Forgiveness can seem elusive, confusing, and counterintuitive. At some point in my life, I understood forgiveness as letting the person who hurt us know we were okay with what they did to us. This led me to feel conflicted about the concept of simply letting something go to avoid holding someone accountable for their actions. This stuck until it was time for me to forgive someone for what they had done to me.

The residual pain of a past relationship can burden us in a way nothing else has the power to. When I faced my own relationship demons, I was forced to understand forgiveness to move on. Although difficult to do, it was the most rewarding lesson of my life.

My grandmother has always provided amazing foundational strength and wisdom. Before she passed, spending time at her house was a huge highlight of my youth. Just about every holiday was celebrated there, and several Sunday night dinners were enjoyed around her dining room table.

I remember vividly this small frame she had hanging on her staircase that read, "Forgiveness is the fragrance the flower sheds on the heel that crushed it." It bothered me a little because I didn't understand it, but I respected it because if it was worthy of being on her wall, there was surely a wise lesson to be learned. It would be almost 30 years until the opportunity to learn the lesson arrived.

When we experience a traumatic, abusive, or otherwise troubling event, more often than not, we can internalize it. When we internalize it, we get angry at the person who did the awful thing to us, because we think we are the reason the person did it to us. Believing we are the reason it happened means we feel we could have prevented it, did something to deserve it, or did something that made them do it when none of these are true.

People who do bad things to others are... bad. It's that simple. They often don't care who they hurt and will exploit anyone they can. When a survivor finds themselves in the path of a bad person, there is no way of knowing what that person is capable of or how that person will react to any given scenario; it is completely out of anyone's control other than the bad person.

Forgiveness is not about suddenly allowing the bad person grace for what they have done; it is about understanding that they have internal struggles they are unable to manage. When strong emotions are unmanageable, they are acted out and they are shared with others through no fault of their own.

To forgive is to release ourselves from the pain and the cold emotional grip of the bad person. When we remain in a freeze state because of the pain we feel, it gives the bad person power over us, power there is a chance the bad person doesn't even care about. Once we can allow ourselves to enter a space where we see that the behavior of the bad person had nothing to do with us, we have reached forgiveness.

You may wonder how something that felt so personal can have nothing to do with you. The bad person did indeed do something bad, and it may have greatly affected us. The lesson is that they would have done the same thing to whoever was where we were at the time of the incident, making it something that inflicted incredible pain without actually being targeted to us.

Bad people are careless in their actions, impulsive, insensitive, and will stop at nothing when the urge presents itself. They often lack boundaries, especially within others, and maturity. At times, it almost seems as though they are completely clueless about the damage they are doing and go on about their day seeking out another opportunity to get their needs met.

Bad people also do things to hurt others intentionally, and this is often under the premise of promising something positive and delivering something completely different. Forgiveness in a scenario like this is more difficult once we understand the abuse was intentional, however, the same rules apply.

They do it only because they don't understand healthy behavior, or have an interest in executing it. They struggle with allowing their own vulnerabilities and insecurities to show while battling a heap of emotional pain inside that has nowhere to go. Maybe they want others to feel as terrible as they do, or maybe they have released the oars and just don't care anymore. It doesn't matter why they have decided to behave that way, we just need to understand it's not about us.

Understanding forgiveness means seeing the wisdom in the frame my grandmother so proudly displayed on her staircase wall. "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heal that crushed it," is about reaching the other side of forgiveness and finding the beauty beyond the pain. The beauty is in the lesson that we can't control the actions of others, and their actions often have nothing to do with us, releasing us from carrying around the pain of their internal struggles.

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invisible heartbreak

Our caregivers, whomever that happens to be for you, model the behavior that eventually becomes part of our regimen of thoughts, actions, reactions, and responses to both positive and negative events in our lives. It may be the people who conceived us, other family members, extended family, or a different adult or set of adults. The only consistency is we had no control over where we lived and what behaviors became part of our tapestry.

