RESENTMENT

Sept 23, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader

“Before recovery some of us spent countless hours in resentment….”  BRB p.380

“Many of us come into ACA with seething resentments. We can be recognized by the hundred-pound resentment rock around our necks. Convinced that the rock was placed there by others, we hang onto it as if to let it go would cause us harm.  The rock is content to remain where it is. However, the pain of carrying it may be too much.

ACA teaches us that forgiving others has nothing to do with the other person. We do it for ourselves so we can let go of our own pain. We hear others say that praying daily to forgive the person we resent will eventually rid us of that resentment. We learn that we don’t forgive the act, but do forgive the person.

Many of us who hear these things for the first time think it sounds foolish.  But what else have we done that has been able to chip away at the poison our resentment has brought into our lives? So we try it, repeatedly, every day.

After a while, we notice a remarkable thing happening.  The details that seemed so important and were feeding our ongoing resentment seem to be fading. Our rock is losing some of its weight.

On this day I do what has worked for so many others in recovery; I pray that the resentment I’ve been mired in for so long will be removed.” 

My experience:

I had so many resentments I cannot count.  Although outwardly it seems like I had a successful life, I was mired in these resentments that were holding me back.  I could not forget, thus not forgive.  What I came to see is that I can forgive the person and thus releasing me from them.  But that does not mean that I need to let them back in my life.  I get to choose my interaction, if any, for that person that I forgive.  In the forgiving process, I identified the pain, sat with it, felt it, and worked with my HP to release it.  This was all for me, not for the other person.  I am in a much better place today.  Thank you ACA.

UNTITLED

You shattered my safety you seized my innocence

I could no longer wallow in my youthful bliss

Though you were unknown when first we met

You were part of the clan and supposed to protect

But slithering you were waiting to cause me pain

Tears shed for years thinking I was to blame

Faith wasted away from those supposed to protect me

With that instead, I grew up angry

As my wrath increased, the trends I did buck

With me not a single person wanted to fuck

Even to this day the PTSD exists

My body reacts to this bygone innocence

I was naive and the elder I was made to trust

Never understanding you had an agenda about us

So this secret I held for so many years

Instilling in my core a surplus of fears

As I learn about forgiveness from the Bishop afar

I am told to have compassion of who you are

What in your humanity must have happened to you

Did you only echo what you saw and what you knew

On the innocent were you made to prey

What on Gods earth made you act this way

Did you not have a choice in all the insanity

Were you like me, part of the ACA family

Keeping that in mind I now take a different view

With my heart on my sleeve, today I forgive you.

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