Forgiveness and the Double-Nickel Year
Full Moon Post of October
I am Double-Nickels—a phrase coined by a good friend when she turned 55, and has since been taken up by the rest of my friend group as we reach this age. With this formative year comes an urge to do a significant amount of self-examination. Perhaps it's the auspiciousness of those two fives side by side, or maybe it's the nickel’s modest, vintage vibe that makes this moment more symbolic. Or perhaps, after everything that has unfolded in recent years, I finally have the capacity to go deeper. As I stand at this milestone, I have been delving into why I write, and for this full moon post in particular—because the full moon is a time for forgiveness after all—why I titled this publication, Songs of Forgiveness.
When I chose the title, Songs of Forgiveness, for this publication, I did so intentionally. Because language sets things into motion. I see the damage that unhealthy political discourse has done in American society and I chose the name as a sort of antidote to the misuse of language, an intention to seed more of what the world needs right now rather than contribute to what there was already too much of. But taking on the concept of forgiveness wasn’t just for lofty ideal—it was also rooted in a personal intention to heal myself through my relationship with my mother.
As my mom’s eldest, I was born of her 20 year old womb and planted in the dark loamy earth where she had been raised. I was the first of my generation to both my mother and my father’s families. My mom wasn’t ready to be a mom. She loved babies and she loved me, but marriage and family was most useful as a way out of the trap of her obligations to the farm and to her grief stricken parents after the loss of her sister. She had designs on making her dent on the world and she had a world of things yet to do that didn’t include parenting me. Instead she enlisted me as her helper, and I took responsibility for what she could not. Songs of Forgiveness was a way to let go of my resentment of that.
Early Memories
Below is a memory that returned at the writing of this.
We are by the kitchen sink and she has a fist full of my hair. It’s the blue kitchen of our house in Austin, Minnesota where we lived from the beginning of my fifth grade year to the end of my junior year of high school. We had just returned home from some event and she pulls me closer to her face where all her features are narrowed in anger. Her force-of-nature energy is pinned on me. I could have been any age in the range of those six years. I’m aware of having embarrassed her in public with some unremembered behavior. She says through pursed lips, “Never. Do. That. Again.”
In the writing of that memory another one comes, my presentation in my public speaking class of sophomore year. I am in the middle; the shaking of my hands, the blankness of my brain, I can’t catch my breath. The experience returns to me and I see they are connected. I had learned to avoid evaluation in public so as not to embarrass her, and here, in front of the classroom and the evaluation of my classmates, panic set in.
I forgave my mother for her rare displays of anger and perfectionism. I needed her, so it was essential that I let go of resentments. I had no interest in holding any anger against her because we were in this together. In fact, I did a good job of giving it back. I once accused her of not wanting me to cut my hair, because then she wouldn’t have anything to grab when she was angry. That made her livid. As I came of age, I cultivated other behaviors that went against her perfectionism. “Tina taste,” my mother would call it. A little like Grandma’s “that’s different,” it meant “that’s not what I would choose.”
Alzheimer’s
While early experiences paved the foundation for my practice of forgiveness, my mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis presented ever more opportunities for practice.
Years later, I would be at her deathbed and that anger face would appear again, as it had from time to time throughout her illness. Eyes trained on me, this time without the words. Language was long gone by then. She hadn’t been out of bed in weeks. But her look could still incite the same skin crawl from the ground up. A wave of it from feet, through legs, groin, belly, heart and throat — followed by profound weakness. All my energy transmuted to liquid and drained away. Even at this transformed version of herself, I was bloodless.
Though logically I knew that her brain was riddled with the plaques from Alzheimer’s by then and her responses more wild animal than human, my body responded. Even while trapped in the bed she had crawled into months before, she could freeze me in my tracks.
