Tagged: “Children”
How can parents recapture a sense of love with their adult children if those parents never showed love as the children were growing up?
This may be an issue of self-forgiveness first so that the parents are seeing their own worth despite their imperfect parenting. Then the parents should consider asking the adult children for forgiveness as the parents now show love (in the parents’ own way and in their own time). This requires both courage and humility and may require much patience on the parents’ part as they wait for the adult children to adjust to the new pattern of love.
Grieving Sandy Hook Mother Finds Peace in Forgiveness
The tragedy that broke the heart of a nation has led one mother from her journey of suffering for the loss of her child to what many consider unthinkable — forgiveness of the one who had taken so much from her.
Jennifer Hubbard’s 6-year-old daughter, Catherine, was one of the 20 students and 6 teachers who were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, nine years ago this month (Dec. 14, 2012). In one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, the 20-year-old shooter ended his rampage by killing himself outside one of the classrooms.
The unimaginable horror of the tragedy and the raw emotion of losing her red-haired kindergartener caused virtually everything in Hubbard’s life to crumble around her.
Like parents of the other 19 students who never returned home from Sandy Hook, Hubbard found it difficult to consider recovery and healing. Still, she had to move forward to nurture Catherine’s second-grade brother, Freddy, who was also grieving, and to fulfill her pledge to make something positive out of the tragedy.
“On a purely human level, it is impossible to imagine being able to heal from the devastation of kneeling on the frozen earth beside your baby’s grave,” according to Hubbard. Relying on her Catholic faith and an outpouring of donations from supporters across the country, Hubbard slowly was able to grapple with her unthinkable pain and eventually to consider forgiveness.
“Surrendering debts takes time and does not mean forgetting,” she recently explained. “Forgetting would return us to where we started. … Forgiveness releases another from the debt you feel owed and gives your heart permission to heal rather than keep score and has more to do with us than them.”
Before Catherine died, Hubbard says, she could not understand people forgiving those who had inflicted unthinkable pain upon them. But now, by practicing forgiveness herself, she says she is able to experience peace and personal tranquility.
“Forgiveness is where we are changed, both in forgiving those who have launched assaults and in forgiving ourselves,” Hubbard writes in her recently published book Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook Mother. Each chapter in the book is dedicated to one step in Hubbard’s journey toward “wholeness” along with reflection questions and action steps for application in the reader’s own life.
Through her story, Hubbard shows readers how they can embrace grief and vulnerability to help heal their heart. As Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., writes in the book’s Forward: “Jennifer Hubbard’s achingly beautiful book takes us to the heart of horror and leads us out to an otherwise unimaginable hope.”
Catherine’s memory is kept alive in Newtown by donations from across that country that led to the creation of the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary that provides learning opportunities related to all the things Catherine loved—bugs, birds, pets, farm animals and nature. Hubbard also does that through speaking, including radio interviews and appearances on national television news shows.
How can we keep forgiveness initiatives going in schools and social groups, such as correctional institutions?
What advice do you have for parents when there are conflicts between siblings? What are the dangers to be avoided?
Sometimes, when parents want the children to forgive one another, the parent engages in a superficial ritual such as this:
“What do you say?” (directed toward the one who acted unjustly).
The parent waits for the words, “I am sorry.”
The parent then asks the one who was hurt by the other, “Now what do you say?”
The parent waits of the words, “I forgive you.”
Parents have to be careful that they do not equate forgiveness, in the children’s minds, with a language-ritual of “sorry” and “I forgive.” This is the case because forgiveness originates in the heart and the one who was treated badly might need a cooling-off period. It is best if the children are drawn both to forgiveness and to being forgiven rather than being forced into these.
Is there any research in which parents taught forgiveness education to their children?
Yes, here is the reference to a successful forgiveness education program in Northern Ireland in which parents taught forgiveness education to their children:
Magnuson, C. M., Enright, R. D., Fulmer, B., & Magnuson, K. A. (2009). Waging Peace in Belfast-IV Journal of Research in Education, 19, 57-65.
