For donations Click Here

Forgiveness and Holding a Grudge

Question:

I worked in a very bad place. I had an abusive boss. Before she left I told her I forgave her for what she did to me. I wanted to be free of it all. I felt like Hashem was at my back. She did not ask me for forgiveness. She had actually called me into her office to lecture me why I didn’t go to her goodbye party, a party she said she didn’t want but had a prepared guest list. Years before at our annual holiday party my boss wanted everyone to wear yellow,.The majority of the office did not want to, with the exception of two people. We signed a petition and we didn’t need to wear yellow. That holiday party she kept deliberately embarrassing me. I came home in tears, it was the final straw for me and said I would never sit at a seudah with this person and say brochos. To get the government (federally funded program) to pay for the party there had to be training. I would prepare all the training material and often conduct the training although it was my boss is job. After the training I would leave and use my vacation time while the rest of my coworkers would get off from work and get free food. There is a lot more that can be told about what my boss did but for the purpose of the question it is not necessary. I was up for a promotion after she left, I was finally going to get paid for the work I was doing already, and it would be less work. My boss deliberately misinformed me about the compensation, her replacement was not getting along with the office manager due partly to my boss’s behavior. She also deliberately misinformed her supervisor why I turned the job down. At the time I did not know the organization wanted someone from within the organization (me ) to take the job because the new director was so out of place. My boss did it was in an email sent to her. I saw the email much later.My boss on the other hand wanted someone from outside with whom she made an agreement with. The new person would call her in as a consultant and therefore still make money. All my boss would have done was ask me to show the new person how to do something. If I took the job there would have been no need. My boss’s supervisor went so far as to ask me to make him an offer but I could never see past what my boss filled my head with and my own insecurities. My boss had asked me what I would want I told her she said I would never get it, but that was the exact package. She did not tell her supervisor what she told me. I am a very insecure person and could not see past the years of abuse or lies. After I forgave her I found out she told my new bosses I was going to be a problem. I was called into the office and warned I better be welcoming to the new person. In the end I did the work of all the new people until they come up to speed, with never a thank you. To advance yourself in this office you couldn’t be my friend so I went from being most popular to being constantly told I should get another job somewhere else. I went to the hospital administrators but they did not help, they kept breaking my privacy. I fell apart and became very ill. I asked my friends to stop gossiping and slandering me, one was someone who was not frum, and I wrote her a long letter about how three people get hurt when loshon hara is spoken. Another friend, deliberately let someone believe I was making complaints about them when I wasn’t. I left. I have not gotten better. I became so paralyzed by al their gossiping and the idea of them gossiping about me. There was a time I couldn’t say birchas Chachodesh because I couldn’t wish klal yisroel well if it meant wishing these people well. I went so far as telling one who was Frum from birth how alone I felt after finding out about her betrayal. She told me I don’t know what I am talking about she is not betraying me, she never feels alone Hashem is always with her. I never doubted Hashem was with me or that everything I was going through was because of Divine Providence. This woman who told me she never feels alone email account was hacked and I saw some of the awful lies she wrote about me. I took it to my father’s grave, davened and burnt her letters. Her husband died that year I don’t know if it was on my father’s yahrzeit but it was very close. I know the right thing is to forgive, I read many books on forgiveness, but when I think about these people all I do is cry. On yom kippur I had a hard time saying slichos I just tehillim. In Rabbi Shteinman’s ZTL biography they quote Rabbi Shteinman saying a person who doesn’t forgive it is because they want Hashem to punish the person but in the end it will be the person who is not forgiving that will be punished. I made a copy of the page and reread it but I can’t seem to convince my heart what my brain knows is true. Rabbi Shteinman told people that the amount of pain they were to receive had already been measured by Hashem on Rosh Hashannah. These people are not giving me a second thought and I am drowning in all the pain. Logic and facts don’t seem to be working on my heart. Is it forgiveness if I still cry from the pain? I feel like I am trapped in a cell of my own making. How do I get my heart to accept what my head knows to be true? Thank You.

 

Answer:

Thank you for your question.

It sounds like you were thru a very difficult situation, and that you went thru a lot of pain. Although it might be a pious thing to be mochel them, you are not obligated to do so. Right now, that you are in all this emotional pain, you are not really up to really being mochel them, and if they didn’t come to try and make you feel better or ask forgiveness, you are not obligated to do so. Yes, there are higher levels, but for right now, this is where you are holding and this is what you feel. Therefore, I would suggest that for the time being, you should forget about the issue of forgiving them and move on. You can work on topics of emuna and bitachon, and maybe in a few years, after the issue has already settled, you will be up to really forgetting about what happened and being mochel them.

Best wishes

Sources:

 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *