{"id":14647,"date":"2017-02-06T12:02:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T17:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=14647"},"modified":"2017-06-26T11:17:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T16:17:05","slug":"with-kleen-conscience-loss-and-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2017\/02\/06\/with-kleen-conscience-loss-and-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"With Kleen Conscience: Loss and forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

My twenties have been a wild coupling of experiences. Within these past twenty-four hours of writing this piece, one of my closest childhood friends and her boyfriend brought in a new life to our world–and one woman I knew more than most, left us. <\/span><\/p>\n

While some of us may have spent our twenty-first year in a drunken stupor, however metaphorical or literal it may have been,\u00a0 <\/span>these sobering events personify the lessons we still learn through life.<\/span><\/p>\n

While loss is a concept I am too familiar with, it never gets any easier when life presents a tragedy like this. <\/span><\/p>\n

Without fail, loss brings me back around from all the distractions in life. It reels you into the core of your humanity. <\/span><\/p>\n

Suddenly, there is a clarity among the emotional chaos. What is important to you manages to surface in response to the realities you cannot change. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone faces loss at some point and to some degree.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me this really brought around an answer to a thought I had last week. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s column, I originally tried to write about forgiveness. I spent hours researching and talking at length with several people about the nature of it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had thousands of words in drafts that couldn\u2019t articulate what my feelings were.<\/span><\/p>\n

What it boiled down to is that forgiveness, really, is a type of loss. For many, it\u2019s a belief system or a part of their own faith. <\/span><\/p>\n

To some it\u2019s an action; to not care or allow yourself to be angry at someone or something that has already affected your life. <\/span><\/p>\n

It can even be a cultural expectation or value.<\/span><\/p>\n

Forgiveness, to me, is some amalgam of that all. It\u2019s certainly a struggle, but while I may have trouble forgiving some events in my past, with time I have grown to experience forgiveness for others. <\/span><\/p>\n

I think I may forgive because I lose more should I not give up that anger. I had to experience that. I really have sacrificed much to hold on to strong feelings about my past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if you can\u2019t completely forgive something or someone, it feels more peaceful when you understand why you\u2019re working toward that. <\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019re losing that anger. It\u2019s a loss. <\/span><\/p>\n

That anger holds power and can serve some purposes–but you\u2019re giving it up. You\u2019re exchanging that feeling for the benefits of understanding and peacefulness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The power of that exchange is one that can serve you better in most cases. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly no perfect person. My lack of ability to grasp forgiveness has been one of my greatest faults for a long time.<\/span><\/p>\n

That began to change a few years ago. I started to process the residual elements of the losses I experienced. I still clung to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you experience many great losses at once or within short time periods, it can build to the point that it\u2019s unable to be taken in. I just tried to keep my head above water. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, the more I kicked and struggled against the tides, the more I resented them. The anger kept my legs kicking and my head bobbing through the waves, but I no longer saw the shore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Forgiveness can show you that shoreline you may never have believed you could reach, remind you of the sky after the storm and of the beauty of calm waters. <\/span><\/p>\n

It can remind you that you loved to swim before you had to. When you\u2019re ready, forgiveness can let you test the waters again. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you struggle with forgiveness like I do, don\u2019t feel alone and please don\u2019t feel hopeless. It\u2019s a process. There are many steps that different individuals go through at different times in life. It\u2019s not a race. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come remarkably closer to a peacefulness that I had never imagined I could ever arrive at. You lose and lose, sometimes in life. You do your best, but it just doesn\u2019t cut it. That\u2019s how our world turns.<\/span><\/p>\n

While most people would never have imagined this woman who passed and I knew so much about each other, we did. <\/span><\/p>\n

She was very receptive and open to someone who she had hardly just met. I will never forget when she finally cracked a smile during a tumultuous time for the both of us. <\/span><\/p>\n

Having someone like her in my life, even briefly, gave me a glimmer of the kindness that was still out there and still possible. I will remember her gift.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barton Kleen<\/strong>
\nExecutive Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My twenties have been a wild coupling of experiences. Within these past twenty-four hours of writing this piece, one of my closest childhood friends and her boyfriend brought in a new life to our world–and one woman I knew more than most, left us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":13706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1999,1748,1747,1384,1725],"class_list":["post-14647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-barton-kleen","tag-forgiveness","tag-loss","tag-opinion","tag-with-kleen-conscience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Barton-Website.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3Of","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15651,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647\/revisions\/15651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}