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	Finding the Way Forward through Self Forgiveness: a Survivors Journey to Healing By Virginia Jones The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing December 31, 2011 http://compassionategathering.blogspot.com/2011/12/finding-way-forward-through-self.html We all abuse ourselves more viciously than anyone else does. Too often we repeat to ourselves, over and over, the criticisms and complaints others have directed at us, bashing ourselves and paralyzing ourselves with self loathing. I still remember my mother’s words said to me 40 years ago when I was a child because I’ve repeated these words to myself so many times. “Your father spoiled you.” For years I thought of myself as spoiled and unpleasant, and didn’t my life and friendships, or lack of friendships, validate that point of view? Where were the friends I didn’t seem to have? Where were the invitations to dance that never came while I sat on a folded chair along the wall. Obviously there was something unattractive and unlovable about me because no one was attracted to me and no one loved me. It took me years to understand that my mother was speaking from her pain and anger at my father and not from some self evident truth about the five year old me. It was much harder for me to forgive myself for being alone and unloved than it was for me to forgive my mother for saying such wounding words to the five year old me so many times. I had to come to terms with being sexually abused as a child and discover that very often child survivors of abuse struggle with relationships and withdraw from these relationships to avoid pain we’ve experienced in interpersonal relationships. It took years for me to see the patterns of my behavior in avoiding opportunities for friendships and relationships and for choosing relationships that could not possibly work. I am still working on changing those patterns. Only in my mid forties, during a spiritual retreat on resolving conflict through listening, did I begin to understand how I was abusing myself with my self criticism and self doubts. The relationship I was working on changing at that time was my relationship with other Catholics. The priest who baptized me Catholic at age 41 was revealed to have abused boys. This revelation caused me to examine both my own past as a child sex abuse survivor as well as what had transpired on the issue of clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church. As I read newspaper articles and press releases from different places and times, I came to realize that the leadership of the Catholic Church had known about this particular priest's abuses for more than 20 years before he was removed, and that he had almost certainly abused many boys during that 20 year span. I set on a path of sharing my newspaper articles with other parishioners to try to inspire them to take action for change in our Church. About one-third of the people I gave my articles to were sympathetic, about one-third were more ambivalent about my course of action, and about one-third were angry at me for passing out what they considered to be scandalous and untrue newspaper articles. I was puzzled by why most people didn’t seem to care so I gave out more articles -- provoking the leadership of the church to throw me out of the parish. They also told many parishioners that I was mentally disturbed and to my distress, most people did not question what they were told. Fortunately there were a few brave souls in the parish. One stood up and advocated for me before the parish council. When a new priest became pastor, he welcomed me back into the parish. I took the opportunity to hand out even more newspaper articles and to tell anyone wether or not they wanted to listen, about how badly I was treated by the leadership of the Catholic Church. The response I received was that most people found me very annoying. Many survivors of clergy abuse have thanked me for being brave enough to stand up for truth and justice in a Catholic Church and have condemned the Catholic parishioners for acting more as cult followers than as genuine Christians. But my intense actions of handing out lots of newspaper articles and passionately advocating for survivors through passionate personal encounters and lots of long angry e-mails did achieve my goal of inspiring other Catholics to care and act on the issue I felt so intensely about.
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