Reminiscence: A Healing Pathway to Forgiveness | Robin Edgar | TEDxTryon
thank you I am here today because about 15 years ago I was sitting with a group of about 20 residents of the senior care facility and I was there to capture some of their stories so as we went around the room I asked them to think of a smell when they smelled it today it took them back to another place in time and we were hearing happy stories about the lavender bush and lilac bushes outside grandma's bathroom window and the fresh-baked homemade chocolate chip cookies sitting on the kitchen table when they came home from school there was even a man who said the smell of manure reminded him of his wife well that's because they met when they were working together on a farm and then move out to Emogene she was sitting in the corner like this I knew I was in trouble she proceeded to tell the group I don't have any happy memories my mother was a taskmaster and I got married to the first man who asked me when I was 15 just to get out from under her roof I knew that I had to break the ice so I asked Emma Jean to tell us about her mother and she proceeded to tell the group that her mother was an orphan and growing up in the late 1800s in rural Ohio that meant from the time she was eight years old she was sewing denim overalls in a factory just to earn her keep and then she was adopted by a farm family and treated like an indentured servant toiling in the fields all day and sleeping on a horse blanket in front of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen at night pass Emma Jean was telling her mother's story you could see the realization wash over and soften her face she said I guess that's why my mother always expected us kids to work because that's all she ever knew as a child growing up I asked Emma Jean is there something that your mother taught you today that you really cherish and she blinked and she looked this way and she blinked again and then she looked straight at me and she said I never thought about that but she taught me how to sew and I've never had a standard bill body I could never order clothes from the catalog or wear him right off the rack so I always made my own clothes and always got so many compliments finally at 80 something years old Emma teen was not only able to forgive her mother but celebrate the time that she had with her and it's stories like imaging that have put me on this female Don Quixote quest to get people to tell their stories I believe in the axiom that everyone has a story to tell but what I have learned is that it is in the telling of the story that you can recognize the significant people and events that have shaped your life I started on this reminiscence teaching one in 1998 when I was preparing a syllabus for a life writing class as a journalist I knew that the people I interviewed responded with more details when I use sense memory prompts because scientific research has shown that the smell sound and even objects can trigger the significant memories about emotional events so I decided that I would add some of my own childhood memories to my syllabuses example and as I followed my senses back to memories about my mother who had passed away several years before it amazed me how celebrating the time I had with her ease the pain of my loss and that I could recognize how she had shaped my life but even more powerful looking back with adult eyes on unpleasant childhood memories I was able to forgive my mother just like Emma Jean for instance I talked about how linoleum square tiles remind me of being pigeon toed as a child we used to live up a flight of about 13 steps and I could rarely walk down all or part of them without falling this was due to being klutzy but it was also because I was extremely pigeon toed well my mother didn't want to embarrass me by having me wear these clunky shoes that went with this metal apparatus so she decided to take matters into her own hands and she was going to train my feet herself so that summer after she braided my hair so tight I had this perpetual smile on my face she would have me literally toe the line and she would have me walk along the outside edge of the linoleum tiles and anytime one of my toes would stray into the center she would slap me on my back and say walk the right way I hated those walking lessons and I thought my mother was just being so mean to me but looking back with a new perspective I recognized that it was out of her love for me and even though I'm still a klutz at least I'm not pigeon toed anymore well when Rita heard my story about walking lessons and one of my reminiscence workshops she decided to apply the same technique to her awful childhood memories about her alcoholic abusive father she told us that she would sit at the kitchen table every night to finish her homework before going out to play and because she was left-handed as was her father he forbade her to do her homework with anything but her right hand this took her twice as long and while her other siblings were out playing she was struggling to finish her homework so her mother took pity on her and she said go ahead and finish with your left hand and I'll watch for your dad to come home from work well this worked a couple of times until the day her father came in the back door and he caught her left-handed as was his nature he proceeded to give her a severe beating but as Rita was recalling this incident in her mind's eye she could see her father's left hand coming down on her missing two and a half fingers from being forced to work with machinery for right-handed people she instantly recognized that it was out of his care and concern for her to not suffer like he had as a left-handed person in a right handed world she applied this technique to several other unhappy memories about her childhood and was finally able to forgive her father and she wrote to me and told me it changed my life forever why is that well when I worked as a facilitator for the Fetzer Institute campaign for love and forgiveness I learned that every day we don't forgive is like taking a dose of poison now forgiving doesn't mean you condone the wrongful act what it means is you empower yourself to let go of the hate and resentment for that wrongdoing and the wrongdoer so which would you rather be the victim who slowly destroys themselves or the person who empowers himself to find the empathy to forgive but before I go any further I want to tell you that there are two sides to every story we talked about the telling of the story but there's also the listening to the story and listening can be tricky sometimes there is so much noise coming from how we feel or what we think happened that we can't hear what the other person is saying does ever happened to you I'd like to share one more story about how a woman named Teresa was able to listen really listen to the point to finding empathy to forgive I meant Teresa in one of my life writing workshops and she told the group how she was a high school teacher when she found out that her brother Steve was shot to death in a bar parking lot and as she sat in the trial she was trying to make sense of her brother's killing and she was looking at this young man Carl who had shot her brother and she wanted to know his story she also wanted to make sense of the judicial system so she went back and got a degree in criminal justice during which time she learned about this innovative program called restorative justice which serves both the victim and the person who committed the crime because they're both damaged through that program Teresa was able to visit Carl in prison and hear his story he told her about his unfortunate childhood he never knew his father his mother was incarcerated so he spent his childhood in and out of sometimes abusive foster care situations as Teresa listen to Carl storie she was able to forgive and she said that made such a big difference for her and she thinks for Carl as well so isn't that magical to rewrite the story from being the victim to the person empowered to find the empathy to forgive and it's so wonderful to experience that peace that comes from the power of forgiveness I mean look at Emma Jean after she forgave her mother we could not get a word in edgewise she was sharing so many happy memories about her childhood and Rita realizing that she was really quite happy being ambidextrous decided when her left-handed son wanted a special Mouse for his computer she taught him to use his right hand by conveniently forgetting to get the mouse to Raisa speaks about forgiveness and restorative justice all over the world in her book and documentary is used in institutions in schools and victim organizations and asked for me my mother's walking lessons taught me that no matter what the bump in the road I can persevere as long as I put one foot in front of the other and walk the right way so can you see who I am on this quest to get people to tell their stories and to listen to stories of others and I ask you what is your story that you would like a chance to tell or is there perhaps a story that you need to listen to with a different perspective so that you can find that healing pathway to forgiveness thank you