In just 4 Months...a summary:

[From the Facebook page: Julie Chimes on Forgiveness]

Julie Williamson 27 May at 11:39

Why do YOU think forgiveness is important?

This year I want to change my life – “do as you always did, get what you always got” otherwise. My theme for this year is “letting go” as for decades I have been living with the mental consequences of being sexual assaulted, being sexually bullied as a child and being mentally abused as a young adult, without much help or support at the time to get through the experiences. For the perpetrators involved, these acts are probably forgotten, water under the bridge, but for me, it has been as if the things happened yesterday, but I have now got to the point where I want to let go of the past’s hold on me, and believe this freedom will come with forgiveness – a forgiveness that I can give to myself – a permission to forget and to live on.

I want to learn how to stop the nightmares as I now realise how much the memories and the past’s holds take power and strength away, but it also shows how much inner strength I do have as despite this, I am still here. I believe that forgiveness will give me back strength and power as I am so tired: I want to let go of my bad past, but at the moment its talon-like grip still holds me, piercing my flesh, holding on, even though my willingness to hold onto it is waning, my will to let go presently ignored by the nightmares that still come. My hand is limp, so tired from the effort, exhausted from the fight, but the talons are strong, hurting just enough to keep it, unwilling, in my mind and keep the nightmares coming back from time to time. The memories of threats, insults, blows (both physical and mental), of bullying amid harsh treatment to keep me down, to keep me feeling undeserving... But there is still that little bit of me, defiant, unrubbed out, that doesn't believe, that is a whisper but who wants to shout. That little flame, a spark, waiting for the freeing breath to become a fire. I am hopeful that one day I will feel free and safe (finally), and I am willing to learn, to be open again. For years I have felt as though I've been waiting for the invite to truly live my life. Now I feel that I have it. I have to "RSVP" the invite but I'm getting there :)


When I wrote the previous words, I was just about to re-start counselling with a new counsellor through a local Women’s charity that helps adult survivors of abuse. I had had a gap of 3-4 years and this time wished to deal with an unresolved, then-current binge eating issue which had its origins in my past of assaults, insults, bullying and mental abuse. Now I has just discharged myself from the counselling – a first in my 12 years of a depression diagnosis – as I feel that I am presently able to face the issues without them being a daily problem, because of a good counsellor, continued support from Julie Chimes, lessons learnt from recent surgery on my dominant arm to relieve tennis elbow, and in the spirit of letting go that forgiveness encompasses. It is new and scary, but exciting too. My bravest thing has been to let go... to go into the world guided by my intuition and a newly-found self-belief.

For over a decade, I've had depression and anxiety, and during that time, received intermittent counselling, usually with the result that the counsellor has moved on before I felt ready. New jobs, promotion, house moves, and sabbaticals were some of things that got in the way and each time I felt unfinished, unguided and lost until I was able to find another form of support. The binge eating was a coping mechanism I now realise that I used to keep strangers and unwanted attention away, and to bury but also keep alive my feelings, self-assigned guilt and fears over my past. I tried to get professional help about a year ago for the binge eating, but was turned down. Luckily another avenue opened and I found counselling through the local charity, and I came into this with my year’s theme of letting go as my pointer.

It was whilst waiting for the counselling to restart that I heard by chance Julie’s interview with Jeremy Vine in May. I was returning from Malvern (from a quilting show) and ordinarily I would not have been listening to the radio at that time in the day, but I used to live in Malvern during a bad, abusive time in my life and I try to return there for other reasons to detach the emotions from the location as the area is too beautiful in itself to avoid and give into the past. Each visit isn’t without some anxiety though, although the amount does decrease with good experiences. There is a saying that when the pupil is ready, a teacher will come. I wasn’t quite there at the time but was ready to listen to Julie’s words and remember, for a time to come.

The counselling started a few months later and during each session many tissues were used as the words spilling out from my mouth and brain brought with them pain still keenly felt. Some were echoes of tears already shed before, old ground re-covered. But this time it was different. I didn’t get to tell all the horrors – just some of the things that deeply affected me – but that was enough with my counsellor, because at last, I felt listened to, heard and acknowledged. I had also reached a place in my life where I was ready.

I had surgery 5 weeks ago on my dominant arm to relieve tennis elbow in my right elbow. The tennis elbow problems had meant that I had been unable to do the creative and crafting things I love for any great length of time and sometimes I had shooting pains up and down my right arm meaning there were times I couldn’t carry anything of great weight and driving a distance usually hurt, and for someone whose “closest” blood relatives are over 180 miles away, doing nothing was not really an option. It wasn’t until nearly the time of the surgery (and afterwards) that the realities hit me - “what if I can’t do…” after the surgery? And all the dreams and plans, some of which were still newly forming, suddenly seemed a long way away. My fears were real, and the thought of pulling out of the surgery option began to grow, but despite the fears and nerves, I went through with it. You might think “No big deal”, but I’m really a (trying to reform) control freak and perfectionist, and letting someone take a knife to you requires great trust.

After the operation, my arm wrapped in a bandage and throbbing from the 4cm insertion, I was intermittently taking pain-killers and anti-emetics whilst at hospital, and was sent home with more codeine and ibuprofen with the strict instructions to carry on taking them. (I’ve since discovered that I am hypersensitive to morphine and codeine). The first night home I dreamt of elves, but by 48 hours of codeine I was having night terrors, of screaming with no voice, so I stopped the codeine as soon as I could. The thing that go me through that darkest night was a small light, little more than a glow, that I saw in my dream state.

