"Can I Ever Forgive Myself? "

Several years ago I received a letter from a college friend who had long been out of touch. In the letter he explained that he was an alcoholic and working on his recovery in a twelve-step program. "I ask your forgiveness," he continued, "for hurting you in our relationship." It's true, he did hurt me, dropping me without any explanation. I felt disgruntled and confused at the time, but I also sensed he had struggles that tormented him. I let my disappointment go.

Reading his letter many years later, I felt no anger towards him. Surprised, possibly, that he felt he needed to make amends after all this time. I quickly wrote back. As I sent him my words of forgiveness I realized how much easier it is to forgive another person than it is to forgive ourselves.

I thought about the long, hard look at himself that resulted in such a letter; about the years between our brief relationship and the day he wrote to me. I know from people who are on the twelve-step path that such a letter is not a formality. It is a bundle of shame, slowly yielding dignity and self-respect by the sheer fact of recognizing its existence and acting on it. I hope my response helped in some small way with that undertaking.

None of us is blameless. We all know that, which is why we cringe when people in public life won't admit mistakes. We all feel guilty about something. Sometimes for good reason.

The Jewish observance of Yom Kippur acknowledges that we make mistakes throughout our lives. As Kate Wenner learned, there is "a list of transgressions from A to Z,"[1] if you need to refresh your memory. It takes an unabridged inventory of human frailties: gossip, betrayal, bitterness, abuse, hatred, insult - it would be difficult to go very long without committing some of them. And so it is that once a year Jewish people take a long, hard look at themselves and make amends with those they have wronged.

This ritual of forgiveness heals wounds, restores relationships, and returns people to their true selves and a fresh start. Such an exercise cannot be easy, however. And for some, even the collective power of a religious tradition cannot touch the secrets they hide.

Kate Wenner's father was one of those who went untouched. Ashamed of his family secret, he withheld himself from those he loved. Loving honesty, he found himself living a lie - and carrying the blame for a crime he did not commit. In the final days of his life he confessed to his son and daughter. "But even after he confessed," Kate Wenner writes, "he did not forgive himself."

Can we ever forgive ourselves? Or must we be consigned to the possibility that each of us will carry some shame, some uneasy sense of the wrong we have done, to the end of our lives? Does it always take another person - preferably the one we have wronged - to forgive us and relieve us of our burden?

Kate Wenner sought refuge in the Jewish tradition. There she learned that those who are gone still have a chance for forgiveness through those who remember them. Knowing that the truth about her father was not so much about the fire as it was about the secret that defined his life, she finally came to understand why. "He showed us his courage," she writes, "his determination to face his shame." Though he could not forgive himself, he showed his children who he truly was. This courageous act at the end of his life "at last allowed him to feel loved and to give love in return." He found a way to face the truth and in doing so, gave his family a new beginning.

We cannot undo what we have done. We heard earlier the Chassidic tale about the child who told stories - some true, some untrue - about the people he knew. When his rabbi asks him why he does this, the child responds, "It's only talk. I can always take it back." To show him how wrong that is, the rabbi instructs the boy to open a pillow full of feathers and shake it out in the town square.

There is no recovering the feathers. There is no taking back the words. Everything we have ever done still exists somewhere.

Every now and then, often in the middle of the night, we remember - and are ashamed. Others may not understand why. Why did Kate Wenner's father feel so responsible for a fire he neither planned nor set? I don't know. But I know how it feels.

What we have done - or not done - becomes part of who we are. I've often wondered whether there is a vanishing point for such little secrets; some time in life when you can just forgive yourself and move on. Do we really need to feel responsible for something we did (or didn't do) at fourteen, or twenty-seven? Patricia Hampl writes, "Time, we like to say, cures all. But maybe the old saying doesn't mean time heals. Time cures a secret in its brine, keeping it and finally, paradoxically, destroying it. Nothing is left in that salt solution but the pain or rage, the biting shame that lodged it there. Even they are diluted or denied . . . . Occasionally an undissolved sliver floats up from the corrosive murk to pierce and poison the heart. But nothing is left of the thing itself. The secret has completed its vocation of extinction. It is gone, cured. Lost in its corrosive element."[2]

Lost, perhaps; but still part of us. Gone, but not undone. Finally there is no one left to grant us forgiveness.

Can we make it all go away? Probably not. But we can look back on our fourteen or twenty-seven year-old self with compassion. We can remember that who we are now is someone who has learned from all we have done, good or bad, and all we have not done, to our regret. We can be honest with ourselves about it. Facing the truth and learning from it may be what it takes to forgive ourselves.

Think about Kate Wenner's father, whose life was altered by a sense of blame for a fire he did not set. If only he had confessed his feelings to someone who could have helped him understand it was not his fault. Like a child who feels responsible for her parents' divorce, Kate Wenner's father carries a child's secret too long. Lost in its "corrosive element," to use Patricia Hampl's words, it rarely surfaces, and when it does, "it pierces and poisons the heart." Surely it could have been otherwise.

The ritual of forgiveness enacted during Yom Kippur offers an important truth about the healing power we hold for each other. Though we reckon with truth in solitude, we find forgiveness in relationship. Kate Wenner's father spent a lifetime reckoning with his truth, never to achieve freedom from his shame. If only he had told his children sooner; if only he could have been released from the guilt he carried for so long.

In a later essay about her father, Kate Wenner tells a little more about why he couldn't take the chance.[3] When he learned he had cancer, he also chose to keep that fact a secret from his children. "Why," his daughter asked, "didn't he ask for our help?" He explained, "I wasn't willing to take a chance that I would ask for love and be rejected." This "disturbing but honest answer" enabled him to make that last, courageous confession. When he saw that his children would not abandon him; that he was loved as he was - secret and all, he was free. Free to confront the truth, free to seek forgiveness, free to live in the love that was there for him.

It is the season for looking within, for facing the truth, and for seeking forgiveness. This cycle of healing is ours to give to ourselves and to one another, as long as we live. Whoever we are, and whatever our truth, there is still time to be free.

[1] Kate Wenner, “Lives; After the Fire,” "New York Times," Magazine, Sunday, October 8, 2000.

[2] Patricia Hampl, "I Could Tell You Stories" (New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1999).

[3] Kate Wenner, “A Father’s Confession,” "My Generation," AARP, July/August 2001.

Kate Wenner’s essays about her father can be found at http://www.settingfires.com/articles.html