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Forgive but don't forget - moving on from our mistakes


I have a lot of things to hold against myself, many and most of which are a by-product of my excessive drinking days. Since giving up drinking, the feelings have come up to the fore, because now there’s no longer the self-administered anaesthetic to soften the blow and help me forget. It’s all there in glorious bloody technicolour, waiting for me when I wake up like a black dog with a bone, reminding me at a moment’s notice of my multiple mistakes.


Now I just want to throw something into this one woman pity party: I heard someone say recently, on TV (it may have been on my ultimate guilty pleasure - Neighbours – I forget) that mistakes are there to learn from. And this is absolute GOLD, something we should all remember in every day life, but are so focused on beating ourselves up that we often don’t. Mistakes are there to learn from.


This post was born because one day back in January I realised that it’s been one whole year since I promised myself I would stop beating myself up about, and try to come to terms with, the end of my marriage. A whole fricking year. And I had to think hard about why I really was no closer to coming to terms with it than I was at the start of 2020. Yes, pandemic. Yes other things to think about/concentrate on/head above water, ensuring my babies are safe/happy/well/SAFE (warrants saying twice) etc. Equally I’ve stopped drinking, and that’s massive – that’s huge. It’s taken a lot, and I mean A LOT for me to get to where I am now with that. So yes, like most people my concentration has been elsewhere and my focus has been on other issues the last 12 months. But what I realised this morning is basically the crux of it all – I’ve yet to forgive myself.


Now this blog isn’t about my marriage; but the demise of said relationship and the lack of self-forgiveness for my part in that is what got me thinking about forgiveness as a whole, it’s role in healing in our sobriety, and how it can help us regroup and move on in many parts of our lives.


Forgiveness is a really big step in the sober journey; not only do we have to acknowledge and forgive our past drinking selves to truly move on emotionally, but it plays into the whole intrinsic package of self-care too. Being kind to ourselves involves forgiving ourselves for our crappy behaviour when we were drinking; asking forgiveness from the innocent bystanders we dragged into our sh*tshows, and also our physical selves - our damaged bodies and our poor poor minds. We need to learn to forgive ourselves for all of that. Recovery is all about self-care and healing, and forgiveness is a pretty big part of healing and moving forward positively, right? I mean, I’m no therapist, but I think this makes some sense.


So this is how I see it, and I’ve formulated some steps I can take to try and make a start on this. Your steps may evolve from or be completely different to mine, but we run our own race and as you know I just LOVE making lists and oversharing. So here they are:


1. I need to forgive myself for making the wrong choices. To allow myself to accept that my choices to drink - and subsequent behaviour whilst inebriated - played a big part in how things went south in many areas of my life. I need to acknowledge, forgive myself and move past it, as opposed to sit, dwell on and continue to beat myself up over it. I may need to read this paragraph many, many more times before it sinks in, but it’s a start.


2. Gratitude lists or journal entries are great techniques to get my head straight. I personally think of things I’m grateful for at the start of each day (you can read all about that here), and meditate for a short while using these as my focus. This morning, instead of gratitude, I concentrated on a simple ‘I forgive myself’ mantra. Now you may not be down with meditation or anything like that, I wasn’t for a very long time. But if nothing else, I’ve found lately that positive affirmations can go a long way to set up a positive mindset. How about starting by repeating a simple mantra each morning… “I forgive myself” or “I forgive you”. Say it in the lotus position, in the shower, in the mirror or in the nude. But just saying it and believing it will help shift things mentally, even just a little.


3. It takes two to tango. The call of the drink is strong my friend, and although you’re literally doing all the heavy lifting (of the bottle), the ubiquitous and insidious nature of drink in our society, our social lives and general way of fricking LIFE means that it’s a constant battle. It’s there to celebrate, commiserate, commemorate. IT’S NOT JUST YOU IN THE BATTLE, YOUR DRINKING BUDDY ALCOHOL IS RIGHT THERE, EGGING YOU ON, CALLING YOU TO ARMS. So forgive yourself, because it’s not all your fault and only yours – we are not in our sane right minds when under the influence. Alcohol is an addictive substance and although this is no excuse for crappy behaviour, you need to allow yourself to be forgiven for believing the bullshit it feeds us. The important thing is you’re out of that now (or thinking about leaving it behind, hence why you're here) and you can start working on healing the drink-ravaged damage.


4. Of course the stuff that you’re dealing with may be bigger than just asking for self-forgiveness; it may need to be forgiven by others that have been hurt emotionally or physically by you. When I’ve done something wrong, like most of us, my moral compass means I need to atone for the consequences of my actions. I know this is part of the AA’s 12 steps, and while I’m not in on that personally, I do think this is just out-and-out common sense for anyone at fault, in any situation that has negative repercussions - to apologise. I teach my kids that if you hurt someone, even if it’s by accident, you still say sorry. Same goes for adults – you hurt someone, you say sorry. Sometimes that may not be enough, but it’s certainly a start, and it sets you on the right mental path to make further amends if need be. Admitting to our faults and having someone else forgive us goes a long way for us to in turn forgive ourselves and move forward. Worst case scenario, there’s a chance that the recipient of your apology doesn’t want to know. But you will know in your mind that in the absence of doing the right thing in the first instance, you at least gave it your best shot at rectifying it after the event and allowing yourself some closure. And you can lose literally nothing by saying sorry to yourself as well. Go on, give it a go.


5. Write it down… Carrying all the blame and self recrimination around is tiring, it’s hard, but if you can, try and put it down and lighten the load - that will help your mindset massively. God knows giving up drinking is a hard enough job without adding guilt and self-flagellation into the mix. Journaling has helped me come to terms with a lot of regrets I carry. While it doesn’t alleviate it entirely, it certainly helps to offload (and it’s not always possible to apologise to the ones we’ve hurt). So journaling or the age old ‘writing a letter and burning it’ trick can always be used as a fallback. Or how about writing a letter and actually posting it, in real life? Sometimes the old ones are the best. The joy of writing instead of talking is that there’s endless scope for editing and ensuring you get it just right, in order to put forward the best version of what you need to get off your chest.


In the end, it may need more than a simple atonement - counselling might be needed for you to work through the deeper issues. But approaching and accepting that self-forgiveness is actually required in the first place is a really good starting point to allow yourself the space and grace to move forward, and ensures that we learn from our mistakes rather than repeating them. And don't forget, if you're sober, that in itself is an insanely amazing step of self-love and self-care to take. In the wise words of Miguel Ruiz:


'Forgive yourself. The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you've created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows.'


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