Do Resentments Live In Your Heart?

Resentments are road blocks in our lives.

Glorious morning,

Today let's explore a quote about resentment. This quote is from Barbara De Angelis. “

"The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving the present “.

This quote reminds me of a long held resentment I had inside of me for decades. I experienced a violent event at the age of 11 at the hands of my uncle. At the time I only processed the event in the capacity an 11 year old could process. I was confused at why he did it and therefore held resentments for decades to come. Even when he passed away when I was 16, the resentments I originally had remained. Even though it was a one time event, the resentments remained.

If we do not learn how to let resentments go, we suffer and so do the people around us. The resentment we hold poisons our spirit and we can not experience the fullness of joy which is our natural state. I remember as a teen, if I heard something on the news that was a similar incident that happened to me, the resentment I was holding would get reminded and triggered. I would literally speak out loud to the television , calling the accused perpetrator all sorts of names, and yes I would get filled with anger. I then discovered in my relationships that anytime my significant other would do or say something that even remotely reminded me of the event when I was 11, I would get triggered and a flood of my unresolved resentments would come rushing out, influencing my anger.

These emotional little outbursts happened throughout my life and became my “ normal “. I didn't realize at the time how much my buried resentments were influencing my choices in behavior and how much it was taking away from the beautiful potentials I could have been experiencing instead. The only way for me to return to that loving innocent joyful state when I was 11 and before the event happened was to go back to the source of my resentments. Re-visiting the event and trying to make sense of it was not easy, but I eventually learned how to look at the event through a different lens that I hadn't before.

I actually imagined what would drive someone to do such a hurtful thing? How horrible can one feel inside to do such a thing? The more I stepped out of the victim state of “ poor me “, the more I was able to explore poor him! I realized he was a victim of himself and found out his childhood traumas way surpassed my own. I started to be able to view him as just as human as me, only with a different childhood story. Our stories shape us, the good and the bad. When we carry around our resentments it warps our lives. We live unbalanced. When we learn to forgive the people who “ trespass against us “ it frees us up to be more understanding that we are all on this journey of hard knocks and that no one is perfect, including ourselves.

We all make mistakes and we all have the right to redeem ourselves. Although my uncle died before he could redeem himself with me, I'm thinking he wished he had never done it in the first place because he died homeless on a park bench. His own childhood story was obviously never worked through and it influenced his entire life, just like our stories influence ours. Forgiving my uncle allowed me to be a more balanced human by allowing more love and compassion into my life and in turn helped me to let go of the anger and resentments that were preventing me from being more joyful, more forgiving and more peaceful.

After all, we can not be grateful and angry at the same time so I choose gratitude. How about you? Do you struggle with forgiveness and can't seem to let go of resentments? Backpack therapy can be an amazing tool to help you see the areas of your life that need to be “ unpacked “ and put to rest for good. Make a free discovery call today. Peace be with you, Dawn

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