Psychopaths don't say, "I'm sorry."

Last week was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It’s one of the holiest days of the year. A time for forgiveness, making amends, and setting intentions for the New Year. I fucked up a lot this year. I lost my temper, lost my patience, and sometimes even lost hope. So, I said I’m sorry to those closest to me and forgave myself, and others, for being fallible.

Even the ones who never asked for forgiveness.

It took me a long time to begin the process of forgiveness for those who never asked. Embarking on the journey toward forgiveness for my mother became much easier after she died. Even though I hadn’t spoken to her in a long while, just knowing she was still alive and so totally in denial about any of her actions created a chasm of hurt and anger too wide to cross. She didn’t deserve to be forgiven, and why should I forgive someone who would never be the least bit remorseful anyway? But eventually, through much self-work, therapy, and the support of a truly loving relationship, that hurt and anger shifted into something like acceptance.

After my mother died, holding onto hurt and anger at someone who wasn’t even alive just seemed silly, and more than a little burdensome. She still didn’t deserve my forgiveness. But I did. And so, I began to forgive. Little by little. Nothing that she did was okay, but I can forgive it anyway. Because she was broken. She was a broken person in every way a person can be, in her brain, in her body, and in her soul. And that’s really, really sad. It still doesn’t make it right. But it does make it easier to accept and to let go. Because it couldn’t have been any other way.

My mother was never going to be capable of love, or joy, or understanding of a life apart from her own insanity. And it’s unfair of me to demand that she, or life, or the universe make things any different than they were. She lived a miserable life filled with pain, anger, and sadness. I can’t pretend to know why I was placed on earth as her child. Whether it was shitty luck, or destiny, or something entirely random. I can choose to question, to ask why all day long, to look for answers in crystal balls, or make a full-time job out of trying to make sense out of it.

Or I can choose forgiveness.

I’m not going to lie and say it’s always the easy choice. There are times when some horrific violent repressed memory comes along and smacks me upside the head, and I can feel myself sinking into the same old patterns of hurt and anger. And sometimes it takes a minute, or a week, or more to process. But I know in the end that I will forgive her. Because I am choosing to, over and over and over again. I am choosing to live the life that she never could.

Psychopaths may never say, “I’m sorry,” but the rest of us can forgive them anyway.

As for the other folks in my family that remain in the present tense, well, forgiveness is a process with them too, one that I continue to work on all the time. I have very little or nothing to do with most of my family. Not so much because of hurt and anger toward them, although there’s still some residual disappointment lingering, but because I am accepting them. I’m accepting who they have been, and who they are today. For many, that’s not anyone I choose to associate myself with. And for others, well, we just don’t really have much to say to one another. And that’s okay.  Because forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine, or even ever being in the same room with a person again. For me, it just means letting go of the idea that things could have ever been any other way than the way they were.

I am setting an intention for this Jewish New Year to get even more practiced with the art of forgiveness. Why? Because forgiveness feels good. Well, maybe not good exactly, but a hell of a lot better than carrying the dreadful weight of resentment around. I’m not religious at all, and don’t subscribe to the idea that my fate is sealed for an entire year if I fail to make amends on one particular day. But never making amends? Never acknowledging your wrongdoings or forgiving others and letting things go? That’ll seal your fate forever. Just ask my mother.

So, while I’m working on getting better at forgiving others, I may as well go ahead and get better at forgiving myself too. It’s hard not to want to go back in time and do things differently, make better choices, say all the right things. Knowing that I did the best I could at the time is a small consolation for suffering through the years of consequences for my own misguided decisions. I’ve done a lot of work to give the many versions of me the love and acceptance I know they deserve. But there’s still a bit to go. It’s a slow process. Afterall, it's often more difficult to forgive yourself than others. But if I’m going to break all these negative cycles I inherited, then the cycle of depriving myself of the joy of the present because of the mistakes of my past needs to be pretty frigging high on that list. Fortunately, I’m getting pretty good at saying, “I’m sorry,” and for saying, “I forgive yo