Three Simple Words

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi


A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about the problems she had with her mother in the past. Knowing the mother, I could completely understand where she was coming from, yet one thing was as clear as spring water – even if her feelings were justified, my friend was not happy.

The discontent began when Sharon – the name is fictitious to protect her identity - was a small child; likely, it probably goes back even further, but her memories of times past only regress to a certain point, right around the time when she was about five years old.

Her mother was a victim of her own choices. After marrying young to escape abusive parents of her own, she had become pregnant with Sharon when she was only nineteen, and had almost immediately found herself trapped; with a much older and controlling husband, and a daughter to care for, the poor woman was stuck in a role she despised. She had dreams when she was young, and many times, when she finally laid her head down at night, she could shut out the world and live the life she wished she could have.

Her disappointment toward life turned into anger first and in control over her daughter’s life. Sharon had no choices; her mother made them all for her. That kind of smothering control triggered the opposite approach to parenting in Sharon. Terrified of growing into her mother, she had chosen to be a friend only and couldn’t bring herself to discipline her own daughter. As her daughter quickly began descending a vicious spiral of occasional drug use and bad company at sixteen years of age, her maternal instinct nudged her to take control of the situation, but her past experiences blocked her from taking charge. Indirectly, her mother was still controlling her. Sharon knew it was time to make some changes.

She felt like she hated her mother even more now, and she held her responsible for her own daughter’s poor choices. She ranted over the older woman’s mistakes almost two and a half decades earlier, and the first words out of her mouth were in regard of the fact that her mother had ruined her life first and she was now working on her granddaughter. That’s where I had to stop her – her mother, wrapped into her own anger, might have been abusive in the beginning, but now she was the one picking up where her mother had left off. It was time to let go of past resentments and focus on present problems.

Letting go was hard, as by letting go of the chokehold her mother had her in she felt she was condoning her actions. It never occurred to her that by forgiving her mother she was not letting the old lady off the hook, but she was allowing herself to finally be free from the influences of the past.

She finally did. About a week ago, she went to visit her mother and told her about the feelings she had fostered all these years. In return, her mother explained her own feelings toward her and asked to be forgiven. Sharon could not utter words of forgiveness, until her mother broke down and said: “Don’t make the same mistakes I made. I can’t change what happened when you were a little girl, but you can change what will happen to your daughter.”

Sharon went home and thought about the events of late. Her mother was right – no amount of anger, of resentment or justification could change the past, but maybe there was hope for the future. She picked up the phone and called her mother. “I forgive you,” she said, nothing else; then she hung up. Those three words suddenly lifted the weight she had carried on her back all her life, and removed the blinders from her own eyes. When her daughter got home that evening, she called her into the living room and they had a long talk. The daughter half-way listened and then got up to prepare to go out with her friends, but Sharon stopped her before she could walk out of the room. “Not tonight,” she said, “tonight you’re staying home.”

Sharon was free. Forgiving her mother didn’t make her accept her mother’s ways, but it gave her an edge to stop those behaviors from affecting her present life and her parental skills. Unknowingly, she had found the key to come into herself.

The Time is Now

“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.” ~ Og Mandino

When I was younger, I hated Mondays. To me – and I felt justified in my feeling because most people I knew felt the same way – Mondays represented another long week to pass before finally crossing the threshold of a new weekend, when I could finally let my hair down and remember I was a human being.

One day, not too long ago, I got up on a particularly dreary Monday morning. It was cold and raining outside, and I had to go to the grocery store. Never mind the fact that I don’t particularly like shopping…on a day like this I would have been happy to do just about anything else at home instead than going out. So I didn’t; I dropped my daughter off at school and went back home. I looked for a list of excuses that would justify my lack of resolve – the closet REALLY needed straightening out, the kitchen floor HAD to be mopped, you name it, I thought of it…anything that could keep me from going out into the elements was welcome in my book, no matter how much I normally didn’t like the task.

