<cite> @a1b2c3d4 said:</cite>
Hi Starlight1 🌟

I am glad you did some spontaneous art and that it helped you!

I reread all your posts in this thread, so this reply is about everything you shared here.

In your most recent post, you wrote: “these issues have become confused or conflated… sometimes forgiveness becomes confused with reconciliation with the other person(s).”-

Please let me know if my thinking in what follows is true to you, or not exactly (I’ll use upper case for the different issues that became conflated)

* FORGIVING OTHERS has become tangled with FORGIVING YOURSELF — as in, you have to forgive others if you ever did anything wrong yourself.

* RECONCILIATION got tangled with FORGIVING OTHERS- as in, forgiving others means you must reconnect and interact with them.

Your CREATIVE BLOCK got tangled with EMOTIONAL HARM (by your mother and the woman in church). Both experiences made you feel that you and your creativity existed only to serve other people, not yourself. Because of that, when you think about art, you may also be thinking about guilt, pressure, and being used.

And underneath all of this sit RELIGIOUS MESSAGES that taught you that you must forgive others in order for God to forgive you. Those teachings got mixed with your personal experiences of being used, pressured, and guilt‑tripped (emotional harm)

This may create a loop where you want to protect yourself by not forgiving, but you also fear you are doing something spiritually wrong.

About emotional harm: when a parent expects a child to support their needs, dreams, or emotional stability, the child learns that their own desires are secondary.

Instead of being supported in exploring art, you were told to give up your path so that your mother could pursue hers. That kind of role‑reversal teaches a child to silence their own feelings, to feel guilty for wanting things, and to associate creativity with obligation rather than freedom.

Over time, this can create a deep internal block — because every time the child reaches toward their own creativity, the old message returns: “Your needs don’t matter. Someone else comes first.”

Your mother’s voice (as well as the church’s) sounds like guilt, pressure, duty, and the idea that you must sacrifice your own needs.

Your own voice is quieter — it shows up in your spontaneous art, your curiosity, your desire to understand yourself, and the longing for creative freedom. One helpful way to connect with your quieter voice is through small acts of creativity that have no purpose except expression, just like the spontaneous art you shared about in your recent post. Over time, you can learn to treat the others’ voices as an old echo, and hear your own, authentic voice clearly.

Anita

Hi Anita,

Thank you for writing. I do broadly agree with what youve shared. Im in a predicament though.

I think that sharing my response further might not be best for me.

Im not sure i can respond or when i’ll be able to respond.

I focused a lot on my mother. However, there were other people. There were some positives coming from my mother, its more complicated. Even as im writing i feel a narrative that might seek to override my own self expression is the inference that i hadnt been fair to other people. That claim might be used sometimes by people who dont want honest reflection.

Sometimes, when looking at complicated past issues, people try to claim a role of hero or heroine, or a role they want, as they recall parts of the narrative. But perhaps each person involved can contribute in a positive way?

I note that in religion there is the message that you must honour your parents. However, some parents deny their child(ren) their human rights. I think that more understanding and explanation needs to be given with that message. Also, children need guidance from healthy role models, and that means those role models are required to educate children in life skills and social skills, but how can they do that if they lack them themselves?

In the country i live in there have been barriers to formal education, which mean that a cycle of abuse and neglect gets perpetuated by people, and some people who have been educated then judge those who arent achieving or havent achieved in the same way, but as individuals i think we often have different learning styles.

Hi Anita,

I want to think this through a bit more before i reply. Thank you for posting!

Hi Peter,

Thanks so much for writing back. I think i understand, but i will think about it a bit more. With reference to doing art, i did a picture of a hand pointing at myself, with forgive written on it. I will explore more. To be honest i think i need forgiveness from God, but i think of the Lords prayer (from the past) and theres a loop where it says forgive me my trespasses as i forgive others. Im not sure what happens first… forgiveness of me, or of me forgiving others. Can i forgive myself? Ought i to forgive others if ive done wrong too? How do i know that im forgiven?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Peter and Anita,

Im confused. Are you saying different things?

Peter, i feel youre saying i need to find a way to forgive, and not say that i dont.

Anita, i feel you are saying its okay to take my time and to not forgive, but do you mean actions etc rather than not forgive a person?

Ps also as this forum is for art, ought i to be looking for a way to combine creativity with this issue??

Thank you Anita. I probably need to write things out, so i may not respond for a while.

Take good care of yourself….hope to be back here.

I just wanted to say i think some things other things have got conflated or merged, and im trying to tease them apart.

If people really knew the consequences of certain behaviours, would they do them?