Dayton - The magic of forgiveness: emotional freedom and transformation at midlife

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dayton, Tian.

The magic of forgiveness : emotional freedom and transformation at midlife / Tian Dayton.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-0086-8 (Paperback)

ISBN-10: 0-7573-0086-3 (Paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-9988-6 (ePub)

ISBN-10: 0-7573-9988-6 (ePub)

1. Middle aged womenPsychology. 2. Middle agePsychological aspects. 3. Self-actualization (Psychology) 4. Forgiveness. I. Title.

HQ1059.4.D397 2003

30.244dc21

200301710

2003 Tian Dayton

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.

3201 S.W. 15th Street

Deerfield Beach, FL 33442-8190

R-02-06

Cover design by Lisa Camp

Cover illustration 2003 Jean Douglas

Inside book design by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

TO MOM,
WITH LOVE
AND
UNDERSTANDING

ltimately, make it your goal to move on to forgiveness of yourself and those causing you pain in the past. Forgiveness doesnt mean that what happened to you was acceptable. It simply means that you are no longer willing to allow a past injury to keep you from living fully and healthfully in the present.

~CHRISTIANE NORTHRUP, M.D.
THE WISDOM OF MENOPAUSE

kay, I admit it, I dont really love writing acknowledgment pages. Im always afraid Ill leave someone out, and I will look, horrified at the finished book and it will be too late to fix it. The other reason is that I am painfully aware that a book passes through more hands and hearts than can ever fit on an acknowledgment page, no matter how carefully writteneven if I say Ill try to remember the most important people, its full of pitfalls. But here goes, my best attempt for this book, to say thank you to those who have been helpful in getting The Magic of Forgiveness to you, the reader.

This book was the idea of Peter Vegso, publisher of Health Communications. I got a call from him sometime after breakfast over a year ago. He asked me if I wanted to do another book on forgiveness, as a companion book to my bestseller to date, Daily Affirmations for Forgiving & Moving On, which I wrote in 1992. When I wrote that book, research showed that people didnt buy books with forgiveness in the title. Research was evidently wrong. Many people, it turned out, struggle with the issue of forgiveness. I think this is so, because deep down we intuit that it is in forgiveness that we will find our real emotional freedom. That is the spiritual, emotional and psychological intersection where we will find the truth that will set us free. That is where even our bodies will be able to let go of whatever were holding onto that is pulling us down and robbing us of our joy. So I agreed to do it. Its a great subject and one in which Im already obviously interested. One that I witness clients struggling with on a day-to-day basis. One on which I have received the most touching letters of my career. I will never forget the workshop I gave, after which a woman came up to me with a book that was literally in pieces, barely held together by a rubber band, and asked me to sign it. It was so used by her that I couldnt even read the cover, but it was Daily Affirmations for Forgiving & Moving On. She told me, I never knew someone could understand how I felt from inside, it was like you were living in my skin. Thats why I had to say yes to writing this book. I had to keep pursuing a subject that was important to so many people, and I was sure it would be good for me, too. After September 11, it also just seemed to be the right subject to explore.

Christine Belleris, my old friend and editor at Health Communications, and I traveled a journey with this bookfrom its being a book on forgiveness to a book on forgiveness for women to a book on forgiveness for women in midlife. Current brain research that I found convinced both of us that this book had to be designed for us, all of our friends and all the midlife women that we knew. This was the book that could explain what was going on with us emotionally, psychologically and physically, and point a path toward using this changing, shifting time of life to grow, to come alive spiritually and to understand the deeper nature of relationships. And we knew, women being what we arekeepers of the hearth and explorers of wisdom that once we got the message, we would pass it along to those we loved. We would get it to pay forward. Lisa Drucker, this books primary editor, was a constant creative companion and source of support on what felt like a very important journey, I hope to both of us. Thank you, Lisa, you have been wonderful.

I also need to acknowledge Jean Douglas, the artist who painted the image on the cover. No one could be more generous and pleasant to work with, and I truly appreciate her throwing herself into creating an image that worked graphically and that, as a painter of considerable sophistication, she could live with artistically. It felt like it told the story to me, and I am ever grateful.

I further need to acknowledge Kimberly Peck for all of her hard work in the preparation of the first manuscript, and enthusiasm for (a burgeoning midlifer herself) and interest in the subject. Thanks also to Lawna Patterson Oldfield for her exacting and creative typesetting of the insides of this book. A book can abound with good information, but if it isnt readable and attractive, the material feels too dense. Lawna did a wonderful job of presenting this material beautifully.

And the person I want forever to acknowledge as being the cornerstone upon which everything else in my life has been built, including forgiveness, is my husband, Brandt. Our partnership over the past thirty years has given us two wonderful people we are lucky enough to call our children, as well as each other and ourselves. No one could remain happily married or in a compatible family for a long time without learning and practicing forgiveness on a daily basis. William Blake says it best, And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me.

ll the case studies and letters in this book are composites of real stories and from real people. In all cases, names have been changed to protect privacy and guarantee anonymity.

The generosity of those who have allowed their stories to be shared brings depth and life to these pages, and I hope honors their experiences.