Forgiveness

I have never been the forgiving type, instead I am extraordinarily good at holding a grudge and remembering every hurtful comment or event and reminding that person of it years later.

Typical woman behaviour I hear the men cry, but what if your lack of forgiveness extended to yourself? What if you were unable to forgive yourself for making a mistake? What if you were unable to forgive yourself for not knowing something that you feel you really should have? What if this severely impacts your mental health because that knowledge that you think you should have had could have saved your babies life?

Well as I say that woman is me.   My head is a horrible place to live sometimes and I have come to realise that I want to be more gentle with myself and I want to come to forgive myself, after all how could I expect myself to known something I didn’t know! Logic tells me this is daft.

I didn’t know what sepsis was and I thought you just looked out for a rash with meningitis and I never believed that Heidi was that sick that she would die. I just didn’t know.

But in my head, I should have known because I’m her Muma, I should have listened to my instincts, I should have known because it was my job from the moment she was born to protect her and keep her alive and if I had known things could have been different.

My thoughts towards myself can be so negative and cruel, more so lately with the date about to tell me it’s a year since Heidi died, and I’m a bit sick of treating myself this way, so I will work on forgiving myself. I will work on being more gentle with myself. I will work on saying ‘I forgive you’ and maybe even I love you’