What does it mean to forgive?

This post is a question to the handful of people who bother to read my blog. I am genuinely puzzled about what it means to forgive someone and I thought maybe some of you would have some insight.

I understand forgiving a discrete transgression or even a pattern of harmful behavior that is not deeply damaging. I can understand letting go of these things and giving a person a fresh start. But there are situations, such as when someone is abused, where it is unhealthy for the victim to wipe clean the slate and start afresh with the abuser. Often, for these victims, cutting off all contact with the abuser or figuring out a way to keep them in a place where the abuse cannot continue are incredibly healthy moves. Yet I often hear these victims being counseled to forgive their abuser.

It's all well and good to relinquish a sense of vengeance. But I have to assume that forgiveness means something different in this context than it does normally. Because normally, I think that forgiveness should be an utterly complete act, an act in which I dismantle all of the internal barriers I've constructed against someone else's poor behavior-- to truly begin the relationship anew. I think that when victims of abuse are counseled to forgive their abusers, their counselors either don't understand the true nature of forgiveness, mean to convey something different, or are stupid. Am I missing something here?

A Human Face

When I was pregnant with my first baby (who's now 6), I spent a lot of time doing yoga and relaxation exercises. I developed the idea through things I read that the process of giving birth was an ancient ritual to which I should trust myself, and that my role in the process was as little more than a vessel. More than actively doing anything, I needed to not do-- not clench muscles, not collect the physical stressors in my body-- I needed to step out of the way and let everything flow through me. (I could wax ecstatic elsewhere about the joy of natural childbirth but I will spare you of it here).

I didn't plan to continue using those exercises but they came back to me as I nursed my babies. I was surprised, when they were new, at how much time I was required to spend passively providing their nourishment. I was a busy career woman and not accustomed to spending large swaths of time doing, ostensibly, nothing. I learned not to watch the clock. I watched their faces. I felt their warmth. I did not think about what came next. I practiced relaxation techniques. I centered myself in those moments.

Shortly after my oldest was born, I started taking clients to the border to present applications for admission to the U.S. I was still establishing myself as a credible attorney and I would spend a lot of time in waiting rooms with clients where I could feel tension begin to collect in my body. And I found those same relaxation techniques coming back to mind as a necessity. I began to stay inside of those moments of seeming nothingness and to focus on what was right in front of me: my client-- a person just as stressed out (if not more so) than I was, someone who had placed an enormous amount of trust in me, whose livelihood was on the line. And I began to talk to my clients with the kind of focus I used in bonding with my babies, as if there was nothing outside of that moment with them. I learned later that that kind of attention to people was part of what made me good at lawyering, but at the time it was nothing more than a coping mechanism transferred from that humbling patience of motherhood which shows us we are always only vessels through which something larger than ourselves is always trying to emerge. We resist this process with our very bodies as something uncomfortable. We tense up. We exert our strength in the way that is natural to us, by doing something active, when what is required is to open ourselves through relaxation to what is happening around us, to participate in the seemingly inconsequential moments between the things that we deem important. So often this means looking into a human face. 

How To Sleep At Night if You're an Attorney

I've been an attorney now for 6 years. The first couple of years were pretty rough, and I gather that's par for the course. But I have gradually learned that the key to minimizing the stress of my job lies in recognizing and operating within the parameters of my role. I imagine this is true for many professionals, but I can speak only from my own experiences. My role, as I view it, is twofold: I am a counselor and an advocate.

As a counselor, my only job is to advise my clients. Advising clients is nothing more than researching all of the possible options available to the client and telling him what consequences could flow from following each course of action. Sometimes there are only a couple of options and the results are pretty straightforward, but other times the possibilities branch out in all directions. The most important thing to keep in mind in advising clients is that the decision as to which course of action to follow always belongs to the client. It is never my choice. I provide information and convey the level of risk involved. That is all. Some clients ask me what I would do if I were in their shoes, and with some disclaimer as to the fact that I am not, in fact, able to stand entirely in their shoes, I have no problem stating what I would do and explaining why I would do it. This is sometimes helpful to the client. But unlike George Bush, I am not the Decider. Recognizing that fact takes an enormous burden off of my shoulders. As long as I have provided the client with accurate information, I have done my job. Whatever consequences flow from the client's choices are the client's to bear.

