Author: AmandaRW

You’ve probably seen them by now. Artist and poet Rupi Kaur posted a photo series of herself and her sister in various poses, with their periods. In one, a girl is lying in bed with her back to the camera, with a small amount of blood leaking through her pants and onto the bed sheets. Instagram removed the photos because they violated their community guidelines and women responded with anger. “This is our life every month! This is our normal!” Instagram reversed their position and the photos were back.

 

When you are a woman struggling with infertility or recurrent miscarriage, your period is a powerful reminder of what you have lost. A period is more than an inconvenience each month, or a minor pain, or just something to be endured. Your period is a reminder that you have failed. This month, yet again, you are not pregnant. My period has come, this baby didn’t stick either. This month means waiting another month to see if you’ll have better luck. You start to bargain with yourself, with God, with your partner, with all the things you will do differently over the next four weeks. This time, I will try acupuncture, a different prenatal vitamin, more prayer, I’ll exercise less, I’ll exercise more…. This time, I will try sex in a new position, or twice a day instead of just once. This time, I don’t care if you have to work, the OPK says NOW NOW NOW. Each month, you are prepared to sacrifice more and more to the fertility gods to try and make it work. And your period coming at the end of that optimistic two week waiting period is just another bloody reminder of what a big fat failure you are (pun intended).

How can we learn not to hate ourselves, hate our bodies, hate our predicament as we try month after month? How can we get the courage to try again? Let’s start by sharing our stories. Let’s start by not being afraid of the stigma, and talking about our struggles, our bodies and the emotional impact this infertility journey has left on our souls. Like Rupi Kaur, let’s reclaim our periods and be unashamed.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

“Maybe you just can’t carry boys?” I was pregnant for the fourth time, this time with a daughter, and I think in saying this, she thought it would give me comfort. This time, my pregnancy was different. This time it was a girl. All I could think of was Anne Boleyn. She couldn’t have a boy either, and look what happened to her! Besides being plagued by multiple pregnancy losses (sources are not clear on whether she lost two or three babies), her failure to produce a male heir meant her husband arranged to have her executed. A high price to pay for being, in modern medical terms, a habitual aborter.

So is it true? Are there some women who just can’t carry boys? Maybe not, but recent research has confirmed there is a link between boy babies and stillbirth. Researchers at the University of Exeter looked at studies from around the world to see if there was a connection. They examined the numbers from 21 different studies conducted in 24 different countries, from Australia to Venezuela, the UK and US, as well as China and India. Overall there were over 30 million records.

And sure enough, the researchers found that boys are more likely to be stillborn than girls. This was true in every country studied, except for a couple where sex selection of fetuses is known to be an issue. The difference was about 10%, which means that male babies are 10% more likely to die before birth than female babies. Not a huge difference, but about the same as the risk caused by smoking. They don’t know why this might be the case, and the best they can come up with is speculation based on what happens in animals, where male babies are more susceptible to stress or the effects of a poor diet. Also, despite the huge study, there were some limitations to it. When searching for articles to include, they looked for articles that mentioned gender, so studies where the differences were unremarkable might have been missed. Also, they weren’t able to make a difference between stillbirths that happen before labor or during labor, which might have an impact.

So what does it mean for you? Maybe not much. If you lost a boy, it is cold comfort to know that his gender might have played a role. If you are pregnant with a rainbow boy now, the increased risk isn’t enough to worry about, and besides, you can’t make changes at this point anyway! And despite what happened to Anne Boleyn, there is no evidence that certain women can’t carry sons. Who knows what her next baby might have been, had Henry VIII not decided to have her head cut off? After all, once my daughter was born safely, I went on to have another pregnancy. A son. He’s 3 now and I think he turned out okay.

To read the study in full, it is free online. Find it at:

Mondal D, Galloway TS, Bailey TC, Mathews F. Elevated risk of stillbirth in males: systematic review and meta-analysis of more than 30 million births. BMC Med. 2014 Nov 27;12:220.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

I have written this post over and over again. I am struggling with what to say for Mother’s Day because this is not just about me being a mother, but also about my relationship with my own mother as well as with my mother-in-law. Losing Nate and Sam did not just turn me into a mother with no children, it forever changed how I relate as a daughter. And because of my loss, I can’t relate to my children’s grandmothers.

