“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” ~Nelson Mandela
Has anger ever filled you up so completely that you felt you’d explode?
Two months after I had a baby I suddenly found myself inextricably angry. Yes, I felt the joy and happy stuff that everyone tells you about.
But having a daughter also triggered a flash flood of buried anger, blame, and resentment. And it was all directed to one person—my mother.
A therapist told me once that my mother had “verbally abused” me. That launched a fifteen-year process of rehashing and blaming my plethora of emotional issues on my mother.
But no matter how many therapists or coaches told me that she “didn’t form a proper attachment” or whatever, I always defended her. That is, until I became a mother myself.
When my own nurturing instinct kicked in, I realized what I’d missed out on as a child. I was overwhelmed by “how coulds.” How could anyone treat a little girl that way?
The anger overtook me. It was like a well of blame had opened up and I had fallen in. Something had to shift.
In truth, it happened fast. You might think it would take years to let go of anger and blame so strong it feels like it’s coming out of your eyeballs.
But once I realized how to let it go, all at once, poof, I was free. Now years later, I’ve never looked back.
How did I do it? I discovered the profound meaning of two words: perspective and compassion.
Life is Like a Box of Hair Dye
My mother grew up in the South in the sixties. I’ve watched enough Mad Men to know that life for women in my mother’s generation was very different.
Women’s value was heavily dependent on their looks and the look of their houses. Combine that world-view with a heaping helping of stress from an overwhelming job and you get a picture of my mother.
Think of an uber stressed-out Betty Draper. At thirteen, when my blonde hair started fading to light brown, she started dying it. “Boys won’t like you with brown hair,” she said.
Yelling was the norm and more I cried the more she yelled. I was an only child, lost in a world where my looks and image were tantamount to survival and nothing I did was enough.
The Blame-Spin Cycle
Getting stuck in blame feels like walking through an endless maze, looking for cheese that doesn’t exist. That’s what therapy felt like.
The more I re-counted the past, the madder I became and the more hopeless I felt. I was spinning in an endless cycle of blame, anger, and resentment.
What is the end game? What do I do with the fact that my mother’s behavior may have caused me pain later in life?
It was a well-meaning friend who finally cracked the code, over wine and panic one afternoon. I had called her over because I felt too emotionally unstable to be alone with my infant daughter.
“Why don’t you just ask her why she did it?” she asked.
That had never occurred to me.
I’d Like Perspective with a Side of Compassion Please
“It was the only way I knew…” she explained, after I found the courage to ask her why she had treated me so harshly.
My mother then went on to recount tales of her childhood. You know the beginning of Cinderella, when she spends her hours cleaning endlessly at the whim of a demanding mother?
That’s the image that came to mind as my mom recounted years of cleaning and re-cleaning my grandmother’s house. The family was not allowed to leave the house to do any activities until the house was spotless.
And of course, the cleaning always took up the entire day, disappointing my mom and her sister every time. My grandmother, it turned out, had been an even stronger product of her environment.
Why are people the way they are? If you can ask yourself that question before passing judgment, you can save yourself tremendous mental energy.
When I started understanding the world for my mother and grandmother, I was flooded with intense compassion. Think of Biff in any Back to the Future movie, when manure was inevitably dumped on his head—that was what happened to me with compassion.
Suddenly I realized that no one is to blame. If I blame my mother for my problems, then I have to blame my grandmother for my mother’s problems. And then I’d have to blame the Great Depression and society for my grandmother’s problems.
I just don’t have enough space for all of that anger.
Getting perspective on a situation and fully understanding the whole story is like pulling back the curtain and finding the little man with the booming voice in The Wizard of Oz. It loses its power over you.
Could my mother have made different choices? Of course she could have. Did she do the best she could with who she was back then? Yes, I believe she did.
Setting Yourself Free
What happened happened. No amount of blame, resentment, or anger at my mother will make it not have happened. It is just what happened.
We can let what happened control us and we can live in blame and anger, or we can let it go and free ourselves. When you hold on to anger, it’s you who suffers. You’re the one who has to live in your head.
Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. You don’t have to tell him that you forgive him, or even talk to her again if you don’t want to.
This process is simply about changing the way you see someone so that you can stop wasting valuable emotional energy. If you are holding onto resentment or anger, today is the day to set yourself free.
Right now, think of one person who isn’t safe to walk down the streets of your mind without being attacked.
Picture your story about that person. Then try to tell the story again from her perspective.
What is the back-story? Think about her childhood; when did she get hurt?
Find some way to see the story that allows you to feel compassion. It may not be easy at first, but there is always an answer.
The forgiveness journey is worth taking 1,000 times over. I can’t even begin to describe how much this idea shifted my experience in life.
Letting go of the anger feels like flying. By getting perspective on the story and uncovering compassion, you have the power to set yourself free.