I should note that the only course of action I will not follow on behalf of a client is anything that is illegal. I will advise those clients who propose such courses of action as to all of the penalties that can flow from that action, but if, after hearing those penalties, they still wish to engage in illegal behavior, I tell them that I cannot represent them. Engaging in illegal behavior, like making decisions for the client, is something outside the scope of my role and I just won't do it.

As an advocate, I represent my client in whatever course of action he or she has chosen, before the government. In my practice, I do not do so in a court of law, but to administrative agencies within the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. For the most part, my cases are presented in writing with no in-person appearance. However, I do represent people in person before Customs at the border. I credit that representation with my ability to understand how adjudicators think, and it has deeply informed the way that I prepare cases that I mail in as well. Not only will I not submit a case that offends logic, I also won't present anything that won't pass the sniff test of a seasoned government official.

Often the cases I present are so clearly approvable that there is virtually no chance of denial. Other times, there is a great deal of discretion involved on the part of the adjudicating officer. And I do have clients who choose to present cases that I have advised them may be approved but are unlikely to be approved. Those cases are actually a little bit stressful for me, and that is because it is a judgment call on my part as to whether I want to take a case like that. If there is a very low chance of approval, I often just turn the case down because it's not worth having to deal with the client, who will be very high maintenance and won't want to pay his bill. But sometimes there are cases which I believe really should be approved under the law and yet probably won't be because of current government attitudes or adjudication trends. I think those cases are worth fighting for, if the client is aware of the risk involved and chooses to pursue the case anyway. I like to push the boundaries of current government opinion when it is wrong.

My role as an advocate, then, is somewhat less clearly defined, and situational, than my role as an advisor. However, the important thing to keep in mind is that once I have chosen to represent a client and the client has chosen a course of action, my job is to advocate zealously for that course of action. I push to the side all of the what-ifs and possible pitfalls associated with the strategy and put together a solid case. I try to present each one as if it is unimpeachably logical. But once I present it, I have done everything I can and the final decision rests with the government. If a case is denied, I can choose to appeal it. But once I hand that case over, it is again out of my hands and I really don't think about it until I get a decision.

There are limits to what any of us can do. It is sometimes tempting to over-estimate the power that you have over others, but it is an illusion to think that we truly have control over what anyone else chooses. And ultimately, if someone gives you that kind of control, it's a mistake on their part that will harm you both. Everyone makes their own choices. The best we can do is to inform people's decision making process. Recognizing the limitations of our roles is a way of letting go of things that were never in our control to begin with. I love my clients but I don't carry their problems home with me at the end of the day, and I don't pin my happiness to things I can't control. I am happy when I have advised and advocated well.

Visions of Motherhood

One night this week I struggled to consciousness from the depths of an awful dream in which I allowed my 2-year-old to climb into the back of a stranger's SUV. She innocently scaled her way up into the waiting car seat by herself and buckled her belt as the car peeled away from the curb where I stood frozen in fear. It was a ritual unknown to me and I fought through fog to focus on the vehicle's license plate before it fled from view. My 6-year-old chattered happily next to me, smiling up at me and holding my hand while explaining that her sister would be fine because the male driver of the car was "hers." I was utterly helpless, somehow complicit in endangering my child in a way I found confusing.

In the morning as I hung laundry on the clothesline to dry-- a ritual that connects me to a long line of women gone before-- I watched the dawn slowly lighting up a thick fog that hung low to the ground. I had strung bright swaths of colors on the breeze and felt surrounded by a spectacle. But I must have been very quiet, because I heard the sound of deer snorting somewhere close by. I struggled to see them at first in the fog, but then a tiny fawn the size and shape of a child's half collapsed lawn chair skittered into view, running in circles. Her mother followed close behind her. The two came in and out of view in the mist. They were playing.

