Author Archive: doctorbobenright
Anonymous
My father left the family when I was 6 years old. My mother had to work two jobs and support my sister and me. When I first heard of forgiveness, I thought it was a nutty idea. Why would I want to say that what my father did was ok? I have to admit to feeling a kind of rage whenever the topic of forgiveness came up. How dare he leave his family? I got madder when he came around as I was about to enter college. Both my sister and I had done well. We achieved in school and were making something of ourselves. Then in waltzes my father and all is supposed to be well? Forgiveness is for those who can’t think straight—at least this is how I saw it. Once I started looking into forgiveness more, i realized that I do not say, “It’s OK,” when I forgive. I am not letting my father off the hook. I am saying that leaving the family is wrong and even so I can love him and have compassion on him. I have come to realize that his own father did the same and also had a serious problem with alcohol. My father never really had love from his father. He did not have a good role model about how to be a good father. He has to own what he did, but he is not an evil person. Yes, he is confused and hurt, but he is not a bad man. When I realized this, I was able to respond to his phone calls and even meet with him. We still have a long way to go, but my forgiving him opened the door to our reunion. He has his own work to do, too, and I am hoping he can do it and have a more stable life.
Frank
I am a vice principal of an elementary school in Florida. I have a doctoral degree and my goal has been to be a principal in the future. My beef is with the educational system. It seems to me that there is an expectation that all of us as administrators have to be the same—kind of rigid, never smile, never relaxed. Administrators are an unhappy bunch. I am in the process of forgiving the people in the district office because I have not been promoted yet. This is not sour grapes. I have had to fill in for our principal at times and I get high marks from the teachers. I treat each one as a human being and I do the same for the students. I am forgiving out of a sense of frustration. I am trying to see the people in the district office as people (sure, imperfect people), worthy of my time and my respect. I have to admit that it is a struggle. I have to work at this every day. I can’t say that I have completed the task. My forgiveness is a work in progress. I want to do this so that my frustration eases and so that I can communicate with the district office personnel in a humane and civil way. I also think that the students in my school will benefit as I continue to struggle after forgiveness because I will not let any anger spill over to them. This is important to me. The students deserve my best.
Anonymous
A significant experience of forgiveness was returning home to my Catholic faith.
It had been over 20 years since I had experienced the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I remember well that I had been experiencing a lot of restlessness and anxiety. Then I decided to go to this sacrament. I was very nervous, but after much prayer, I had a strong prompting in my heart to take this step.
After I went, the burden of restlessness and anxiety was lifted within my heart! I had received a great gift from God within this beautiful healing sacrament. It was God’s divine grace that took away my sins because I had received the gift of forgiveness from God. I had built up layers of dust within my heart. (One definition of sin: “an often serious shortcoming.” Merriam-Webster dictionary.)
After I have read Dr. Enright’s book, “Forgiveness Is A Choice”, I have learned much more on the importance and healing of this most important act of forgiveness. It does take time to learn how to forgive, and it can be a painful process. No pain, no gain. I realize that forgiveness is an essential key element in also loving others too.
I am so very grateful that Dr. Enright has stayed the course in this most important work. He is truly a gift to others in helping us all to learn how to forgive which helps to heal the broken heart and this leads to true and everlasting peace.
God bless Dr. Enright and all those at the International Forgiveness Institute. I was also touched to be asked to write a moment of forgiveness, which I hope and pray that it can help others as well.
Jennifer
My story concerns forgiving myself. I would be embarrassed to say exactly what I did and so I will skip that. I even changed my name to protect the not-so-innocent. When I forgave myself the first thing I did was ask forgiveness from God. As a Christian, I know that my sins can be forgiven. The remaining problem for me is that even though I knew that God had forgiven me, I just could not let go of the guilt. It was eating me alive and it did not help when well meaning people asked me, “Are you more powerful than God? If not, then just let go and accept the forgiveness.” I tried that and I was still miserable.