My mother-in-law has always wanted to be a grandmother. I think she even wanted to be a grandmother before she was a mother. She bought toys for my kids back when my husband was still in high school. Never mind that he didn’t meet me for another 20 years. Never mind whether or not we wanted kids or whether we could have them. She was ready for babies, dammit. And then Nate and Sam were born. And died. My mother-in-law was at the hospital with us, but she didn’t come in to see us, or see Nate and Sam. And I still can’t forgive her. When I am feeling charitable, I acknowledge that she may have been too devastated. That she was raised in a time when holding, cuddling and caring for stillborn babies was not done. That she might regret not having agreed to see them. When I am not feeling charitable, I am reminded that the nurses and social worker who encouraged me and supported my husband and I were there for her too. They would have been there, telling her how important it was for her to come in and say her goodbyes. But she still never saw them. And I am hurt and angry. To me, this was a rejection of my sons, and a rejection of our family. She was so eager and excited to greet them when they were alive, but couldn’t stomach looking at their perfect faces after they had died.

I am fortunate. Both my mother and my mother-in-law acknowledge my sons. Even though they have not experienced loss themselves, they know that I want Nate and Sam remembered. They know that they are forever part of my life and I am forever their mother. Not every mother is like that, and in research, other mothers have reported the pain of having their parents give little support. As one mother, when pregnant again after losing a baby, said:

“They’ve [the grandparents] all been very excited about this baby . . . but they don’t know how to react. They don’t know what’s going to upset me and they’re so afraid of upsetting me by bringing Derik up. But what’s upsetting is when he’s not acknowledged. They think it’s easier now, that we will push [away] the grief, our memories of Derik and just move on, which is obviously not the case. So that’s really difficult. His anniversary is coming up and last year we did a formal memorial. This year we haven’t planned anything and nobody’s inquired either.”

Another mother talks of how hard it has been with her father-in-law and his wife:

“My family [has] his picture up with all the grandchildren’s pictures. Steve’s mom’s house it’s the same way. But Steve’s dad and stepmom, when it was over it was over for them. They think it’s just awful that the girls even know about it. They don’t call on Davis’s birthday and even say hello. They’re just really strange. It can’t ever be talked about over there. Of course the girls do but they just ignore it. I think they mentioned to Steve once that we should take the pictures down and he said “No, its fine. It’s not that it didn’t happen.” They’ve never really said why they can’t deal with it. If I ever bring it up they just stiffen.”

How has your relationship changed with your mother or mother-in-law since losing your child? Will this change your Mother’s Day?

Quotes from other mothers were taken from: O’Leary J; Warland J; Parker L. Bereaved parents’ perception of the grandparents’ reactions to perinatal loss and the pregnancy that follows. Journal of Family Nursing. 17(3):330-56, 2011 Aug.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

Still Standing is a wonderful resource, but sometimes you need to talk to someone in person. Reaching out online just isn’t enough. I recently had the chance to meet 60 wonderful women who are there for you when you need someone to talk to. The Pregnancy and Infant Loss Network is a volunteer organization here in Ontario that has in person support groups as well as one-on-one telephone support. They’ve been helping women for over 20 years and have grown from small beginnings to a large network of women (and a few men) across the province volunteering to help the newly bereaved.

These volunteers are some amazing people. Most have their own story of loss, and their own grief which they continue to cope with. Helping others through the process in turn helps them. By giving of themselves, they are able to share the pain, and this helps create meaning for their lives going forward without their babies.

In the early days after your baby has died, there is often such a huge physical ache in your heart, which talking to someone who has been there can help heal. Only another loss mother knows that ache, and is willing to sit with you while you endure those hard days. I am so grateful to those who once they are in a better place are prepared to help others in turn.

I’ve often thought this is our secret mission as baby loss moms. When Nate and Sam died, so many people, some of whom I’d never met before, came to welcome me into the sisterhood. Much of the reason I write for Still Standing is to let those who are new to the ‘club’ know that they are not alone and that there is life after loss. But in truth, I also do it to help myself. Writing gives me an outlet to talk about my sons and to continue to keep their memory alive.

If you are at the point where you’re ready to help another woman, reach out to someone else. You can do it formally, through volunteering with PAIL or another local area group. You can do it informally, through women you know who’ve had a loss or through women you’ve never met, through social media. And if you’re not there yet, still reach out to someone else. Call your local area bereavement support group or go to a meeting. Don’t just read this article, respond to it and let others know where you’re at in your grief.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

So how do you talk to kids about death? How do you do it in ways that are age appropriate?

