Why You Can Love the Person That Hurt You

Why You Can Love the Person That Hurt You
By Z Zoccolante
(Listen to the audio of this wonderful blog in the blue box below!)

I sit on my patio peacefully sipping coffee out of my little pink mug while my dog Vega wanders by the open window behind me. There’s a hiss and a cat screech and my dog barrels backwards. My cat is such a witch, I think, as Vega comes into view, her eyes searching the open window where my cat has vacated her perch.

Vega’s eyebrows arch in sad confusion as she tilts her head at me. That’s when I notice a deep, red drop of blood lingering on the black fur of her nose. “Oh no,” I tell her and jump up to run water into a kitchen cloth. Vega sits still while I press the cloth along her nose. Her deep brown eyes stare up into mine with innocence and love. “I’m sorry she’s such a meanie poo to you,” I tell Vega.

My cat lingers in the bedroom doorway, like a furry, fat gumdrop. I think about how I could respond, how I could shoo her away, bat at her, throw a dog toy aggressively in her direction, scold her with a sharp tone, tell her that she’s mean, that she’s a bad kitty. I could retaliate. I’m bigger. I’m the human after all.

But I don’t do any of these things.

Instead, I pick up her fat, fluffy body and hold her close to my chest. I pet her lovingly and tell her that I love her. I tell her that I know she’s scared of Vega but we don’t scratch her and we don’t hurt her. I tell her that behavior isn’t ok and I kiss her on the head and put her down on her perch again.

As I set her down I’m reminded of a phrase I heard: Hurt people, hurt people.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a person who admitted that in fights with their partner they become so terrified that their partner’s going to leave them that they react in inappropriate ways. This person’s hurt is so triggered that they lash out with inappropriate behavior, saying and doing things that are harmful and unhealthy to the relationship.

The irony is that we all have these triggers. We all fear abandonment, rejection, hurt, loneliness, loss, or heartbreak. We’ve all reacted out of our own hurts and fears. Because we’ve hurt or are hurting, we in turn have hurt others.

If we understand that people react out of their own fears, it becomes less about us, and how we’ve been wronged or hurt, and instead becomes about the need to love to the person that hurt us. This love can be given from afar (if the situation isn’t safe, the person isn’t present, or if they’ve passed away).

If we’ve been hurt, we can understand that people aren’t perfect and that we react in both conscious and unconscious ways. We’ve all done at least one thing in our life, which we didn’t fully know why.

There are reasons we do things, whether we are conscious of them or not. When we do things that hurt others it usually indicate that there’s something that needs to be healed in us. It could be a childhood wound or family dynamic that is being triggered. It could be a conversation that we didn’t know how to articulate and may need a third party, like a therapist, present. It might be that we need to access and speak from our heart instead of having cognitive conversations. It might be we feel unsettled or hopeless and don’t know what to do. And so we hurt people.

We’ve all been hurt-er and the hurt-e. We change places in these positions throughout our lives. Knowing this, helps to forgive someone who’s hurt us. Knowing this, helps to have compassion for someone’s form of suffering.

When people are hurt they don’t need to be shamed, swatted, or told that their bad people. They need love. They need to know that even in their pain, even in their hurtful actions, they’re still a person worthy of love, because they are. We are good at our core. We are all loving and kind. We all want to be loved and accepted. We want to be held.

We want love. We want our fluffy little bodies picked up lovingly and told, “Hey I love you, and that’s hurtful. Let’s not do it like that, ok.”

As Ghandi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

When I mess up and hurt someone, I want to be held in that place of love that says, “I see you, even with this hurtful behavior, and I know that you’re still good. You are still worthy of love and I choose to extend love.”

Be kind. Do have safe boundaries, and extend love. Be love. The change starts with us.

With Love,

Z :)