The light was not real and was little more than an impression of light, but it gradually grew from the dark after I said to myself “I accept myself as I am”. Again this might not be your big deal but for me this was a first as I’ve always been so hard on myself as a person because others were cruel to me and someone who was always looking to the future or past glories, not looking at who I am now, my real self, so giving myself acceptance for being now was a powerful thing in the dark and kept further terrors away – a leap of faith in the dark…

Just before my surgery I had had a good counselling session, having been set the task to focus on the here and now and since then, had found it possible without my past interfering. I didn’t cry much that next session. The counsellor also said something that made a sea change in me: that things in my past were each isolated events, not collections, or indicators of the things in my future. I realized I no longer had to catalogue, collect events and analyse to death the past for lessons but rather see it all as a passing moment, discrete (i.e. not continuous) and finite in its actions and effect. As a result, I felt different, I felt unblocked, my pain had finally been seen, listened to and acknowledged, so that I felt that I no longer needed to remember it or hold it like a cloak around me to keep me “safe”. And taking that with the nightmares being stopped by an affirming light, it suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted.

The counsellor said that talking to me she had suddenly physically felt the weight I had been under and now suddenly I felt that weight and then felt it leave. Suddenly I felt I could now forget those really sticky, horrible, ugly moments from my past as it came to me that they had had their time, nothing had changed, and whilst they had felt safe to be in, to hold onto, they were detaching me from my present and all the infinite possibilities a moment might hold that had been passing me by without registering. It was then that I found gratitude, for my hubby and son for putting up with me, for realising what a control freak I had been and letting go of my resistance to help and acceptance. I had tried to control uncontrollable things to keep the fears and past away as I felt those things defined me and without them I would be nothing. My surgery also put things in perspective as I was beating myself for not being able to do “so-called simple things” and irritated when people helping me didn’t do things to my still-perfectionist standards. I was punishing myself for needing help, rather than accepting the help that was given. And so I let go… We are not prefect, we are human not machines and the imperfections open opportunities. For most of my life I felt that I was born a duck but now I know I was born a jewel and rather than being scared of not knowing who I am and what I want to do, I’m starting to see the infinite possibilities and feel excited for the journey ahead, being of the moment, rather than focussing on the past.

And so it was nearly 2 weeks ago that I discharged myself from counselling as I felt I had reached a place for the first time where I could walk at least part of this journey with myself, and so far I’m OK. This September was the first Back-to-School day that I didn’t binge eat to push down the feeling of loneliness or of “stopping being a full-time mum”, because, for the first time, I didn’t feel that my role had really changed despite going from holiday mum to term-time mum, so I didn’t feel sad. The revelations have changed my outlook and feelings on the past and the mental weight and my physical weight are going.

It’s still all new, and yes scary, but also exciting, and I have further surgery in a few weeks – to remove my gallbladder this time - but the good thing about the future is that it only comes to you one moment at a time. I’ve restarted making jewellery, but for me this time, making bracelets to remind me to let go of my past and to keep moving forward. I was just writing down some inspiring messages to make into bracelets, but the words started to form a poem so...

Be now
Be of the moment
Let go
Be brave
Take chances
Be magnificent
Just do it
Be...

Alanis Morissette’s song “Thank U” is part of the soundtrack of my life right now, in particular the lyrics "How about me not blaming you for everything/How about me enjoying the moment for once/How about how good it feels to finally forgive you/How about grieving it all one at a time" and "The moment I let go of it was/The moment I got more than I could handle/The moment I jumped off of it was/The moment I touched down". I didn't get gratitude before, because I felt I had nothing to be grateful for, other than my family and some friends. Now I'm starting to see the freedom that not carrying your past with you (as a means of defining you) brings, and I can feel the draining weight go. And I keep reminding myself that I do not need to surround myself with beautiful things to be beautiful: I am enough in myself for that, with my spirit and my mind-set, and belief in myself. I am strong enough to just be.

Originally I looked to my past to define me, meaning I stayed its victim, because I don’t know who am I now, but not knowing is ok, as this is the time available to me to work it out. So rather then running away from the space to work out, I’m starting to accept I can try, make mistakes, and make new ideas, rather than be the shivering jelly too afraid to make a move at all. I don’t have to like my past and yes some of it was so unfair, but I accept that the patterns I thought I saw in the events were not really there and the past is not an indicator of my future, and should not be an invader of my present. So I am learning to accept, to detach the emotions from the past, let go of the hurt and the pain, starting looking to a future (although not too far ahead) and to live each day and as many moments as I can, trying to see/feel/taste/hear/smell/breathe the newness of that moment rather than the staleness of life passed by. I now wear a bracelet that says “life is for living” to remind me of this.

I realise that by reliving the past (by holding onto it and re-playing the bad bits) doesn’t make it perfect in the sense of the best thing ever. The past is already perfect but in the sense that it is finished because it is the past. It’s not a Groundhog Day thing that can be changed until it’s right. But until you learn that lesson the mistaken belief that it can be changed is repeated until you move on. Freedom comes from realising that it's OK to let go.
A moment holds an infinite number of opportunities and possibilities all waiting for you to take a move. That is what is so uplifting, inspiring and, yes, sometimes scary but also exciting, about a moment if you are able to see it (It's taken me over 10 years of depression to finally be able to see more clearly now and now I live in the moment rather than look back) but finally I am getting it. I felt I had to hold onto my past as it was a part of me, it defined me, it was "safe" in that it had already happened, but now feeling acknowledged and heard has meant that I don't need to hold on to that wreckage - I can seek other things to define me as that past is no part of the “me” now. I have changed – the past cannot, it happened. It had its “now time” in the past and time has moved onto a new moment whilst I was holding it in my gaze. Until now. Please consider this my "RSVP" to now, to my new view of life.

This reply is long but this is what has happened since those previous words and little did I suspect how much would change then when I wrote them four months ago…