Everything from the foods we eat to the traditions we follow during any given celebration originates from the people of our past, creating our culture. The way they drive, their manners in public, their vernacular, the way they manage their emotions, and their viewpoints on the world are all things we adapt to as children. Often times we adapt to it so sincerely that we can't recognize the harm it's doing.

We learn patterns on how to observe, process, and react in all areas of our lives, including our public image and what happens behind closed doors. It's not incredibly difficult to recognize harmful domestic behavior patterns, and I have seen how they can be played out and passed from one generation to the next. Intimacy, menaing the factors relating to how we manage our behavior with intimate partners and the ones we love the most, are typically learned by observing how our caregivers manage their role with their intimate partner and close family members.

If we are lucky enough to be in an environment with positive physical affection, achievements are celebrated, and difficult discussions are approached calmly without being avoided, there's a good chance we view intimacy in a positive light.

On the contrary, if we grow up being told to avoid certain topics or know we can't ask about an event that happened, harboring secrets and feelings are invalided and met with the silent treatment, we were not given the opportunity to learn healthy emotional management. Being in an environment with verbal aggression, physical violence, passive-aggressive behaviors, or unfair, untruthful, or malicious treatment as a model is an indication we may be managing our caregiver's unresolved generational trauma. The behavior patterns are then taught and repeated, through no error of our own because we don't have the skills or knowledge to replace them with healthy ones.

As we begin our journey to navigate our adulthood in the great wide open, many of us are on the search for the perfect mate: the person who understands us and loves us for who we are without the desire to change anything about us. Someone who will respect our choices and needs, someone who will be willing and able to comfort us when we are sad, celebrate our victories, and support us when we need strength. Without the ability to recognize these behaviors in another, we may find ourselves in a loop of disappointing romantic encounters. There is no doubt this is going to affect our mental health.

Many of us seek therapy for guidance in navigating out of a chain of abusive or stagnant romantic relationships. To love and be loved is one of the most precious things we can have in our lives, and if we are never taught the skills to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, how are we supposed to know how to? When we start exploring where we learned these behaviors, generational trauma is often the thing that bubbles to the surface, and the road to recovery can begin.

Generational trauma is something that becomes understood and recognized out of necessity only to discover we need to dive in and learn how to fix it. It starts within, and then we must learn the skills to break the cycle and pass those healthy behaviors to the next generation.

As a therapist, I have seen the effects of generational trauma, and it's a difficult subject to approach. Since almost all healing is driven by personal motivation to change, we must first identify there is something to heal from. The problem with generational trauma is that it is part of our culture, and when it comes to culture, we need to look at our upbringing and actions with brand-new eyes.

Healing from generational trauma requires a massive amount of maturation and insight, and if we are the ones who were chosen to be the cycle breaker, it means seeing our caregivers and family members differently. When we begin our healing journey, there is a chance we will be greeted with rejection, denial, projection, and other defense mechanisms that play a part in creating the chain of trauma itself.

This involves the painful process of discovering the people who raised us have trauma they did not heal from, and essentially put us in the line of fire without knowing it. This is hard to hear, discover, and learn, and it is heartbreaking to admit and accept. It is also incredibly difficult to correct because without knowing what to do instead, we are thrown back into the unhealthy cycle. We must learn healthy behaviors to replace the toxic ones.

The ones in the family who see the pattern and take the initiative to create a healthier environment are the cycle breakers. Having the insight to break the cycle is one of the most difficult positions within a family, and may be one of the most difficult things we encounter in our lives. Healing from generational trauma has elements involving intense heartbreak, and accelerated growth. It means accepting not only the behaviors themselves but also the responsibility for changing the patterns, which involves a deep understanding that it wasn't their choice to learn the behaviors in the first place. This is what makes generational trauma an invisible heartbreak.

It is my belief we all have the inherent desire to spread positivity, and many times aggression, violence, sadness, and betrayal are learned reactions based on unresolved generational trauma we inherited from our caregivers. We all have the power to choose our own actions, and it is never too late to break the chain.