Last Saturday, I heard Kimberly Thomson speak at the PAIL Network conference (more on that next month!). Kimberly is the National Director of Rainbows Canada. This organization is dedicated to helping children learn to cope with grief and other traumas. Her inspiring talk helped convince me that by talking to our children about their brothers, I am not harming them or traumatizing them. Being open and honest about death, the impact of death on our family and the place Nate and Sam hold in our hearts actually helps them learn to cope with all of life’s upheavals. Children who have faced a death in the family, and learned to cope with the loss effectively, often grow up to be more compassionate, caring and resilient adults. Whether you have living children or not, I encourage you to check out this great organization and their resources at rainbows.org. You can find Rainbows chapters in the US and Canada as well as Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa and Singapore.

First of all, you tell the truth. Kids are way smarter than we give them credit for.

Second, you answer their questions honestly. They won’t ask the questions unless they want to know the answers. If they are asking, it shows they have the capacity to understand. Remember, it is okay to show your own emotions. You can tell them you are sad. You can demonstrate you are sad by crying. All these behaviours are part of healthy grief. It is also okay to say “I don’t know.” “I don’t know why your brothers died. I don’t know what happens to us when we die, although my beliefs tell me it is something good, I can’t be more specific than that. It is also normal for them to be afraid of death. We all are, in some ways. We just try not to let that fear ruin everything else.”

My daughter is five. She knows about her brothers, talks about her brothers and understands the role they play in our family. She is a little confused about how they can be babies but still be ‘older’ than her, but then again, so am I. My rainbow son is only two. He pointed to his brothers’ urns and asked “Are there cookies in there?” I just said, “No,” and let him go back to playing.

When he asks me for more details, I’ll tell him all about his brothers.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

The Early Lost

The shade of death upon my threshold lay,
The sun from thy life’s dial had departed
A cloud came down upon thy early day
And left thy hapless mother broken-hearted
My boy – my boy
Long weary months have pass’d since that sad day
But naught beguiles my bosom of its sorrow
Since the cold waters took thee for their prey
No smiling hope looks forward to the morrow
My boy – my boy
The voice of mirth is silenced in my heart
Thou wert so dearly loved, so fondly cherish’d
I cannot yet believe that we must part
That all, save thine immortal soul, has perish’d
My boy – my boy
My lovely, laughing, rosy, dimpled child,
I call upon thee, when the sun shines clearest
In the dark lonely night, in accents wild
I breath they treasured name, my best and dearest
My boy – my boy
The hand of God has press’d me very sore
Oh could I clasp thee once more as of yore
And kiss thy glowing cheeks soft velvet bloom,
I would resign thee to the Almighty Giver
Without one tear, would yield thee up forever
And people with bright forms thy silent tomb.
But hope has faded from my heart – and joy
Lies buried in thy grave, my darling boy.

On June 18, 1844, Susanna Moodie lost her beloved son, John. He was just 5 years old, and he drowned in the Moira River, just a few miles from where I live. She was devastated, and wrote this poem in his memory. Susanna Moodie is best known today for her memoirs, which describe life in early Upper Canada and her adjustment from a world of privilege back in England to “Roughing It in the Bush” in the wilds of Canada. Yet this poem illustrates something beautiful that seems to still be forgotten. Throughout history, even when child death was a common occurrence, women mourned the children they had lost.

We forget because women did not leave much trace throughout history. For generations, history was focused on what was considered to be the important world of men. Our private lives, our private losses, were not considered to be of much use. Yet a walk through a cemetery, or reading a poem like this one, can remind us of how valuable these children were to their parents. In years gone by, when entire families were wiped out by diphtheria, or measles, or influenza, each of those lives lost was a horrific tragedy to all who knew them. Each of those mothers wept just as we now weep for our lost children.

