by Gayla Jennings

Created on: April 30, 2008

Forgiving Myself

I'm striving to forgive myself and I believe in its power to heal old wounds. In numerous conversations with my husband, he's exemplified forgiveness' importance while I've tried to make sense of my personal conflicts. And I'm learning to forgive myself in order to release the perpetuated stresses from my past.

I was asked to be different things for my parents after they divorced. My dad asked for a sweet and loving daughter to accent his new life with another woman and my mom asked me to give her strength after feeling abandoned again by another husband.

A few years after my parents separated, my dad began dating another woman. This introduction of another figure in my life, somewhat competing with me for my dad's attention, was hard for me to understand. I already felt as though the weekends spent with my dad weren't long enough and to have someone sharing that time with us seemed to rob me even further of a closeness with him.

During this same period, much of the time I spent together with my mom happened backstage and in the dressing rooms of theaters. She was a prominent actress in Portland, appearing in musicals, comedies, and dramas and it was exciting to be part of that world while still spending so much time with her. But suddenly, she went from the stage into a rehabilitation facility for alcohol and prescription drug addictions.

Just before my eleventh birthday, my dad asked me how I felt about us moving in with his girlfriend. I remember sitting in the car as he spoke of our "better life" and I felt my heart drop with disappointment. My life already felt disarrayed and now I felt as though it was getting worse. I didn't want to move again. I had already moved about seven times during the course of six years and I wasn't looking forward to the possibilities of moving again. But above all, I felt as though I was losing my dad, as if we were moving into a new home where he could start over again and I would just have a room at the back of the house where I could be forgotten.

As our weekend ended, I came home to my stepfamily's house and was overjoyed to see my mom had returned from treatment. She was in great spirits and had a wonderful gift for me. For my birthday, she had arranged for the two of us to go to Disneyland. As soon as I stepped off of the plane in California, I forgot about all of my worries.

But as soon as we had come home from our trip, I learned that my mom and I were moving out. As unexpectedly as everything else

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