In my German Facebook group, there is a new impulse from me every day, which is intended to invite thought and reflection.

I have a very specific purpose with this: so that mothers who have to share custody with a toxic ex-partner refocus on what moves them forward.

Every other month, one of the things I ask is what they may forgive themselves or others for.

We mothers are often our strictest judges, making life even harder than it already is in the situation.

But that’s not the only thing. Of course, in addition, there are a lot of wounds that narcissists have inflicted on us.

Do I now want you to go to your tormentor, hold out your hand to him and say:

“All forgiven and forgotten! I forgive you”?

No, you don’t!

The topic of forgiveness is rather delicate and invites misunderstandings.

That’s why I’d like to go into it in more detail in this article today.

Do you follow?

First of all: Forgive yourself

As mentioned above – we can be incredibly unforgiving to ourselves:

We struggle with the fact that we met and fell in love with this man.

We resent the fact that we have created this father for our children.

We resent the fact that we stayed with him so long and put up with so much from him.

We resent the fact that we have left him – especially when he subsequently rushes us from one court case to another in a war campaign, driving us into financial ruin so that we cannot provide a high standard of living for our children.

We struggle with the fact that we put up with him financially during our relationship and made hair-raising financial decisions in his favor, which he mercilessly exploited in the end.

We struggle with the fact that we cannot protect our little children when they have to go against their will to our violent tormentor for contact because the judge has decided so.

We struggle with the fact that we agreed to the trial alternating model and that the children are now so confused that they need therapeutic help.

We struggle with the fact that we often feel so despondent and helpless and that we are not the strong mothers we should be as role models.

We struggle with the fact that we don’t have the courage to stand up to biased guardians ad litem and money-grubbing experts who threaten the existence of our little family.

We struggle with having made so many mistakes in the first year of separation.

We struggle with not being a good mother because we are so exhausted and stressed that we simply have no mental resources left to respond lovingly to our children’s concerns.

We struggle with all of our shortcomings and weaknesses that other mothers don’t seem to have. After all, if we did, we wouldn’t be in this situation?

Sweetheart, if even one of those sentences up there resonates with you, please sit down and forgive yourself. In writing, please.

Why you should forgive yourself

Please be sure to remember this one fact:

You acted in every situation the way that was right for you at that moment.

Period.

In retrospect, of course, it always turns out what you could have done better.

Coulda woulda so and so.

Even today, you’ll make new micro-decisions every day that could turn out to be wrong in hindsight.

And you will also make many decisions that will turn out to be absolutely right.

So take heart! You do the best you can at the moment. All is well.

To let go, you may now forgive yourself for all that is up there and love yourself again.

Further down I will present you a method to go through the points one by one.

But first we have to take care of him.

​How can you forgive your toxic ex?

Shouldn’t he be the one to come to you and go down on his knees to beseech forgiveness for everything he did to you in the relationship and afterwards?

You already know that you can wait a long time for that, right? After all, a narcissist thinks he’s infallible.

So we can’t expect that to happen. (And honestly, if he ever actually showed up at the door with flowers and started crying because he was so sorry, I’d be more wary than moved).

But we should take care of it, because the unresolved lies like a heavy bag of cement on our shoulders. And still keeps us emotionally stuck in the past.

So we better take matters into our own hands and forgive him from ourselves.

Whaaaat, you want me to forgive him for what he did to me?

The essential distinction I want you to understand:

To forgive is not to accept.

Rather, to forgive is to let go.

Because as long as you are still struggling with what your ex has done to you, it will remain a ballast for your soul.

He doesn’t mind – he has no consciousness of wrongdoing, maybe even no scruples (depending on the toxicity of his personality), in the most harmless case simply no idea of what he has done to you.

So it is basically complete nonsense for you to go up to him and generously extend your hand to him – you might even be laughed at rather, he might even consider himself a winner because you are already going after him again and “running after” him at first sight to make peace

This is a big toad we have to swallow.

After all, we empaths want nothing more than to finally make peace!

I’m going to assume that you were raised on common religious principles and with the view that everyone in the world is good. We hear the good, dear, pious, unsuspecting, altruistic advisors, priests and neighbors say that we must approach our enemies and express the will for peace from our side, then virtually everyone can be softened, and finally everything will be all right again.

If we only start asking for peace ourselves, then we will break this terrible cycle of hatred and gloating.

Fiddlesticks.

That is exactly what is so terrible and unbearable about our system! Everyone expects us as mothers and women to reach out to our tormentors and offer them a hand of reconciliation.

As if we haven’t already tried this a thousand times in the relationship and during the separation!

​So we play the pathetic game and go to the umpteenth counseling and mediation, this time to express our will for peace under witnesses, so that we do not lose our children.

What many of the pious and clueless helpers still do not want to admit:

It really exists – the evil in man.

Disturbed personalities, who are cognitively not at all able to feel peace and joy with their environment.

And we, who have experienced this very closely every day and painfully felt it, must now grow beyond it and take a big step forward if we want to become happy again.

By letting go.

And by forgiving, we let go.

The trick: we forgive in silence, in dialogue with our soul, so that it can free itself. So that we can feel good again.

We don’t care what the ex would do or think. He doesn’t see it – and shouldn’t see it either.

We do this only for us and our soul, so that we become strong again.

We do not accept what he has done to us.

We do not approve after the fact what he hatefully screamed in our faces.

We do not give him permission and satisfaction to continue maltreating us like this because there have been no negative consequences for him so far.

We do not offer him a rosary, according to the motto: Pray five times, and you are already redeemed from your sins towards me.

No.

We forgive by writing down in our journal:

“I forgive X for such and such a situation. I let go so my soul can breathe again. I understand that I am not to blame for the situation, even if X sees it differently. It’s okay if other people see things and circumstances differently than I do. I can always choose to trust what my gut signals to me as true and real.”

You can go through each and every situation that you are still struggling with in your mind about the past in this way. Whatever comes to mind, write it down and go through it.

My personal forgiveness ritual for you

When you think about this topic, you inevitably come across the Hawaiian forgiveness ritual “Ho’oponopono,” four simple phrases that you say out loud to yourself as you mentally go through each situation.

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“I love you.”

“Thank you.”

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t get the third sentence past my lips. Everything in me, really everything, resists saying it.

Interestingly enough, I find it especially difficult with all the other narcissists who are still floating around in my life. I’m thinking of the dear ex-mother-in-law. (Well, who immediately comes to mind?)

I have no idea if the dear Hawaiians knew narcissists.

But you know what?

We’ll just rephrase that for our situation for a moment.

True to the motto: What doesn’t fit, will be made to fit 😀

Here’s my suggestion for you:

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you and let go.”

“I love me.”

“Thank you.”

The thank you at the end is important, by the way. You say thank you when you’ve received something. And you finally receive something non-material, liberating for your soul.

That’s something, isn’t it?

The only thing I ask is that you keep an open mind and just try it out. Report below in the comments how you did with this practice and if you can already feel an effect. Or do you already know another forgiveness ritual and have used that successfully? Share it with other moms!