Sad woman image via Shutterstock
About Lauren Fire
Lauren Fire is the host of Inspiring Mama, a podcast and blog dedicated to finding solutions to the emotional challenges of motherhood and teaching simple and practical happiness tools to parents. Get her free happiness lesson videos by joining the Treat Yourself Challenge - 10 Days, 10 Ways to Shift from Crappy to Happy.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Lauren, that’s a great post.
I’m not sure though. I totally respect the older people’s traditions and lifestyles. When two people have a conflict with each other, both of them should make amends so that future conflicts can be avoided. I understand your point about empathy–understanding life from the other person’s perspective, but I think it shouldn’t really be a reason for them to keep doing something that’s going to be “hateable” in the future. It certainly does show with a lot of people, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to tolerate that to the point that we merely accept that. We should learn how to face life forward. For example, love your kids and raise them based on how you know is best for them. We may have had some ugly past, but we know we can turn it around by actually doing it with the current people in our lives, for example again, the kids. Using the past as an excuse is just lame.
Actually, I have no argument here. That was just an observation 🙂 It’s hard to forgive if others are not forgiving, but I guess that’s the beauty in it–forgive anyway!
I totally get what you are saying Ethan. It seems at first like compassion or understanding why someone did something is the same as excusing or allowing bad behavior to continue. But you can do both- put up your hand and say no more, if you can’t treat me the way I need, you don’t get to be around me. And you can forgive the person at the same time. That forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to go back on your boundary. It just means you have changed the way you see them in your own head. Forgiveness has nothing to do with whether someone deserves it or not, fairness, or rightness. It’s just about you and your own head. Not everyone (including my therapist) agrees with me but looking at it this way has saved me so much heartache and anger.
BEAUTIFUL! Thank you for sharing your story and insight!!! Wonderful food for thought 🙂
Great piece. Thank you for sharing. One I will look back on for sure.
Thank you!!
Thanks! I appreciate it!
Three years after being suddenly dumped by the man I was with for 25 years, I am still struggling with what it means to forgive. I do feel like I have compassion for him (his parents screwed him up), but I still feel like his actions were unforgivable. I don’t feel consumed by anger; I’m not an angry person. But I do feel sad and like my life is broken and unfixable, and I’m not sure how to “let go” of that.
I want to thank you for sharing your story, Lauren. There’s nothing wrong with forgiveness, especially when the cycle repeats itself. Unfortunately, forgiveness isn’t enough to undo the damage that was already done.
I remember my biological father walking out on my sister and me twenty three years ago. I was eight-years-old when I saw him for the last time. Honestly, I’ll continue to carry anger and resentment towards my biological father for the rest of my life, because I know that my sister and I haven’t said or done anything to him to deserve to be treated with so much disrespect. He wasn’t father material. I couldn’t help but be jealous of those that had BOTH of their parents in their lives, when I didn’t have that. It sucked!
Almost ten years ago, my mom told me that I have an older half brother, which was someone that I didn’t know existed. He told my mom that he has been looking for us since 2001, and wanted to get to know his sisters. My sister and I weren’t interested. Although he hasn’t done anything wrong to me personally, it’s a part of my life that I don’t want to acknowledge.
I hear you, Lauren. And actually, that’s an interesting way to do it. And, forgiveness doesn’t have to be recognized (which a lot of people would preach, like “it must be a two-way thing.”) But that would need some strength. I think I really know what you’re talking about. 🙂
Thanks for your reply, Lauren. Have a good day.
Thanks so much for sharing. I totally understand where you are coming from. Ultimately it is up to you whether you want to let go of what happened. I let go because not letting go was eating away at me. Though from my experience, letting go of anger at what someone did is not at all justifying it, or making it right, or saying you deserved what they did. The two aren’t tied together at all. All it means is that when you think of him in your head, the feeling gets more neutral. You don’t get bogged down with anger or resentment. By holding onto resentment, you aren’t hurting him at all. You aren’t somehow punishing him. All you are doing is hurting yourself – if the anger is hurting you, which it sounds like it might be. All you are doing by forgiving is changing the way you see him in your own head, changing the thoughts you have about him so that whenever you think of him you don’t waste valuable emotional energy being mad about something you can’t change- something that already happened. By hanging on you are actually giving him more power over your life today. But that is all just my two cents. I just want to make clear how much freedom is on the other side of this journey. You never have to tell him or your sister anything about it, it’s just about you and your head. I wish you the best!! Thanks for replying to my post!