Slender Stalk

The roads that take me home barely exist--
Well-worn paths of some practical imagination
Linking this and that quiet clearing
To the general stream of commerce
That we are always waking to from our dreams
Of a quiet life in the country,
Which also barely exists.

Alone on a slender stalk one afternoon
A heavy head of red petals drooped
In one of these lonely living rooms
Which existed solely to showcase this flower
Caught in the glare of the late burning sun
Where it caught my eye as I was almost done
Driving home alone.

Conducting Thoughts

My border practice is probably the weirdest version of practicing law that exists. I practice all kinds of employment-based immigration, but none is quite as unusual and satisfying as accompanying my Canadian clients to the border to apply for admission to the U.S. to work temporarily. Some cases are straightforward, but many, if not most, of the cases I take to the border are for people who have previously been refused entry at other border crossings.These cases are time-intensive. When a call comes in for me to take one of them, I feel like a dancer starting her number. The whole process, from the first phone call to the sound of the CBP officer's stamp clicking its approval into my client's passport, is a series of occasions during which the spoken word becomes a thick mental medium in which decisions are made.

I make the first decision: the decision of whether to take the case. That choice is pivotal. Once I say yes, I have already seen the strategy, the path through the thicket, seen myself explaining it to an officer, hearing that approval stamp click in my brain. Once I commit to a case, there are no more choices I have to make.

Getting to that point takes time, lots of time. My clients who have been refused admission have endured a very emotionally traumatic experience. They had pinned their expectations on a US job and thought they were coming in to start work, only to be refused. Their entire livelihoods have been threatened. I start by reviewing the paperwork they submitted, and then I go straight to asking the client to recount to me, blow by blow, what happened when they walked into the CBP office, what the officer said, what they responded, etc. I lead them through an exercise of visualizing the scene and telling it like a novelist, word for word. I do this both because I can glean information about what the officer's problem was with the case, even if the client conveying it to me did not understand it, and because I think it's therapeutic for the client to recount the experience with the aim of strategically reshaping it-- of correcting something in the course of their lives that should have gone another way. It's like backing up time so that we can reverse an event that should not have occurred. But I have to be really convinced that it should not have occurred. If I am not convinced, I can't untie the knots of time properly to correct them.

The next decision is made by the officer: whether to approve or deny the case. Between my decision to take the case and the officer's decision on whether to approve the case, a couple of things happen. First, I write a new support letter for the employer to sign based on the conversations we have had. I work closely with the employer and the foreign national to make sure that everything said factually is accurate and consistent with what was said in previous letters, yet advances the theory of the case more effectively. Usually these letters go through numerous drafts by my suddenly very detail-oriented clients. I understand this response to a prior refusal and suffer it silently. EVERY previously refused client nitpicks obsessively at details. Second, I go over the finalized package of documents with the client in great detail. Third, I meet the client at the Duty Free Store on the Canadian side of the Peace Bridge to sit down and discuss the case again. I show them the application we're submitting and then I do a mock interview where I pretend to be a CBP officer and give them a hard time questioning them about their case. I make sure they make sense and that they don't talk about the facts of their case in a manner that will be confusing. I teach them how to answer questions directly (think: the opposite of the way politicians answer questions). I have used this advice so many times that I say it in the exact same words every time: "Answer any questions the officer asks you as briefly, honestly and accurately as possible. Do not guess what the officer is trying to ask you but answer the exact question. Let the officer lead the interview. He will have a line of questioning he wants to pursue and your job is to answer the questions only." It's amazing how many highly educated people are incapable of doing this. Some get it though -- usually the ones who are not overly impressed with themselves-- and I love them.

