Part 5 FORGIVENESS
By Trace A. DeMeyer
I woke up with two thoughts:
there are two victims of adoption who need help and not necessarily from each
other: the adoptee and the first mother. Each has its own burden and neither
can heal the other.
Indian Country has many hurts from the past that include
assimilation, lies, bad laws and massive abductions of children called residential boarding schools and Indian Adoption
Programs. In order for us to move forward, we work as one people to heal our societies,
and yet we must individually move forward in order for this to work.
Being adopted, living as an adoptee, was my life and was a very important part of my journey. But it's no longer all that I am nor does it control me. I see my life moving forward now and anger does not control me or my actions.
The following essay is an important part of this collective
healing for all adoptees and all mothers.
The Four
Directions of ForgivenessBy White Bison (May 2012)
The Elders explained to us that to hold past
hurts us….we keep ourself in a prison…and the hurts done to many of our people in
the boarding schools are now being passed down generation to generation. This
intergenerational hurt is behind the alcohol problems, the violence, the abuses
and even the suicides. It is time we
break the cycle of passing this on to our children and our grandchildren. They told us that our last test is going to
be …."can we forgive"…..even to forgive the unforgivable.
There are 4 directions of forgiveness:
The
First forgiveness is
in the east is the everyday forgiveness. Then we say, I’m sorry.
The
Second forgiveness is in the south and is called the forgiveness of
the unforgivable. This would be like
violence, domestic abuse or sexual abuse. We do this type of forgiveness to free
ourselves; it doesn’t mean we make the offenders not be responsible for what
they did, but we ask the creator to help us be free.
The Third forgiveness
is in the west and is the forgiveness of yourself. Sometimes this is harder to do than
the first two. You ever do something
stupid during the day or night and the next day you are filled with reqret that
won’t go away? Maybe you try to keep it
a secret and the secret eats away at you. Maybe even wishing a thousand times that you
had not done what you did. Help from the
creator often is the only hope to forgive self. There is one thing the Creator CANNOT do and that
is NOT help one of His children who asks for help. He/She must help by his own rules, the rule of
love. There is a saying….Love thy neighbor as thyself…and that is the problem… most
of us do.
The Fourth forgiveness is in the north and this
is when we forgive
someone to set their spirit free. Or it could be an institution like a church or
the government. You ever have someone
hurt you, you have forgiven them but they cannot look you in the eye? You do it to set their spirit free. You forgive even though they don’t deserve it.
You forgive, anyway.
When our children
see us practicing forgiveness, they will do it also.
Part 6 will continue in a few weeks...please leave comments and share this series with your friends and families on Facebook and Twitter.... Thank you for reading this blog. Mitakuye Oyasin... Trace
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