Thanks so much for sharing. That sounds really rough, and I can imagine being flooded with anger, sadness and grief. I think “letting go” may be the wrong goal, what about a goal of feeling more neutral when you think of him? Little steps. One thing that worked for me when i was trying to move past what happened is a little cheater variation on the Buddhist metta practice of loving kindness. In the traditional practice, whenever you think of the person you want to let go of you say some sort of kindness mantra in your head: “may he happy, may he live in peace, may he be surrounded by love.” But that is impossible when all you can think is how much you don’t want any of that. So start with “if he doesn’t step on a Lego, may he live in peace.” Or “if he doesn’t stub the crap out of his toe first thing in the morning, may he be happy…” Or “if he doesn’t get poison oak on his butt, may he be surrounded by love”. Eventually you can drop the training wheels and it gets easier and you start to feel more neutral. Not sure but maybe this may help? 🙂
Yes I had a therapist once say “you can’t forgive someone who never apologized or admits wrongdoing”…I couldn’t disagree more! That way of thinking traps you. I have to stay angry until they agree? I get to decide when and if I want to live in anger and I choose not to, regardness of what the other person ever says about it! Forgiveness is power, not weakness or acceptance of bad behavior. It’s saying I get to choose how I see the situation, you know?
Thank you for taking the time to reply back to my post, Lauren. I’ll always carry anger and resentment in my heart, due to my biological father’s actions. Although my sister and I haven’t said or done anything wrong to this man, I don’t respect him as a person. Sadly, I’m having a difficult time letting go, since there are NO answers to my questions.
Resentment and anger are the hardest to let go in early recovery; now I am not using, the resentment and anger towards my alcoholic father for his abuse and for the two men who also abused me (sexually) as a child overwhelms me and I have to practice the tools in my 12 step program otherwise I would be dangerous! But its true when I do let it go the pain dissipates and I can let good things into my life as I leave that space open – at least until the resentment and anger comes back again! So its one step at a time and I have to keep practising:)
Hi Lauren, nice post. I think there is a middle ground between staying angry or forgiving. I don’t think they are the only things you can do. I think you can let go of something/someone and not have compassion for the other person. Conversely, I think you can carry around some anger about someone and not let it rule your life. And with regards to what your therapist said, I think that you shouldn’t have relationships with people who chronically invalidate your feelings or deny responsibility, I’m not sure that forgiveness is even in the equation.
I vote we think up a new word instead of using the slightly confusing forgiveness – maybe just compassion for the person who has wronged you, as you suggested above.
Thanks for the food for thought.
Resentment doesn’t always have to do with molestation or men abusing. In my case I have been publically abused by loud harassing women that have publicly said extremely sexually offensive slander against me havin a child. It is a very rich woman who head political public family and was molested by that man. I was told by another person that he was molested by her. He told me in front of her. He seems to might have money, I don’t so she has paid off the authorities to allow her to form pretty much a cult against me having a child I am middle aged and sometimes just pray for cancer . She won’t leave me alone and if my great grandfather hadn’t been a politician a very important one , maditory description in presidential politics to be respected, though since Bush has not and that’s who’s daughter she is because of the lie bush paid Monica luinski (she could do the cigar herself if he was committing adultery and he had it in his mouth, there wouyhave been a condom and putting it in his mouth was it on his breath? Her DNA being on a cigar does not prove he committed adultery it does prove the Bushes with her hair as I know from life’s unfortunate experiences is from incest , that’s why they had to have The only race whose hair is always naturally that way because they die everyday because of what the Bush’s oil industry does. In the Bible it say people that commit those acts should be put to death , they no longer have public exicution though Royalty and all rulers were only a hundred years ago, mandated by law of the Lord to publicly hang or behead people (monsters) like the Bush’s that committed those immoral acts of interrelations with father, mother, brother or sister, even aunt or wife’s sister, unless she (the wife) is dead. To say about Clinton and the obvious uncleanliness and un preserved from non love (no commandments love others or each other/ love. Protecting all the PEOPLES that die each second because of them) to cover it up he raped or slept willingly I’m not sure witch one with his own daughter because he assumed she either wouldn’t tell or because it is so disgusting and disgraceful and no one would not be humiliated in all of America at that ever have been our president unless we no longer had presidents because of it and it either a dictator or something she could never be associated with… Royalty
If it wasn’t for my grandfather I would have been murdered by this woman and God protects me. Because I know she has told another molested woman if she kills me she will pay, but because of my work and good deeds, they fear to. The insanity of Jenna is sickening and I pray very much she leaves my life alone. I was Prom and homecoming queen and a friend has been prom or homecoming queen for 16-17 years now. She has bigamist with different men and one that went to my high school was in a wheelchair when they first started dating. He was teased terribly by other school mates, and extremely in popular. The bitterness of her insanity leaves me in a state of confusion of what people are, I am harmless and helpful and was loving before all this. Now I’m scared to love because it was intertwined during her abuse. I have it in my head love is pain and I relentlessly push it away and subconsciously think it’s hate, then I’m sad. Because I always wished for love more than money, or fame. Just love.