I’m sipping my coffee “treat” this morning, enjoying the unusual flavor combination of a maple-sage cashew-milk latte. It’s very nice. Rich and velvety on my tongue, with the taste of sage and coffee hitting my senses first, and seeming quite festive, with the subtler notes of the maple and the cashew milk making me think twice about what it was I just tasted. Interesting. I don’t have lattes very often, and it’s a pleasant holiday treat.

This morning I am thinking about forgiveness and atonement. I’m thinking about forgiveness because I was once a 20-something woman of such ferocity and bitterness towards life that I commonly snarled (in response to any suggestion that some particularly heinous experiences in my life might warrant “forgiveness”) that “there are some sins even your god does not forgive”, before turning my back to walk away, radiating seething suppressed rage. I’m not sure I still stand in those same shoes, these days, nor do I feel at all certain that it’s a good place to be as an individual. On the other hand, there remains a certain someone who was once in my life of whom it is hard to hold any thought but “fuck that bitch”, with anger teetering on an urge for violence. Her narcissistic machinations left me damaged. Worse still, she hurt my Traveling Partner and did her damnedest to end his relationship with me. But… Holding on to that pain and impotent rage? That’s not at all who I want to be. So… as my Traveling Partner has suggested many times, I’m probably overdue to sort that shit out and move on. Forgiveness isn’t about her, it’s for me.

Atonement is something different. Atonement requires me to acknowledge the part I’ve played in some kind of wrong, and to do something to make it right. Acknowledgement. Contrition. Apology. Reparation. It’s the hard work of being real about being human. Big stuff and small stuff, we all fuck shit up. We all hurt people sometimes. Being a better human being than I was yesterday means coming to terms with the things I’ve done that hurt someone else or created real harm, and doing something to set things right.

…I see a lot of thoughtful self-reflection and contemplation coming my way…

What about when the forgiveness is self-forgiveness? What about when the wrongs were against myself – how do I atone for those hurts, too? How much of this is about me, and how much is in pursuit of healthier relationships and a better world, generally? (Does that matter, at all?)

I sip my delicious latte and think my thoughts. Soon it will be time to put some kind thinking into action. Then I’ll begin again.