Then I tried to forgive myself, not as a substitute for God’s forgiveness, but something that comes alongside that and works with it. I decided to offer a quietness toward myself, an understanding that I can fall as everyone does. Maybe this will sound a little funny, but I began to realize that I can have compassion on myself. To me this means that I will put down the whip and stop beating myself up over what I did. Actually, without that compassion I was pretty much punishing myself for something that happened in the past and I cannot go back there and make it right. The compassion toward myself combined with the assurance of God’s forgiveness of me set me free. And I am never going back into that place of guilt again. I have been set free of that and I am thankful that both types of forgiveness, God’s and mine, are possible in this tough world.
Robert D. Enright
I am smiling here. Am I supposed to be smiling right before I tell my story of woe? Oh, well. Forgiveness can do that to a person—put joy in his or her heart even in the midst of pain. I am smiling because my forgiveness story, which happened a quarter-of-a-century ago, was responsible in part for the construction of this site. Here is that story:
I started to study forgiveness a generation ago, in 1985, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I did not realize it at the time, but as I began to study forgiveness, no one else in the social sciences had taken up this topic in any systematic say. Academia was virtually silent on the matter of person-to-person forgiveness, except in philosophy, where there were a handful of papers exploring this vital topic. The social sciences were silent. As I began to explore how forgiving others might have a direct impact on the well-being of the one who forgives, I encountered substantial and surprising opposition from colleagues, not only at my own university, but well beyond that. This surprised me—-isn’t academia supposed to be about open-minded investigation? About fearless sifting and winnowing? Apparently not. Here are two examples of what I faced early in this fight to bring forgiveness to the social sciences:
1) I was in the office of a prominent professor and after we exchanged pleasantries, he came right up to me. He was not happy. He came up so close to me that we almost touched noses. He glared at me and said, “Do you really think that forgiveness will alleviate symptoms of depression?” The way he said it, my answer was supposed to be,”Why….no…sir….whatever gave you that idea? That would be silly.” Instead, I swallowed hard and said,”Yyyyyes, I do think that science will show this.” Up to that point, this was a hypothesis for me and not a scientifically supported finding (which it is now :). Well, that prominent professor turned around, shook his head in disappointment, and laughed. He continued laughing as he walked out the door. And that was the last time he and I ever discussed the matter. I can still see his head shaking sadly at me as the professor walked out the door.
2) A graduate student whom I was advising came into my office one day and she was pale with stress. “What is wrong?” I asked. She explained that she had just met a professor in the hall who told her that she will never get an academic job working with Enright. The forgiveness work will go nowhere. Enright has ruined his career. She looked me in the eye and asked, “Will I get a job in academia if I continue working with you on forgiveness?” I was honest and said,”It is possible that you will not get a job in academia. It is too early to say how the academy will react to this work. You are taking a risk.” That actually seemed to help this very courageous student, who decided to stay with forgiveness, is now happily published and is tenured at an American university. Ahhh, sweet revenge! (Oops. We forgiveness-types should not use such nasty words as “revenge”….but we are human, too.)
There are other stories to tell, but you get the idea. For me personally, the greatest challenge to forgive people arose when I started to study forgiveness. I did feel betrayed because of my expectations regarding academic freedom—being put down for just having ideas is not so much fun. Yet, I came to see those who castigated me as not seeing far enough. They were trapped in a little world, one that dictates what one can and cannot think. I wanted no part of that. Eventually, I began to see how freeing my own thoughts were on forgiveness, despite opposition, and this gave me the impetus to forgive as I studied forgiveness as my life’s calling.
Some of the colleagues are among my friends now, others have left the university and I have not seen them in years, but my heart is warm toward them. They helped to challenge me. Without them, I may not have dug down deeply to produce the best science that I could. Their challenges made the work better and so as we inaugurate this new website, I give a special “thank you” to those who, a long time ago, were skeptical of me and the work. Their skepticism became fuel for perseverance and now here we are, with a new website that I hope helps others to lead the forgiving life.
