When we ignore the pain, it grows bigger and bigger, and like an abscess that is never drained, eventually it will rupture. When that happens, it can reach into every area of our lives—our health, our families, our jobs, our friendships, our faith, and our very ability to feel joy may be diminished by the fallout from resentments, anger, and hurts that are never named
•Identify the feelings within the facts. Remember, no feeling is wrong, bad, or invalid
We are not responsible for what breaks us, but we can be responsible for what puts us back together again. Naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts
• Recognize the stages of grief, and honor wherever you fall in the process.
Grief happens whenever we lose something that is precious to us, even our trust, our faith, or our innocence. It is important to understand the role grief plays in the forgiveness process and specifically within this step of Naming the Hurt. Grief is how we both cope with and release the pain we feel.
Grief has many well-documented stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and ultimately acceptance.
Grief is how we come to terms not only with the hardship we have endured, but also with what could have been if life had taken a different course. We grieve as much for what might have been as for what was.
Denial protects us from remembered pain and can serve to pace our grief. When a loss feels unbearable or overwhelming, denial can be a way of easing us into an acceptance of that loss. But prolonged denial can lead us to self-destruction. The next stage in the grief process, bargaining, is another form of nonacceptance, much like denial. If only I did this, said that, went one way instead of another, this loss would not have happened, this pain would not have been felt
We can’t bargain away our hurt, our guilt, our shame, or the reality of our loss. The only way out of what hurts is through it
Acceptance is the recognition that things have changed and will never be what they were before. This is how we can find the strength to journey on. We accept the truth of what happened. We accept our hurt, our anguish, our sadness, our anger, our shame, and in doing so we accept our own vulnerability.
The only way to stop the pain is to accept it. The only way to accept it is to name it and, by naming it, to feel it fully
• Find someone who will acknowledge you and listen to your feelings without trying to fix them
If you cannot, or choose not to, name your hurt to the perpetrator, then you can talk to a trusted friend or family member, a spiritual advisor, a counselor, another who has experienced the same kind of harm, or anyone who will not judge you and who will be able to listen with love and empa-thy. Just as in telling the story, you can write your hurt down in a letter or journal. The most important thing is to share with someone who is able to receive your feelings without judging or shaming you for having them. Indeed, because it is never easy to confront the one who has harmed us directly, I strongly encourage you to name the hurt to others first
When we give voice to our hurt, it loses its stranglehold on our lives and our identities. It stops being the central character in our stories.
When we share these feelings, however, when we give voice to our desire for revenge, our rage, and the many ways we feel our dignity has been violated, the desire for revenge lessens. There is relief. Feeling this relief does not mean that there is no justice, or that it was okay for someone to hurt us. It simply means we don’t have to let our suffering make us perpetual victims.