Calling it Songs of Forgiveness set my intention to have patience with her Alzheimer’s, and with myself. Moments of anger would happen frequently when we tried to keep her safe or needed to help her with grooming. Her deteriorating brain made it difficult for her to understand why we thought these things necessary. As a loved one begins to forget, forgiveness is required to let go over and over again of what is no longer relevant, of the frustration at how long everything began to take. Time itself became a song for forgiveness.
Hannah Arendt
And then there was this hope for freedom that led me to call this publication Songs of Forgiveness. I decided to draw inspiration from thinker Hannah Arendt. Her ideas came out of being a refugee during World War II and trying to make sense of the cruelty and violence of Nazi Totalitarianism. She came up with forgiveness as a political act, a choice to release someone from their past actions and to allow for the possibility of future actions. She saw forgiveness as way to move past what has been done and give hope for something new in the future. I chose to evoke her rule of action and forgiveness as I began this whole writing project. If I was going to take risks and write the truth as I knew it, then forgiveness would allow me to keep moving. And it has been the writing that has helped me understand that forgiveness is not just an abstract concept, but a deeply personal process with its own rhythms and reasons.
Even though mom was beyond offering forgiveness, or even being aware of what I had written by the time this writing commenced, what I longed for was freedom from worry about the outcome, what she would think, what my sisters and her friends would think. I wanted to tell stories as if the truth belonged to me, and what I found is: truth belongs to all of us and for that reason, is constraining, and with freedom must come responsibility. I care about my mother’s legacy, but these memories ask to be written, and they aren’t for her anymore.
A Better Future
These memories are a song to a past self who drained away. When we all lived together, she required us to keep the secret of the disease she was battling, even though it was the disease that inspired us to give up everything and throw our lots together into one big house. I did my yoga teacher training while we lived there and when it was time to be evaluated, my panic attacks started again. I waited to write these missives until she could no longer understand. I have long dreaded my mother’s anger, and anyone else’s really. Who does not dread anger? Her fist in my hair, the not knowing which boundaries I transgressed, had consequences that I am only just now beginning to understand at my double nickel year. Forgiveness is a process.
May this song be for a better future for mothers like her, ambitions, intelligent, with a sense of purpose, and saddled with the unreasonable expectations our society puts on woman who are professionals.
Health Benefits
Forgiveness doesn’t come quickly or at someone else’s demand. Saying sorry doesn’t automatically mean you deserve forgiveness. Forgiveness is by and for the one who has been hurt, it requires turning towards what hurts with an open heart. Therefore forgiveness comes down to the practice of the heart’s willingness to see its own wounds and pain, and let go of any ill will in response. And that process will take as long as it takes. While forgiveness, or I should say—the release of holding on to tensions— is the goal, it's crucial to acknowledge that the path often begins with anger—a emotion that plays its own important role in this journey.
Anger on its own isn’t a problem. It is a wisdom that points to boundary transgressions. You need anger to understand and create healthy boundaries. Recognizing the role of anger in our lives naturally leads us to consider the impacts of holding onto resentment and practicing forgiveness on our overall well-being.
Over time, if resentments fester, the increase in stress hormones will have cascading negative effects on things such as your heart health and your immune function. Long term effects of elevated cortisol can impact your eyesight and digestive health, cause headaches, and even a decrease in bone density. Holding on to anger can change the workings of your brain, making it difficult to make healthy decisions and to create short term memories.
It is the release of cortisol that interferes with my ability to perform in front of an audience, making what I want to say hard to remember and causing the loop of fear of fear that drives the panic attack. And who’s to say what a forgiveness practice would have done for mom if we could go back to that blue kitchen in Austin and she could practice a willingness to forgiveness herself and me during what was sure to have been stressful times for both of us.
At double nickels, I have found consolation. If for some reason my words do harm, I know I sent them out not knowing what I do not know. I must trust that humility and have confidence in my ability to see things to their end. And, rely on the wisdom, “if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”
We just begin, again and again, and journey with the ever-changing moon. Get out and enjoy the night while the moon is full.