Not to bow your head ~

~I cannot teach you violence,
as I do not myself believe in it.
I can only teach you
not to bow your heads before anyone
even at the cost of your life.
- Mahatma Gandhi

~ The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
- Mahatma Gandhi

I've had these two quotes as my signature
on my email for a couple of years now.
Every once in awhile I consider
changing my siggie... but then
I read these quotes and find
them still to be meaningful to me. Deeply.

When I first utilized them I was in a very bad place
in my life socially, crippled with fear and shame
and embarrassment and FEAR...
Barely left the house, only when I absolutely had to,
wasso scared to run into someone that would
lash out at me for something my son had done
and that had been in the paper
much exagerrated....

Then that very thing happened,
a lady that claimed to know me
from years prior, I had no memory of her,
really let me have it in Safeway,
asking horrible questions in an accusatory tone,
and saying things that were horrible and mean.
Gaining the attention of many people around us.

Amazingly I found something inside
and stood up for myself.
So that first quote has to do with that,
with not holding shame,
with not allowing anyone else to shame ME.
I still need the truth
of that deep conviction to remind me.
It did assist me to go back
out into the world and LIVE my life.

The second is because I have always been
a very easily forgiving soul,
letting things go quite quickly and completely,
and I've taken some firefor it.
I figure that second quote validates that
I'm on the right track re forgiveness.

Much love, Sue