In the pages of her memoir that appear right before this poem, Susanna Moodie tells another sad tale of childhood loss. This story depresses me even more, because it shows how little things have changed in 150 years. I can think of no better time than Black History Month to tell this sad story of loss. My apologies for the language, I am quoting directly:

A little black boy, the only son of a worthy negro, who had been a settler for many years in Belleville, was not so fortunate as the Irishman’s cow. He was pushed, it is said accidentally, from the broken bridge, by a white boy of his own age, into that hell of waters and it was many weeks before his body was found; it had been carried some miles down the bay by the force of the current. Day after day you might see his unhappy father, armed with a long pole with a hook attached to it, mournfully pacing the banks of the swollen river, in the hope of recovering the remains of his lost child. Once or twice we stopped to speak to him, but his heart was too full to answer. He would turn away, with the tears rolling down his sable cheeks, and resume his melancholy task.

What a dreadful thing this prejudice against race and colour! How it hardens the heart, and locks up all the avenues of pity! The premature death of this little negro excited less interest in the breasts of his white companions than the fate of the cow, and was spoken of with as little concern as the drowning of a pup or a kitten.

She does not name the boy, or his father. I do not know whether this “accident” was ever investigated, although it appears it was not. 150 years later, and other than the language, this sounds as if it could have been written yesterday. Plus ça change….

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

 

Here in the Northern hemisphere, the days are getting darker and darker. As we get closer to the Solstice on the 21^st, at least where I live, it can seem as though we are descending into an ever deepening and never-ending darkness. Much like grief, at best the light peeks through for a few hours, and even when it does, the world still seems grey and flat. The light remains hidden.

Yet this is the time of year where we celebrate light. Christians talk of Jesus being born as the Light of the World. We talk of how the shepherds had their way to the Christ-child illuminated by an angel whose light shone around them, and the Wise Men also were led by the light of the star. In Judaism, this time of year marks Hanukkah, also sometimes colloquially referred to as the Festival of Lights. Each night, a candle is lit to commemorate the rededication of the temple, and to represent a miracle: that the oil used to light the lamps lasted for 8 days. Light is perhaps never more noticeable than in its absence.

On my return home from the Southern hemisphere a few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to watch a film called “Light” which explores more of this idea of lightness and darkness. The short film tells the story of Omar, who finds himself falling into the darkness of grief. The story tells just of the immediate aftermath of his son’s stillbirth. As he calls his mother back in Lebanon to tell her the horrible news, she implores him to take care of his son and prepare his body for burial in the traditional Islamic way. The enormity of this task, seemingly so simple, nearly derails him. The film got me thinking about our double-meaning of the word ‘light’. Preparing your son’s body for burial is a heavy task. It isn’t to be taken lightly. And yet at 5 months gestation, this little boy likely weighed only about a pound. Omar is surrounded by light. The hospital windows are large. The room he sits in, waiting for his wife to return from surgery, is painted white. In just 13 minutes, you can sense the darkness fall around him as shock turns to grief. Omar is in a world of darkness. He is a recent immigrant, knowing no one in this new country, not knowing the customs or having close friends and family. He is even separated from his wife temporarily as she is still in recovery. And yet, far on the other side of the world, there is this light: his mother. Her voice over the phone, at once calming and yet clearly agitated at the loss of her grandson, is Omar’s connection to the light. She provides for him a pathway, a light at the end of the tunnel, a way forward. In her instructions to him on how to prepare his son for burial, she is recognizing the value of her son’s life. Stillborn at just 5 months, his life too had meaning and is deserving of the same ceremony and respect as an adult. If you get the opportunity to see Light, please do. For me, it was a beautiful reminder of the universality of loss. It will be playing at the Dubai International Film Festival this week.

As we approach the holidays, with so many difficult times and difficult memories, spend a few moments to think about your light. Even in near total darkness, can you find the light? Like Omar, you might find your light in a relationship with your spouse, a close friend or relative.  You might find a light in your religious or spiritual faith or practices. You may find light in a new mission: to comfort others experiencing stillbirth, infertility or pregnancy loss, or working towards stillbirth prevention. Your light might be as small as a single candle, or as large as “the glory of the Lord”. When darkness is near absolute, it can be hard to believe that one day, the light will return. That the shadows of grief will become smaller and smaller. This month, focus on the light.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

Grieving is hard work. It is exhausting, both mentally and physically. People who are depressed and grieving often have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, and find themselves going back to bed, or at least to the couch, early in the evening. When you do sleep, it can be restless and hard to catch quality sleep, meaning you wake up just as exhausted as you were the night before.

