Forgiveness and Imagery by Jann Fredrickson, MS, LICSW

One of my foster father’s died this past week. I say one because I actually had three. Wendell was the last one an also the longest. I lived in his home for three years and then periodically when I was in college. When I heard of his death, my first reaction was, well, how am I supposed to feel about a person I hardly knew? How am I supposed to feel about a man who barely seemed to tolerate me in life? Was I SUPPOSED to be sad? How about his own four children who only recently have reached out to me as an adult? Ho am I supposed to feel when they decide to include me in the ritual of “walking down with the family” that goes on in funerals? Was I supposed to be glad that NOW they finally decide to accept me? To little, too late, was my first reaction. Bitterness and anger, and a very quiet, lingering hurt was the second reaction. Oh, how familiar these emotions are to me whenever I think of all those years in foster homes.

So, what to do? I remember my foster sister who didn’t talk to me the entire three years that I lived at Wendell’s home except through the filter of her parents or by the surreptitious glares across the dinner table at one of my foster mother’s unbelievably find dinners. Or the best one….her completely ignoring me at her wedding and going out of her way to make sure everyone in the family got flowers but me.

Boy, does anyone ever “get over” that nagging, indulgent self-pity that goes with the more subtle forms of abuse? I had no scars. I was well fed, (in this particular home), well-clothed, warm and I had clean sheets. What more could one ask? I kept asking these questions on the solitary drive to Wendell’s funeral, two hours from my home in St. Paul, Minnesota to a small Northern town in Iowa called Northwood.

Wasn’t it time to forgive? And if so, HOW? (more…)