(The worst clients are the ones whose idealized version of themselves is so important to them that they cannot deviate from their own egotistical narrative about their abilities in order to realize what the officer's actual concerns are and how to address them. Their argument seems to be, "I'm so wonderful; how can you deny me?" I have to break these people down. It is painful.) 

When we finally get to the CBP office, the officer, of course, makes the decision. I am pretty familiar with the officers that typically handle these cases in Buffalo, and I know their style. First of all, some will allow me to stand there for the entire adjudication while others will promptly ask me to sit down. Some officers blow hot and cold on this point. There is no right to attorney representation at the port of entry, so they do not have to allow me to stand there. But inevitably, if the officer is having a hard time making a decision (as is often the case with prior refusals), he or she will call me up to discuss the case. Then there are some officers who ask what the person is applying for and then ask you to sit down while they review the paperwork. Some of this group do so quickly while others labor over it. Some even approve cases without asking any further questions; this is weird. Then there is the very small group of very seasoned officers who start out by sizing up the situation through a few pointed questions. From this little cluster of questions I see that the officer has already honed in instinctively on the weak points in the case and is prodding it like a surgeon prods a tumor with his scalpel. These are the coolest officers; they smell a case like a dog.

I often feel like a stand-by interpreter for someone who speaks passable English. The officers speak in the language of the law and of their particular set of concerns and the client speaks in the language of his profession. They use two different sets of jargon. I try to teach the client immigration jargon well in advance of the interview with CBP so that they can speak the officer's language; this seems to work the best. I keep my mouth shut for the most part, until I see that there is a breakdown in language; that the officer and the client are speaking past each other and not catching the other's meaning. Then I jump in. But as I explain to the client beforehand, I don't explain things to the officer directly unless he asks me to do so. I just facilitate conversation, prompt the client to give the information that the officer is trying to elicit.

All in all, I only take a case with a prior refusal when I believe that the reason for denial was a communication failure. In order to get a better decision on the second (or third or fourth) try, I have to dissolve myself into a non-presence that silently facilitates a conversation. I try to be a medium to help conduct the flow of thoughts. I try to be perfectly ignored even as I'm shaping the event. It's a fun role to play.

The Talismans of Memory

On a recent cross-county flight, a member of the flight crew walked the aisles, handing out blue plastic "wings" pins to all the kids. I was happy to see that airlines still do that kind of thing in the post-9/11 world at all. But it was still a far cry from the way I was introduced to the airline industry as a kid. I remember going into the cockpit with all the other kids on the flight when I was eight years old, and having the pilot explain what his controls do, in a manner that commanded respect. (Don't they know that an object holds only the power of the experience that surrounds it in the memory? Surely advertisers know this.) And they gave us metal wings pins, not plastic. I loved those wings and what they recalled to me of the experience. But I have long since lost them. I don't recall where or when-- whether I misplaced them or threw them out on some grey morning when I was in the mood to move on, growing, as we do, past the stream of objects we once depended on to form our identity.

There is always something new within our grasp. Whatever we choose to hold onto is always a primordial tool with which to fashion our experience of the universe.

Onto the same flight, I carried with me a bright yellow package of Juicy Fruit gum, with 17 soft, fresh sticks of silvery, foil-wrapped gum. I chewed precisely one of those sticks before depositing it into the pocket of the seat in front of me for safe-keeping. I promptly forgot the gum, though, and made my way through Disney World and a dozen family members I would never meet again. And I forgot that gum, that wonderful pack of sugary goodness that I was told would keep my ears from clogging from the altitude.

Of all the things I encountered on that trip, that lost pack of gum is the thing I recall the most. Unlike the wings pin, which I kept for some time, and parted with when it was no longer precious to me, I lost my pack of gum while it was still a valued possession. I still think of it flying the friendly skies without me, forever fresh and containing 16 unopened slices in the seat pocket of a Boeing 747. (I still remember the pilot mentioning that).

There is something powerful about the things that we lose while still value them. They become the talismans of our memories, symbols imbued with power, representing and meaning far more than all of the other things that have passed through our hands, which are many.