One of the hardest things to do when grieving is to devote enough time to the work of grief. And it is work. Many employers only grant a few days off for grieving a family member, something that is woefully inadequate. But it can be hard holding down a full time job and work through your grief as well.

The temptation is there to put it off, to throw yourself back into your life and avoid the uncomfortable feelings that grief brings. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was one of the first researchers to take a serious look at grief, and she described it as a five-stage process. However, grief isn’t a linear process, and we can find ourselves repeating stages, moving from one to the next, and back again, as our circumstances allow.

Kubler-Ross described the first stage as denial and isolation. This can be asking for second opinions (or third, or fourth) from medical staff. It can be the way I felt disconnected from myself during the first few days after my boys died. It was as if it was happening to someone else. Pretending this isn’t really happening can be a way to shield yourself from painful emotions. It can be the way you simply don’t want to go out, don’t want to see others, don’t want to have to explain where your baby has gone.

The second stage is anger. This can be directed inward, at yourself, or outward at others. You can even feel angry at your baby. You might be angry at the doctor for making a mistake, even if no mistakes were made. You might be angry at yourself for not recognizing ‘signs’ your baby was in distress, even if those signs were all in your head. You can be angry at your partner too, for not grieving in the same way you are, or for not being supportive enough of your concerns. You can be angry at other pregnant women, for having healthy babies even though they don’t deserve them.

The third stage is called bargaining. This is where we try to take our loss and regain control over our world. We might make promises to ourselves or to God that this time will be different. “If I have a healthy baby, I promise I will…” This can often be done to hide guilty feelings about things that happened in your last pregnancy. If you’ve felt guilty over the loss of your baby, it can be hard to let those feelings of guilt go. Forgiving yourself is an important step to feeling better.

The fourth stage, and for many of us the one that has the longest impact, is depression. Depression is more than sadness. It hurts. This is where you can’t get out of bed, where you get little pleasure out of life. There is nothing that can be said or done to cheer you up. Depression has been described as a black dog that follows you around, as a cloud, or a filter that leaves the whole world grey.

The final stage is acceptance. Acceptance is not the same thing as happiness. It is the point where you have incorporated the death of your baby into your life. Where it becomes a part of you and who you are. Thinking about your baby will still be sad, but not painful in the same way as it was during the earlier stages.

New pain can bring up old grief. A friend once told me about how he couldn’t cope when his dog died. It left him with a deep and mystifying depression. As a minister, he was used to being the one to hold it together at funerals, to be the one who could step in and take charge, but here he was, almost paralyzed for months by the death of a dog, who admittedly had been sick for some time. Finally, his wife helped him realize the obvious. He wasn’t just grieving his dog, but all the other friends who had died. He hadn’t allowed himself to grieve before because he was busy keeping busy. When his dog died, no one looked to him for answers, no one expected him to perform the funeral or to help wrap up the estate. He was free to grieve, and so he did. And it hurt.

Keep working on your grief. It can and will come back to you when you least expect it. Work with a grief counselor (you can ask your doctor for a recommendation). Devote the time you need to doing ‘grief work’. You’ll still see reoccurrences of grief throughout your life. We all do. It is part of the cycle of our lives. But postponing the hard work of grief will only make things harder later on.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

Today, I got “the look”. We’ve all experienced “the look”; the one that you get when you mention your child, or mention stillbirth at all. That quick darting of the eyes away. That slightly stunned look as the person rapidly takes in what you’ve said and searches for a way to escape or change the subject. It happens even when we aren’t visibly sad or upset in any way. Today, someone sat beside me at a research conference and said: “I heard you’re on sabbatical! What are you doing?”

(Me, excitedly!) I’m writing a book!

(Other researcher) Oh that’s wonderful, what are you writing?

(Me, still trying to convey excitement) It’s a book about pregnancy after a loss! It’s meant to be a guide to help women going through this difficult time. It’s been great, I’ve been interviewing all these women and just today, my last one is having her baby! I’m so excited for her, I feel as though it is my baby too.

And somewhere in that last exchange, I watched her face fall. I watched as instead of catching my enthusiasm, she didn’t hear any of the wonderful things I said. She just heard “loss”, and stopped listening, panicked and tried to find a way to change the subject.

At first I thought this made sense, after all, who wants to hear about death? Death is sad and scary and horrible, especially the death of children. Then at 5:00 on my drive home, I heard the news….

