Terri Webster Schrandt
Authors, Books, Inspiration

Guest Post – Tina Frisco on #Forgiveness

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Just before I took my blogging break in August, the lovely Debby Gies, aka D.G. Kaye, invited me to guest post on her blog. Debby is the Sherlock Holmes of our blogging community 🙂 Aside from featuring authors, books reviews, and myriad reblogs, she regularly shares tips and tricks she garners from sleuthing. If you’re not familiar with Debby, do yourself a favor and visit her informative BLOG. 
My thanks to Debby for her abiding generosity and enthusiastic spirit. I was honored and delighted to be her guest, and would like to share that post with you now ❤
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D.G. Kaye Author

As many of you know, I enjoy sharing posts here by Tina Frisco. And I was elated at Tina’s agreement to write a guest post to feature here today while I’m knee-deep in re-writes on my newest book. Tina has an inner wisdom, which opens our eyes to simple things we often take for granted, or sometimes hold a place within us that we sometimes struggle with but may not be able to come to terms with. In this post, Tina shares her experience with finding forgiveness and methods she utilizes to delve deep within her soul to find resolution.

Author Tina Frisco

Forgiveness

Terri Webster Schrandt
Image courtesy of Terri Webster Schrandt

“We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that marks our lives. One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.” –Merle Shain, Canadian journalist and author, 1935-1989

Forgiveness is the highest form of virtue. It requires a strong and open heart. It challenges faith, trust, and understanding. It demands a willingness to let go of judgment. It moves us into compassion and elevates our consciousness. It fashions a deeper awareness of ourselves and others. Its gift is a more peaceful and fruitful life lived here on Mother Earth.

Forgiving someone a deep hurt is one of the most difficult challenges I have had to face.

As a small child, I was abused and often overlooked in favor of my younger sister. I was an afterthought. Because children have embryonic coping mechanisms, this neglectful behavior by the adults in my life carved a deep hole in my psyche. Desperate to be recognized, I became an overachiever and a slave to codependence. The imperatives of service and recognition fueled my desperation to a point where it imploded. I fragmented, and many took advantage. I was a walking, breathing wound.

In my teenage years, salt was added to that wound by those who mistook my need to help for egoism. Fortunately, I have a strong will and was able to rebut such claims. Unfortunately, this got me nowhere. I was labeled stubborn, angry, selfish, and a know-it-all. I would be the first to volunteer and the last to be selected. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get people to see me.

These labels followed me into early adulthood. Every time my eagerness to serve was mistaken for arrogance or selfishness, I either lashed out or fell into despair. My life had become one of emotional extremes – a roller coaster ride of peaks and valleys, racing fast to stand still.

All of this began to change when, at age thirty-three, I apprenticed to a medicine woman. She was as brutal in pointing out my weaknesses as she was compassionate in acknowledging my strengths. She forced me to dive deep and breathe while in the grasp of fear. Upon surfacing, I saw that all emotion is self-imposed. I alone am responsible for the choices I make. As my awareness grew, I began to own who I am – a wounded warrior made stronger for having faced that which terrorized me.

A few years into my apprenticeship, an issue I thought I had resolved attacked with a sudden and nauseating potency. Once again, and painfully, I felt overlooked. The hurt cut so deep, I nearly lost my life. I thought I was regressing, but I thought wrong. Issues become lighter as they are resolving. The pieces we have dealt with rise toward the surface. The nearer the surface, the more clearly we see them and the more powerful the impact. As these pieces are released, we might feel we are exploding, much like an erupting boil or volcano.

Naively, or perhaps wishfully, I thought I had finally battled this demon for the last time. Again, I thought wrong.

