Browsing Tag

Erica Garza

Forgiveness, Guest Posts, Relationships

To the Woman Who Wants to Forgive Her Cheating Partner.

March 11, 2015

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88By Erica Garza.

To the Woman Who Wants to Forgive Her Cheating Partner,

I’m not here to reiterate what 95% of the internet, women’s magazines or your girlfriends are likely to tell you. And I’m not here to place blame on any entity: the cheater, the other woman, patriarchy, the media, God.

I’m here to welcome you to this experience.

This might seem strange, but hear me out. What has just happened to you is undoubtedly awful. You’re feeling things no person should ever have to feel in this life, although many of us do. Regret, anger, blame, resentment, self-pity, maybe even self-hatred. Please note that these feelings are normal. Don’t shut them out. Don’t drown them in too many glasses of wine. And don’t let them dictate your next action. Just witness them. Feel them. After all, they’ll be gone soon. I promise you that.

I’d rather focus on something else. Because the fact that you are even considering “forgiveness” as an option means something extraordinary. And the world needs to celebrate the extraordinary much more than it glorifies the wicked and the vengeful.

Considering forgiveness means you have entered a new era in your life. I’m not talking “era” in the way people sometimes refer to adolescence as the era of innocence or the twenties as the era of recklessness. This era has nothing to do with your age. But it has everything to do with your humanity.

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Forgiveness, Guest Posts

The Good News. By Erica Garza.

March 19, 2014

The Good News by Erica Garza

Please, I beg of you: Share the good news. Not “The Good News” they talk about in churches and cathedrals. Not “The Good News” of glossy magazine covers, detailing which celebrity lost the most baby weight this week. Not “The Good News” of the six o’clock time slot, announcing which blockbuster banked at the box office.

The better news.

Like how you’ve finally forgiven him for letting you down all those years ago. You realize now that he was scared then and battling demons that had nothing to do with you. Share how this forgiveness has bred more love between the two of you. How it has freed your heart and mind in ways that make you feel afloat in a cloudless new sky.

Share how you’ve finally stopped blaming your mother for having not done everything perfectly. For having not masked her weakness in those rare moments you were subjected to her humanity. Oh, how that scared you. And, oh, how your heart wells in compassion for her now.

Share how you managed to arrive at that delicious new plane of acceptance for the dimples in your thighs, the soft flesh of your belly and the tiny lines that have emerged from the delicate skin around your mouth. These were born out of time—hours spent nourishing the body, offering the world laughter, speaking, living.

Share the good deed you did today. Or yesterday. Please entertain the possibility that there was at least one. You participated in history, whether or not you have assigned significance to any of the precise words you selected or any of the ideas you, alone, birthed. Perhaps you smiled at someone. Perhaps you thanked someone. Perhaps you loved someone.

Share the good deeds you will do tomorrow. Even if living is all you do, try, I beg of you, to see it as good. Living is a remarkable gift, and if it is willed by the universe that you should have another day of it, know that all the things you do or choose not to do, are deeds of utter sacredness. See the sanctity in filling your lungs with breath, in savoring the sun for as long as it burns bright above you, in existing at this singular moment that is your life and yours alone.

*Originally published by Thought Catalog at www.thoughtcatalog.com

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Erica Garza is a staff writer at the feminist magazine Luna Luna. Her essays have been published by HelloGiggles, Hot Metal Bridge, Airplane Reading and C.L.A.P. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University and is now finishing her first book, a memoir about obsession called Hairywoman. Born in Los Angeles, Erica has spent most of her adult life traveling. Read her essays at www.ericagarza.com.

 

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Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer living on an airplane and the founder of The Manifest-Station.  She’s leading a Retreat in Costa Rica at the end of March and a weekend retreat in May to Ojai, Calif as well as 4 day retreat over Labor Day in Ojai, Calif. All retreats are a combo of yoga/writing for all levels. She and bestselling author Emily Rapp will be leading another writing retreat to Vermont in October. Check out her site jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up is Dallas followed by Seattle and London.