• James Foley beheaded in Iraq.
• More rioting in Ferguson, MO after the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown.
• A mudslide in Japan has killed a two year old boy and one of the rescuers who tried to save him.
• More calls for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women after the body of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine is found in Winnipeg.
• There’s an Ebola outbreak in Western Africa
• Mass extermination of people in Syria and northern Iraq continues

Death, death, death, death. And so many of these are children.

And it isn’t just the news. Pop culture is focused on death too. How many of the top TV shows are about death, usually in gruesome ways? If you can watch Game of Thrones, how could you possibly be disturbed by the idea that sometimes babies die?

Do people distance themselves from death on the news or on television as somehow not real? It happens to other people, in other places, far away? Do people blame the victim, as if somehow all these people deserved their fate? With stillbirth the victim is the ultimate innocent. They weren’t even born yet! Or is the stigma around stillbirth related to something else?

As much as it might hurt me to see “the look”, there are things that are more important than my feelings. My personal hurt is part of a much broader picture. An estimated 8200 babies are stillborn every day. Half of all stillbirths have no known cause. And in order to find out, we need to have more and better research. Where the cause is known, stillbirths can often be prevented. We need to know why the stillbirth rate in the United States is 3 times the rate in Finland. When stillbirth can’t be prevented, we need to know how to care for a woman and her family going through this horrible time. But research is dependent on funding, and funding decisions are made by women like that one I sat next to at a conference. The one who was so disturbed by my book that she couldn’t even bring herself to talk about it.

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.

Last month, I wrote about how hard it is to forgive yourself. The next step is forgiving others, but it is hard. Oh my God, it is HARD!

I wish I could tell you it was easy. I wish I could tell you that if you follow these simple steps, your life will be sunshine and roses. I still can’t forgive everyone, although I am determined to try. Until they piss me off again, anyway.

Here are my concentric circles of forgiveness:

1. People who say stupid things, but mean well, and play a small role in my life. These people are fairly easy to forgive, partly because I have once been in their shoes. I know what it is like to open my mouth and say something completely stupid, and immediately feel horrible about it. I can completely empathize with them. For example, the resident who said “Wow, you’ll be busy at home with 5 kids.” I saw her face as she said those words, immediately realized that I didn’t have 5 kids at home, and felt like she’d been kicked in the face. Or maybe it was the nurse kicking her under the table. Either way, I can forgive her pretty easily because I once innocently asked someone “Is this your first?” In fact, I think if I was given a dollar for every time I said something stupid, I could retire at 40. Besides, I probably won’t ever see them again.
2.  People who know me well enough to know better, but still have a momentary lapse. Again, I can forgive them because I have been there. It is a little harder, because I expect them to know me and to have a clearer idea of what will be helpful, but no one is perfect. Usually, they have good intentions. They truly believe that by not talking about your child, they are helping you feel better. They think “Amanda’s so happy right now, talking about how I miss Nate and Sam too will feel shallow.” Or “She has two beautiful kids, I don’t want them to feel bad by bringing up their brothers, who they did not know anyway.” And even if that hurts because I love hearing about how others are missing my boys too because it reminds me that their lives mattered, they have my best interests at heart.
3.  People I know and are doing intentionally hurtful things. I’m still not entirely sure I’m ready to forgive these people. Let’s just say I am working on it. To be clear, these are not people in category two, who think they are doing you a favour by not mentioning your children or your grief, but people who are too selfish or uncaring. These are the people who walked out of your life because they could not handle your grief, or the people who actually tell you to stop talking about your kids because it upsets them. It is a lot harder to feel sympathy for them. It is hard to forgive the damage they have caused, especially if they are not looking for your forgiveness. The friends who walked out on your life and still haven’t come back. The people who justify what they did as “protecting themselves”, when truthfully it was just their own selfishness.

But here’s the interesting thing about the circles… in order to get the most benefit, you have to forgive the people it is hardest to forgive. The casual remark made by someone you hardly know, you can stay mad at them forever and it won’t matter, because it doesn’t have an impact on either of you. You both walk away and not see one another again. But the intentionally hurtful actions taken by someone you love, if you hold on to that grudge it will eat away at you every time you see them. And because they are close to you, you see them a lot. Which is why I am working on forgiving those who have hurt me the most. I am not there yet, but maybe with a little more practice….

This post first appeared on Still Standing Magazine.