State anger, or the kind of anger that is temporary and related to the situation, negatively affects our ability to forgive others for the period of time that we are focused on negative appraisals of the situation and person. The most harmful of all is trait anger, though, or the kind of anger that turns inward and becomes deeply ingrained into our sense of self and expectations of the world. This kind of anger can become part of our personality and it is particularly detrimental in relation to the capacity for self-forgiveness.

The time just after divorce can provide a window of opportunity for exploring alternative thought/feeling patterns and reinforcing them so that they become part of a new understanding of your life. A new frame on life can allow the story of your past to rest within you, yet invite a fresh chapter that both includes and transcends the past.

Learning and practicing mindfulness and forgiveness helps in gaining a sense of internal locus of control and a mature pathway for dealing with anger, and this improves our emotional and physical health and the lives of those we touch.

Take some moments to notice the patterns of your breathing and to notice, without judgment or attachment, painful or joyful experiences that trickle through you. This is the beginning of what it means to be mindful. Mindfulness naturally nurtures compassion. Out of compassion comes an easier road to forgiveness of self and others. There are particular forgiveness or compassion-building practices that you can engage in, if you so choose.

My favorite practice is metta, or lovingkindness meditation. For further information and training in metta practice, a couple of pioneers in bringing this ancient practice into current hearts are Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg. Lovingkindness meditation involves centering in the heart and envisioning loving intention for yourself, for significant others, and expanding loving intention even to strangers and to those for whom it is difficult to do so. You focus your attention to expand this feeling of lovingkindness to the entire world, to existence itself. It is an extremely powerful practice. I highly recommend it.

The importance of engaging in these types of practices cannot be stressed enough. The divorce rate in the United States continues to remain at high levels. More violence is committed in domestic cases than in any other. Hate and revenge continue to destroy lives. In light of this, it is important for us to continue to explore how forgiveness affects divorce and to consciously engage in practices that both include and transcend our prior histories.

Again, forgiveness is not condoning, nor does it mean that you enter back into an abusive or toxic situation or that you even have contact with another. It is a gesture of impartial beneficence. In moving the direction of your attention to this impartial beneficent stance, you will walk differently in the world, with more confidence and integrity, and it will greatly improve your life and the lives of others.

• Where do I have the sense that my thoughts are coming from right now?
• Where do I have the sense that my feelings are coming from right now?
• Do I believe that I am loved?
• If I am loved, how do I know that? How and where do I feel that in my body?
• If I do not feel love or loved, how do I know that? How and where do I feel that in my body/
• Do I believe that I can feel forgiveness?
• Does forgiveness feel different than love? How and where do I know that in my body?
• Can I feel the pulse of my heart beat? How fast is it? How slow?
• When was the first time that I became aware of my heart beat? How old was I? Where did I believe that my heart beat came from?
• When was the first time that I knew that love exists?
• If I place my hand over my heart and breathe through my belly, what happens? Where does my thinking seem to come from?

Now, take a moment to reflect on your thoughts.

We record our life experiences and the interpreted meanings in our body in ways that reach back to before we could even speak, really before we even came out of the womb. If we did not have the benefit of being securely attached in our relationships with caregivers in early infancy, then life itself may have often felt unfair and overwhelming. We have adjusted in ways that have huge implications for how we hold ourselves as bodily vessels in our everyday lives.

In fact, many people refuse to forgive others, because they have the mistaken impression that forgiveness implies a kind of tactic approval of the wrong that has been done to them. They assume that forgiveness entails welcoming the forgiven person back into their lives with open arms. And, especially when the wrong has been great, few people are naive enough to do such a thing.

Our strong survival instincts tell us it is foolish and dangerous to embrace a person, when we have evidence that they cannot be trusted. These are the instincts that have kept the human race alive on the planet for centuries and deserve our respect. As I assert in the introduction to my book, forgiveness does not equate with condoning. It does not mean that you must give up appropriate interpersonal boundaries or fail to hold another person responsible for their hurtful acts.

Forgiveness does equate with compassion for yourself and for others, regardless of the events that have occurred. Forgiveness requires a surrendering of our grievances to the perspective of the core Self, the part of all of us that transcends time and place and attachments. It involves a shift in meaning and perspective. It is in our power to forgive, regardless of the wrong that has been done.