The Ashes of Forgiveness

The Ashes of Forgiveness
By Z Zoccolante

*New Podcast Episode: Check out episode 2 of the Throwing Up Rainbows podcast available now on our website, iTunes, and Stitcher.

And now today’s blog –

I burned it as I whispered the words over and over and over . . .

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

The photo burned from left to right in perfect symmetry, blue and orange flames, erasing time, erasing moments. Tears streaked down my face falling like ocean rain.

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

Have you ever noticed how easy it can be to say fuck you? Anger is bitter and powerful. It often gives the illusion of protection from the well of sadness surging underneath.

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to say please forgive me or I forgive you? Vulnerability can feel unsafe like I’m showing my soft little underbelly while you possibly wield a knife behind your back.

I chat with a friend about how we both know how to go for the jugular, how to use words to slice and slither. But why would we choose to do that with someone we care about? Just because you see a blatant opening to stick a knife it doesn’t mean you have to stick it there. Why would I do that if I love you and you are also a human just like me?

There’s something powerful about kindness. Sometimes we’re raised to think it’s weakness, to think that tough love and emotionally stabbing someone is how to make them grow.

Someone once told me that she learned from her mother how to slice her husband with cruel words as though somehow he’d realize his failings and become a better person. But the only thing it does is cause anyone to resent the person belittling you.

We’re all human and we all want to be loved.

Sometimes we pour love into someone, and for whatever reason, they don’t have the hands with which to hold our love and it seeps between their fingers and washes away.

Someone once told me that they pushed me away because they loved themselves more than they loved me. Not so stupid now, he said, as I remember the hurt he caused back then. But years have taught me that we must love ourselves more, and yet still be kind. Find a way.

We love each other the best we know how at that time. We love ourselves the best we know how at that time.

Loving ourselves is the most important because if we love ourselves we can also love each other. If we’re kind to ourselves we can also be kind with others. We can see that we are the other. Like they say, what we do to the web we do to ourselves.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle

And so we love each other and hurt the hell the hell out of each other. We all have our part. We all get to be on each side, the hurter and the hurting, the loved and the loving. We get to be someone’s villain and someone’s hero. We get to be our own.

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

Tears roll down my face. The photo burns blue and then to ash. The words become a record pulling threads from my heart.

The four phrases are from Hawaii, from a practice in the Hawaiian culture called Ho’oponopono. Put simply it’s the practice of reconciliation and forgiveness, of making things right.

My friend tells me a story of how a man in Hawaii, named Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, was a therapist who cured a whole psych ward of insane patients without ever giving them face-to-face therapy. He would hold each of the patient’s charts and say those four phrases over and over. By doing that, he healed himself while also healing them.

Just like Chief Seattle said, we are all a web and what we do to the web we do to ourselves. What we do to ourselves we do to the web. The story my friend told me is true and the words stuck with me in the back of my mind until I was ready.

And as it burned I found the words both painful and healing. They were difficult to whisper and the more I said them the more I cried, feeling as though I was letting go of more than just the one thing. I felt as though there really was a web of consciousness and I was forgiving and being forgiven, loving and being loved.

There is something about kindness and vulnerability, about giving these things to ourselves, and others. It can start with us, and four simple phrases.

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

I am left with ashes and I can begin again.

The Ashes of Forgiveness