Story of the Month: April
Let Forgiveness Liberate You
When we contemplate forgiveness, we generally consider the benefits it holds for the forgiven, but liberation also belongs to the forgiver. When you forgive yourself and others, you initiate a process of healing, of becoming whole, of moving forward, and becoming our best selves. On the other hand, to withhold forgiveness is to choose to remain a victim, confining yourself to the deed from which you think you cannot recover. Forgiveness requires an act of imagination, that is, to dare to imagine a different future for yourself. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Our capacity to forgive is an indicator of our resilience, our ability to bounce back from injustice and live a life of love. Some wounds can not simply be forgiven and forgotten, they need to be revisited from time to time. Resilience allows us to engage in this spiral dance of healing, where we revisit old wounds in a new way.
Jan Mirikitani’s journey of forgiving those who sexually abused holds resonance for a lot of women, given that one out of every three women nationally and globally have experienced some form of abuse. Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2000 and 2001, President of Glide Foundation, a human service program providing services for overcoming poverty and a lack of self-worth, Jan, a second generation Japanese American, knows about worthlessness first hand, and her own experience has driven her dedication to make a difference in people’s lives. When we see and hear successful women like Jan, we often don’t imagine that they have suffered great injustices, partly because, in many cases, they shy away from revealing their painful, personal experiences. However, not Jan.
“My stepfather became my main perpetrator of incest,” Jan told me. “He would do things like sexualize a kitten with his hands, demonstrating to me the kind of power over life and death he had in his hands, showing me he had ultimate control over my life. It wasn’t just my stepfather; I was incested by a lot of men in my family, uncles, cousins, starting from the age of five until I left home at the age of seventeen. I would fight, but it didn’t make a difference. I would tell my mother, but she would just pretend she didn’t hear. I would be furious with her. For years, I was more angry with her than I was with my stepfather, because she didn’t protect me, and she did not believe me.”
Although an excellent student, while Jan was in graduate school in the 60’s, she grew deeply depressed and attempted suicide on a couple of occasions. She was getting beat up every day by her boyfriend, drinking too much, popping some pills. Feeling unloved, unlovable, and undeserving of love, Jan seemed to have little control over her own life. Needing to pay her rent, Jan applied for a job at the newly forming organization called Glide. “I am always surprised at my life. I think that destiny had something to do with me going there because it was there that I met Cecil.”
Cecil Williams was a youthful, radical, African American minister appointed to a very conservative United Methodist church. He took down the cross and removed the altar and opened the space to all kinds of people. Runaway teenagers, hookers, gay/lesbian groups, native Americans, Black Panthers, hippies all found a place at Cecil’s church. “Seeing all this activity, life slapped me in my face, ‘Hey, wake up. There’s an existence outside your own navel and your own self pity.’ It was like somebody shook me and woke me up.”
“And there was Cecil. I remember this one moment, when he said, ‘I love you unconditionally.’ It completely shook me. I thought he must be after my body. What else could it be? But he said, ‘No, I accept you for who you are.’ And that shocked me. As a woman who has been abused, you believe that there is nothing worthy beyond the physical extent of your flesh. He spoke to my soul and that was a turning point for me. I felt I had a cause, I never left Glide.” Cecil would become Jan’s soul mate and husband with whom she would build Glide.
In the glow of Cecil’s love, Jan began to feel that she was worth fighting for. She started writing poetry and began to find her voice.”It was like that special effect in the movies,” Jan recalled, “where the invisible man becomes more and more visible. My voice was small, but it grew and grew.
“We formed a circle of recovery for abused women; every ethnic group you could think of was present. Hearing their brutal honesty saved my life and told me ‘I am not alone.’ That circle enabled me to speak my own truth, and be validated for it. We shared the common feeling of a lack of self-worth and as women of color in this society you feel even more unworthy. And these are all beautiful women.
“Going into recovery was a humbling experience. I realized that hanging on to the hatred, hanging on to being the victim, kept me oppressed. Victims have a really hard time forgiving, because that means you have to give up being a victim.
“Forgiveness is a huge act of love. Forgiveness is an act of giving for another. That’s what “for-giveness” is about. I haven’t achieved it. I tried forgiving my stepfather. When he died in the hospital, I went to see him and as he lay dead, I told him that I wanted to bury all my anger, forgive him and let him go. That same day, the sewage backed up in my mother’s house, shit bubbling in the bathtub. I screamed and I laughed, when I saw this, and I said, ‘He ain’t letting me go!’
“The people I work with are the poor, the homeless, the wretched of the earth. I love these people, what my friend calls “spoiled fruit,” the ones who have been bruised, damaged, and mishandled. They truly are the sweetest fruit, because they have gone through the pain of struggle but also where this experience of spirit makes them more empathic.
“The struggle of re-creating yourself is a constant struggle to change and we can never be complacent. I don’t believe we change voluntarily. We change because we must. I don’t ever believe that change isn’t without pain. You always do it kicking and screaming. We burn to find a different self.”
And like phoenixes, Iron Butterflies rise from their own ashes, afloat on the power of forgiveness.