Have you ever found yourself caught up in resentment, unable to forgive? I know I have. I know friends and clients and colleagues who have. It is not un uncommon experience. It’s painful and we can feel stuck. Sometimes for years. We feel such a strong sense of entitlement to be angry that it is hard to see things under a different light.
If you find yourself in this place, this book might help you move through it and out of it. It does not come from a moralistic or religious position, instead it offers a different perspective, it may help you understand why it is you are finding it so difficult to forgive, what it is you are doing to yourself (not just to the other person) and find a way back to connection, most importantly, connection to your true self.
I have read this book years ago and it helped me move through a stuck place I had been unable to move from for a long time. I read it again a while later, I’ve given it to friends and every time I open it, I find paragraphs I marked which feel as powerful today as the first time I read them. Here is one that I will leave you with (from the chapter ‘The more we blame, the further we get from ourselves’):
‘Blame is very absorbent. It soaks up sadness. It dries the tears. It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss – whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony or a war. Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself. Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.”
If are stuck in resentment and you care for yourself, I encourage you to read this book.