Perhaps one of the most powerful films you will ever see in your life, especially if you are in recovery, is an American documentary called Forgiving Josef Mengel. This is the incredible story of Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor who, in the January 1995, re-visited the Auschwitz prison camp where she and her twin sister were subjected to horrifying medical experiments some 50 years beforehand. On the very ground where she was once held prisoner Eva Kor said in front of a group of witnesses, "In my own name, I forgive all Nazis." Eva Kor’s act of forgiveness is amazing to some, and controversial to others. Some have suggested that it was not her place to forgive her captives, and others simply could not believe that anyone could find it in their heart to forgive pure evil. But, as the film progresses, we find out that Eva did not forgive the Nazis to let them off of the hook for their crimes. Forgiving them was part of the healing process that gave her life back to her. Reflecting on the events of that day in 1995, Eva says, "I felt as though an incredibly heavy weight of suffering had been lifted…I never thought I could be so strong." She goes on to say that because she was able to forgive her enemies, she was finally able to free herself from her identity as a victim. This does not mean that she pretends that the Holocaust never happened. Forgiveness is not an act of forgetting. It is, according to Eva, an act of self-healing. “And the best thing about the remedy of forgiveness," says Eva Kors, "is that there are no side effects. And everybody can afford it." In the previous essay we discussed how blame is a normal part by which we in this society resolve conflict, but that, when it comes to recovery, it is better to take ownership of our trauma rather then to hand over that responsibly to someone else. In bringing up the story of Eva Kor, we move on to discuss one of the other traps that comes with playing the blame game. That is, the trap of identifying with our status as victims. Over the years I have had many clients who have struggled over the problems created by identifying with being a victim. As a trauma survivor myself, I truly understand their feelings. After all, many of them are in recovery through no fault of their own. Certainly, I was not the cause of my own accident. It was clearly the result of someone else’s irresponsible actions. But, if one wallows in the status of the victim for too long, one risks never finding the power to move on to be a success in their own recovery. While the victim/perpetrator paradigm has been with us for centuries, I believe our contemporary ideas about the status of victims can be traced back to the 1980’s when our society was reaching new heights of awareness around the issues of child abuse and sexual politics. Back then, people were just becoming aware of just how many individual members of our culture had been sexually abused as children. Experts in the field noticed that survivors of sexual abuse often felt a certain amount of shame over what had happened to them, and sometimes blamed themselves for being abused. In order to put a stop to this debilitating spiral of shame, many therapists stressed to their clients that being subject to abuse is not their fault. In this situation, identifying oneself as the victim was an attempt to find a way to let go of misguided guilt. The idea is that victims are innocent, and cannot be held responsible for what happened to them. Thus, they can feel free of the event. But, as Eva Kor’s experience shows, the next step to the healing is to free oneself of anger as well. Anger and fear are the emotions that follow after one identifies with being a victim. At first, the anger can feel good, and even motivate one to take action, but, eventually, especially when coupled with fear, the anger fails to motivate and eventually begins to eat away at us. We start to see ourselves as powerless. After all, within the victim/perpetrator framework, all the power belongs to the enemy. The victim can only be helped when others come to their aid. The problem with victim status is that we convince ourselves that we are helpless and cannot do anything except lament and cry out for others to set things right. This is precisely why the status of the victim will eventually stand in the way of you recovering to the best of your ability. The power you need to heal as best as you are able resides exclusively in you. It is you who must do the work, it is you who must take ownership. It is you who must summon the power from within. Victims are powerless, but you are not. You must give up your status as a victim in order to summon your power. Forgiveness, even to forgive those who have not asked for it, is the key that Eva Kor found to, as she said, “lift the heavy weight” from her shoulders and feel “incredibly strong.” You too can feel that power. But you will have to let go of your hatred, fear, loathing, and anger, and replace them with compassion, both for yourself and for others. This is no easy task. As I mentioned is the previous essay, letting go of blame, and by extension letting go of our victim status feels like we are allowing an injustice to go unpunished. But when you finally let go of your desire to punish the wrongdoer, when you finally forgive, you will enter into a state of Grace and Power. It is difficult to explain how it is that a state of Grace feels so powerful. If you have never experienced it before, you must take my word for it, and the word of such people as Eva Kor. Grace is Power. This power is available to all those who can cast aside hate and embrace compassion. Some have said that allowing yourself to feel Grace, is the first step towards spiritual enlightenment, and is one of the great rewards of working hard at your own recovery. It is a life-changing event, and one that can be as intimidating as it is compelling. In the next essay, we will discuss this change, this transformation, if you will, and what you must do to have it in your life… |
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