Forgiving Yourself

Forgiving yourself. These words conjure up a variety of thoughts within different people's minds. Today, I want to tackle forgiveness from the point of view of a liver parent. We've watched with sorrow recently as several of our precious liver children have left this world. The grief of a parent is  an experience unique to each one. I can't begin to understand everyone's pain because we are all so different.

What I do know is that guilt is one of the emotions that frequently torments us amidst pain and loss. Did I do enough to save my baby? What did I miss that might have helped in an earlier diagnosis? Why couldn't I buy them more time? How in the world can I live without them?

These questions and others can really become rhetorical because in truth, there's no way we can honestly answer them. Our anguish and loss causes us to ask them but answers alone are sometimes not enough. Only time, faith and the love we showed our children in their brief time with us can heal our wounds.

Guilt can be a debilitating thing. For those of us with kids suffering from various pediatric liver diseases, are awaiting transplants, or have received their gift of life but are struggling, the best thing we can do is let go of any guilt.

Forgiving ourselves for what we see as failing our children is often the first step to healing. We'll never know why our children were taken from us now, this side of heaven. But we can take the necessary step of acquitting ourselves of some tragic failure to save them. Not only will this free us from a self-made prison but it allows us to fully celebrate the beautiful life we were blessed to share for such a short time.