Continue reading … 

Source: Guest post by Tina Frisco – forgiveness

59 thoughts on “Guest Post – Tina Frisco on #Forgiveness”

  4. Tina, your words touch me, especially these: “divine love is born of wisdom, and forgiveness is born of love.” The power of this statement is the very essence of both the divine and love, for to many divine and love are the same. Always an incredible read, my friend, you heart is in your words. ❤

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  8. I enjoyed reading this the second time as much as the first, Tina. It’s such an important lesson because the need for forgiveness arises again and again. To forgive others seems obvious, a step in lightening the load of emotional baggage, but I’m always struck by how important it is to forgive ourselves. Owning our choices, whether they were made consciously or not, as a means of coping or as a result of messages we received as children, is ultimately what frees us. Some of that stuff is deeply buried, isn’t it? A life’s journey inward. ❤

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    1. Thank you for the lovely insightful comment, Diana. Yes, some hurts are buried so deeply that it takes a lifetime for them to surface. Forgiving ourselves our shortcomings helps expedite the process. I appreciate that you read this a second time. Hugs, my friend ❤

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    2. My second reading of Tina’s guest post on forgiveness as well, Diana. And I personally got even more out of it the second time around.

      I think my emotions were originally hijacked by reading that so many people in her early life failed to appreciate/understand the goodness that I see so clearly streaming out from her. It usually angers me when folks insist that THEY know better what a person’s behavior really means, and I tend to get plugged in with the word “abuse” — especially used to describe childhood experiences.

      On second reading – some time after Debs’ posting of it – I was able to absorb more of the message about the benefits of forgiveness and it’s place in the healing dynamic. Good job, Tina – REALLY well done.
      xx,
      mgh
      (Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
      ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
      “It takes a village to transform a world!

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      1. Forgiveness is huge, Madelyn. I’ve worked through lots of childhood messages that I took as fact, forgiven the purveyors of the messages as well as myself for buying into them for so long. I haven’t forgiven my brother’s killer, but I don’t carry it around with me – I trust the universe to handle the karmic consequences. I have a feeling that forgiveness is intimately individual – complex and nuanced and a lifelong process. ❤

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        1. I’m so sorry to read that your brother was murdered. I would have trouble forgiving that one too, Diana.

          Shoot, although I continue to work at it, I still struggle with the reality that Reagan’s homophobia led him to ignore Surgeon General Koop’s immediate and insistent Aids warnings, directly leading to the death of millions when it got ahead of us — including one of my best friends — because the research funding for what would have saved him wasn’t appropriated in time for him (or 7 other good friends).

          One friend, diagnosed post-Reagan, has been doing fine for well over a decade, and the friend of a friend is now Aids-undetectable (essentially in remission – we still have no cure). ALL as a result of research once Reagan was gone.

          I do relate to not carrying it around with you however. Odd how it pops up from time to time tho’, isn’t it?

          I have noticed, however, that “lesser” forgivenesses are much easier to extend as a result. Forgiving someone for something they said or did that hurt my feelings or offended me is a piece of comparative cake!
          xx,
          mgh

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        2. So sorry to learn about your brother, Diana. I’m sure it was a very difficult experience to absorb and work through. It sounds as if you’ve come to terms with it, for the most part. I have found that trusting the universe can be comforting. I hope this is true for you. Blessings ❤

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  11. Tina, my heart bleeds for you as each word of your hurt is felt deep down, somewhere my own moments of being ignored are buried…a girl child was always considered a superfluous member of the family. Though my dad had great hopes from me and seemed to favour me but he was snatched away by the cruel hands of death when I was too young…and life was one big challenge…I learnt forgiveness with great difficulty.
    Thank you for sharing a beautiful post. Stay blessed!

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    1. Oh Balroop, I wish you hadn’t suffered so and hadn’t lost your dad at such a young age. I know we grow through experience, but I sometimes wish the lessons weren’t so difficult. It’s a blessing you learned forgiveness ~ your heart is so compassionate. Thank you for sharing a deep part of yourself. Blessings, my friend ❤

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  12. Loved this post Tina. I can relate to every word having experienced this as a child myself. Forgiveness is probably the most difficult virtue. Even when you want to forgive it can still be a struggle. But you are right once you can move on from the pain and truly forgive, something huge changes in your life

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