The morning rolled along, and it was time to pick my daughter up from school. We got back, and I went to make coffee…I was out of sugar! No big deal, I thought, the creamer itself is fairly sweet, and surely I could enjoy coffee without the extra bit of sugar until that evening, when my husband could just bring some home from work. I drank my coffee and went to do a few other things around the house. I realized I was out of window cleaner…hmmm…a little vinegar could fix that, and the problem was solved. Then, it was time for dinner preparations; and suddenly, I remembered two ingredients I had to have to fix the meal I had already thawed meat out for. That was my final defeat; I got my daughter’s coat on and we went to the store. Not only did I have to go to the store in the end anyway, but now I even had to drag along a tired five-year-old who didn’t want to miss Dora the Explorer and couldn’t find a shoe. To top it all, it was raining even harder now, the temperature had dropped, and a hungry child is never a good companion to have at the check-out line, where candy sparkles from the shelves like diamonds waiting for a thief. The trip to the store which would have taken thirty minutes of my time in the morning turned into a messy journey, just because I allowed procrastination to set the tone.

When we perceive something as being unpleasant, our first instinct is to postpone the inevitable, even if we create a greater sense of stress for ourselves that way. No matter how hard we try to focus on other things, thoughts of challenges ahead are like clouds covering up our sunshine.

Whether we are dealing with health-related issues, situations with other people, or even a personal matter, very few people have the self-discipline necessary to take action immediately, if the effort or the confrontation can be pushed forward and not faced at that moment. Unfortunately, whatever is not approached and dealt with now will not disappear, but it will instead continue to amplify and get worse.

We have the power to control the majority of events unfolding in our lives. The first step is to take action when it’s needed. The best time is usually right now.

From the Words of a Gypsy: My Love Story

If I look back, and rewind the movie of my life long enough to glimpse at the last twenty years or so, I can see that my marriage was in the cards since before I met my husband, or, even better, it was mapped on the lines of my hand. Odd thing to say, you think? Well, listen to my story, and you might agree with me.

On a cold winter morning, a few weeks shy of Christmas 1986, I skipped school with a friend, and we went to hang out at Piazza Dei Miracoli, near the Leaning Tower. Bored as we were, we scanned the crowd of tourists brave enough to defy the weather in favor of snapping a few pictures, until we noticed an old woman, clad in traditional gipsy clothes, who asked if we were interested in having our palms read. We giggled and agreed.

The woman took my hand, and studied it for a few moments, then lifted her deep chocolate brown eyes to meet mine. “You are getting ready to go on a trip” she said “which will redirect the path you will follow”. Since I was preparing to go to London for the Christmas holidays, my attention was immediately piqued. “When you get back, you will be so enthusiastic from your vacation that you will seek ways to go back. A few months later, you will meet a man, you will marry him and will travel far together, and to see your family again you will embark on a long, long trip”.

After reading my friend’s palm the woman left without even collecting the few coins we had for her, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her words. To the ears of a dreamy teenager they went beyond the notes of a sweet melody, and I began to fantasize about this Mr. Wonderful who would allegedly sweep me off to a faraway land.

Months went by. I went on my trip and fell in love with London; deep down, I secretly hoped to be able to move there some day. That summer, my parents went to a different beach establishment than the one they normally went to, and I noticed it was right beside a morsel of beach owned by the American base in Tirrenia.

It wasn’t long – as I lay on the shore sunbathing – until I noticed a very handsome lifeguard staring in my direction. He nodded when he saw me looking back, and soon the smiles began. Still nursing my dream of moving to London, I jumped at the chance to practice my English, and after gathering all the courage I had, I went to the snack bar of the American establishment to get a soda.

My handsome lifeguard was there. So was the beach doggie, Boo-Boo. I leaned down to pad him, and the lifeguard smiled at me. I smiled back. He gave Boo-Boo most of the ham in his sandwich – a gesture that certainly earned him several points in my book. We began to talk, half broken English and half broker Italian. By the time I left, he had asked me on a date.

We went on our first date on June 16 1987, the night of celebration for St. Ranieri, the patron of Pisa. We watched fireworks and had pizza, and finally sealed that magical evening with a kiss. We continued to date until John left Italy in March 1988; I followed him a few months later in November 1988.

That day was a bittersweet one for me – I was following the love of my life, yet I was saying goodbye to all I had loved and held dear until then. That was twenty years ago - John and I will celebrate our twenty-first wedding anniversary this spring. As a couple we have encountered some hard moments, but have conquered each stone and moved forward together. The old gypsy’s prediction still lives on.