateful.  My dad didn't believe the charges, my mother did.  My nieces continued to live with us until about two or three years later when my brother returned home after the war and remarried, but my hate never diminished.

In those days after the accusations I had a difficult time getting to sleep but I would use that period of time to think up a new way I could kill my sister-in-law, every night for eons.  If I couldn't think of a new way to kill her, I'd just kill her in one of my previously thought up torturous ways.  During this time I suspected that my mother and all my extended family hated me for what I "had done" and I withdrew into myself and created a facade of a brick wall that I thought that no one could penetrate.  I also refrained from making friends - particularly females during this time.  I eventually served my own military service, did find a woman that I married and began a family.  After many, many life experiences and creating a career at about age 35, I had some thoughts out of the blue one day.  I recognized that hating my SIL was irrational and I instantly forgave her and it felt as if a load had been lifted from my shoulders.

Fast forward to more than 50 years after my SIL had falsely accused me after I had learned and been practicing meditation and during those meditations learned to really forgiver her - and myself, which I did over time.  It was not a one day occurrence.  From my niece (the younger one, the one I'd been accused of molesting died after creating a family of 5 children) I got the address of my SIL and sent her a small greeting card which was a simple hello, nothing more.  Within three days of sending the card I got a telephone call from her (I had not included that in the card, she got it from a directory) and the first words out of her mouth were "I lied about you.  My mother made me do it to get custody of the girls."  That caused me a bit of anger because she had never told my parents or anyone else about her lie.  However, I was glad to chat with her because prior to the accusation we had been very good friends.  The call led to her visiting me a couple of weeks later, which was from a distance of about 400 miles.  The face to face visit was invaluable and I learned a lot from it.  I found her to be very shallow and childish - something that a 13 year old could easily relate to, so from my new perspective could see how she did such a thing.  That does not diminish the friendship that I had with her during my puberty, I still value it a great deal.

I believe in completing cycles with relationships.  My original forgiveness was the completion of one cycle.  My meditations and forgiveness of myself for the withdrawal that I'd done was the completion of another cycle, and the telephone call and face to face meeting with SIL was the completion of still more cycles.  SIL has also been my prototype lesson on forgiveness.  I've learned that I've had to forgive many, many people in my life, particularly myself.