Act can free you from the pain that holds you captive, some say

By Cheryl Sherry
Post-Crescent staff writer

The Rev. Dottie Mathews never will erase memories of being abused by three close relatives beginning at age 13.

Nor can she forget the man she first saw as rescuer, who later perpetrated and compounded the abuse during their marriage. It was a time she describes as tragic and horrific, not only scarring her but also her three children.

Mathews has, however, chosen to forgive.

"The fact that I chose to move forward in my life has nothing to do with absolving any of those people who used and abused me," the 55-year-old Darboy woman said. "In my mind, it is not in my power to tell them it is OK. It is not OK and it never will be. …

"But what I came to know is that those people stole big chunks of my life from my early teens to my late 20s and I did not want to give them any more of my one precious life by focusing my energies on them or becoming engulfed in anger. … They've gone on in their world. For me to continue to allow them to define me is something I was unwilling to do."

What is forgiveness?

Today is Easter Sunday, when Christians celebrate Christ's resurrection from the dead. Christ set a noble standard when it comes to forgiveness.

Forgiveness, as defined by Webster, is the act of giving up the resentment held against an offender.

While forgiving someone who has done you wrong is essential to mental health, forgiveness can be a difficult thing for people who aren't clear about its purpose.

"By forgiving someone, you are saying that you will not hold what they did against them," said Appleton clinical psychologist Rob Burkham. "That means that you will work to let go of the anger, bitterness and blame that ties you to them in an unhealthy way. It is a process to forgive someone and it takes time. It is a process of changing your thinking and feelings about what the other person did to you. It is a process that can lead to more peace for you, even if the other does not accept forgiveness."

Carlos Herrera, Hispanic ministries coordinator at St. Therese Church in Appleton, points to Jesus' sacrifices, the ones being celebrated today by Christians, as a path toward finding forgiveness even in the most difficult of circumstances.

"If we forgive each other we are also part of the new power of love that the Lord risen has given us," Herrera said. "Therefore we will be apostles of the resurrection, with joy, hope and forgiveness."

Mathews said she's a testament to those words and the need to find forgiveness in your heart before joy and hope can return to your life. Around the time she turned 30, Mathews came to the realization that no matter how worthless she believed herself to be, she needed to begin making decisions that would permit her to be the parent her children, then ages 6, 4 and 2, needed her to be. So she left her husband.

Mathews' road to forgiving those who hurt her took more than 20 years and involved taking responsibility for her life.

"My healing involved years of counseling, diving into spiritual practices, shedding buckets of tears, borrowing hope and strength from a community of support when I became shaky — but with all that I trudged forward and moved toward accepting that my past will never not be my past," she said. "The only thing I had any control over was the future I might live."A skilled counselor helped Mathews know she did not bring those past events upon herself. "But that's what children do," she said. "When I realized I didn't make those things happen to me I remember that being very freeing."

Since then her spiritual progress has been steady, so steady that in 2006 she was ordained and now serves as assistant minister at Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Appleton.

Benefits of forgiveness

The need to forgive is often intertwined with other struggles in life, said family therapist Lynda Savage, owner and director of the Center for Family healing, a mental health outpatient clinic in Menasha. Savage also is founder and director of Practical Family Living, a nonprofit Web and radio Christian outreach.

Forgiveness, however, is not the first subject she introduces when meeting with new clients.

"One needs to hear the person's genuine concern and hurt, anger and loneliness before you say forgiveness is part of your healing, a part of your adjustment, a part of your goal of getting through this," Savage said. "Forgiveness is a part of the process of understanding letting someone off the hook and no longer blaming lets you off the hook and become more free to get unstuck from their pain and hurt."

Forgiveness, Savage added, is not trusting or agreeing with the offender. "It's not saying I agree with your actions that hurt me. It's agreeing we all fall short of perfection and that we all need forgiveness."

The practice of forgiveness not only has been shown to reduce anger, hurt, depression and stress, it also leads to greater feelings of hope, compassion and self-confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships and physical health.

"Living in a state of un-forgiveness is living in a state of stress," Savage said. "And when you are living in a state of stress your body is emitting all kinds of things that we call hormones that are the fight or flight kind of hormones. …That type of stress is hard on your body, hard on your heart. … It's a physiological thing as well as a spiritual thing."

Acting out bitterness

In 2006, the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University conducted a study on whether child abuse and child neglect caused crime. The findings suggested criminal behavior increases not only with the incidence of maltreatment but also with the severity of maltreatment. Until a child comes to terms with the experience, accepts it and learns to forgive the abuser for what they did, they will never be able to disassociate themselves from the experience.

Many of the troubled and at-risk teenage boys who live at Rawhide Boys Ranch south of New London have been hurt by life, said clinical supervisor Mark Tegtmeier. "They come out of some difficult family situations such as abuse, neglect, family conflict; there are a lot of addictions, a lot of blended family issues as well as many others."

Rawhide is a Christian-based organization that works to equip at-risk boys to become responsible young men through family-centered care, treatment and education. Therapeutic treatment addresses their emotional needs.

"As they work with us, they come to a place where they make a conscious decision to forgive a parent or a family member who has deeply wounded them in some way," Tegtmeier said. "Sometimes that entails sitting down and writing a letter. It may even be a letter to someone who is deceased, but it's a conscious decision on their part to let go and to release, to overcome bitterness and resentment or hard feelings that may have developed as the result of some injury or offense that was caused to them."

Forgiveness, Tegtmeier said, is essentially wiping the debt clean. "You're saying that that person is released and you are letting go. It's a very freeing experience for those that do. A lot of the boys realize they can have peace in their hearts and they can stop feeling revenge or retaliation toward someone that's hurt them. It's a tremendous feeling of release and just a liberation that they experience."

A softer side

There is no universe in which Mathews' abuse or the suffering of others is acceptable, "but it is up to me to say I don't have to carry it around anymore," she said. "I don't have to be identified as their victim anymore. But it took me a lot of years and a lot of tears and a lot of counseling and enormous love for my children, which was the motivator.

"There's a Buddhist writer, Pema Chodron, who says when you can touch the center of your sorrow and let it soften you then can be useful in helping to heal the world. Don't hide from it. Don't deny that it happened, but really go there and touch it and realize this is the truth and allow it to soften you.

"I can't erase my experiences, but I have a choice — are they going to harden me toward the world or soften me? My choice is how do I be soft now. How do I turn this into an open heart that allows me to be compassionate toward the world?"

Forgiveness, Mathews said, is "acknowledging my past will never not be my past, so tomorrow I can move on. And that one I can do something about."