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Any ideas on how to forgive someone after she’s done so much damage??! Whenever her name is mentioned I say things like: ” I’ll be the happiest when she dies” or ” I’ll dance at her funeral”. It may sound crazy but she’s caused me so much trouble & problems…….I’m trying to move on with my life but i’m having a hard time doing so. Any advice??!!
Sounds like you need to talk it out with her she may have no idea you feel this way about her wether that is rational or not, once you tell her how you feel she MAY apologize and try to right her wrong but again no guarantees she may just as well become furious and full of righteous indignation but you will forever have this weighing on you unless you talk it over with her, if the response you get is not a positive one at least you wont have to think about what may have been.
Forgiveness is a very tricky issue. But in the end it really is a matter of freeing the owner of the obligation to be angry. Anger is an emotion that takes up a lot of energy. The subject of your anger rarely realizes or even cares that you are angry at her or do not wish to forgive her for her transgressions. So she moves on in her daily routine without a thought or a care to what you are experiencing. Does she expend any energy towards you? NO. Does she care how you feel? No. Does how you feel or does your anger towards her bother her in any way or take anything away from her? No not really or she would do something to correct the situation. So who does it really affect? You. The only one the entire issue affects is you. The anger and resentment that you harbor only affects you. It takes up your time, your attention and your energy. So if you choose to forgive this unfortunate uncaring person who will it help and who will it affect? The only person it will affect is you. You will no longer think about her, and you will no longer relive the pain of her actions towards you. If you choose to forgive her foolishness, her stupidity and her carelessness towards you then you release yourself from the prison of pain and anger that the situation created and you get to move on with your life. That is what happens with forgiveness.
The next step is this. If she is NOT a good choice as a friend for you, then obviously you have the choice to no longer be friends with her and not keep her in your Quality World. You can place her outside the scope of your inner circle and no longer think about her or deal with her. If at some time in her life she wakes up and misses the connection with you, and then chooses to ask mechila from you, you can choose to tell her that you have already forgiven her a long time ago because it wasn’t worth it for you to be angry at her and you had chosen to move on. You can then decide whether you will allow her back into your life or continue on without her.
Does that make sense to you? Is that something you could consider?
Denim. Aries is correct, and I concur with her approach, albeit in a more selfish manner. Basically, you should refuse to allow that person to live in your head! This person who has hurt you so much should have no right to wiggle herself into your brain and, in addition to hurting you to begin with; to continue on and on to hurt you non-stop! She ensconced herself inside your head driving you nuts, while she merrily goes about her way!
So, yes, there’s the element of forgiveness, and I can’t pasken on whether there are ethical, moral, or halacha requirements to forgive her, but prior to (or in conjunction with) forgiveness, you should selfishly refuse to let her continue to hurt you.
DenimGirl, it is quite unfortunate and I have heard this from so many, and I have actually been involved in such cases. In one case I was trying to get a student admitted to a different high school and unfortunately they “heard” things from both what was then the current HS and the former elementary school. I was in middle of sheva brooches for my son at the time, but I sat down and wrote one of the heads a 3 page email about Loshon hora and how it was a killer, and what nerve it was for any administration to listen to l”H while at the same time “teaching” their students neither to speak it or listen to it. I explained to them that they should judge the student on their own impressions of her, and of their own judgments and not l”h that is making the child sick and want to leave the other school. The very next morning that Rabbi was on her doorstep ringing her bell and welcoming her to the school. He said that with them she has a clean slate and will create her own history starting with that day. Today she is b”h married to a very nice Frum young man.
DG, please don’t despair, people in power let their power get to their heads. They will each have to give their din v’chesbon when they meet their maker after 120. Please don’t keep score or harbor a grudge, Hashem will take car of them and give them what they deserve. She has done enough damage please don’t let her control the rest of your life. Hashem is i charge of shidduchim and not her. Not everyone believes these people and will believe your references more. They also realize that kids change as they mature, so even if they believe a tenth of what she said, they will just ignore it.
If your friends believed her then they are not worthy of being your friends. If your family believed her then shame on them. Please don’t allow her to make you lose faith in Hashem or turn away from who you really are inside or retaliate against yiddishkeit. It will only cause her to say “you see I was right all along”. Too many kids have gone OTD because of yentas like her and ill mannered and uninformed know-it-alls. I know all too well from my clients and the kids I worked with. Great kids with huge problems. I have never, ever met a bad kid, just kids with bad problems.
So if you can just choose to forget her, if you can’t choose at this time to forgive her and just give it over to Hashem’s hands maybe you can move past her. If you try to understand we can’t control other people nor change them, we can only control ourselves and work on changing ourselves for the better and by doing so, other people might change their opinions or reactions to us, then that might help you put her in your past. In other words, if friends or family mention what she said you can choose to say “I don’t know how or where she got that impression of me, but I have no control over what she thinks or what she says to others. Hashem will deal with that in his own way. L”H ruins people’s lives and her comments about me are hitting me hard, I am not going to play her game and retaliate with harsh words against her. I will leave it in Hashem’s hands”. What kind of impression would you make then?
If you are in a circle of people and they start talking about her, you can choose to say “can we please change the subject I really don’t want to say anything mean because I have been hurt by her. I am holding myself to a higher standard, please support me in that”. If you can turn the negative into a positive no one will understand what the fuss was about.
Let me take you back to my client’s story. Hashem has a very funny sense of humor. The principal that was making her miserable in her former HS wound up getting a job as a teacher in the new HS the second year she was there, her junior year. The original HS closed down. The Rabbi told her explicitly to stay away from my client, she was not her concern and that everyone loved her. But my client who was so sweet, felt sorry for her and wanted her to feel welcome in the new environment so she made it a point of saying Hello to her each day and wishing her a good day just as she did to all the other teachers in the hallway. By the end of the year they were best friends. That woman only stayed that one year, but my client not only invited her to graduation the following year but also invited her to her wedding. How is that for forgiveness?
I’ve dealt with the same issue for a number of years, also with an administration member of my HS. I have tried a number of times to forgive but it is hard and fellings of anger keep coming back. (I made decisions in the past based on their actions and the results of those decisions still affect me, reminding me of the past.) I’ve been able to suppress these feeling by blocking out my entire HS experience. I never talk about my years in HS and even refuse to answer when asked what HS I attended.
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