n+1 chances are for others

June 30, 2015 5:55 AM

TherapyFilter: How do you come around to not just forgiving yourself, but believing you are worthy of forgiveness? And that to forgive is not some fault of a weak person who just wants others to like them?

I was told as child that I should not be sorry, I should just not do the thing I was sorry for in the first place. And that to forgive others meant that I just wanted them to like me when I shouldn't trust people who've done something that needs to be forgiven.

This lead me to believe that saying "I'm sorry" was a lie and an excuse. I could not ask for forgiveness, even though we went to church and I heard every Sunday about forgiveness. It just wasn't for me. I felt that there was something different about me because of this, that I could not make mistakes.

This has lead me to very defensive. As a child I was told I constantly needed to be "right". As you can seen from my previous question, I was afraid of getting "in trouble". (Also, I am not longer on medications at all and that has helped enormously. I may have needed them at one time, but not anymore apparently. I can concentrate and sleep and all that good stuff.)

I have been working with a good therapist for about a month now. I was with a different therapist for about a year but ended that as I felt we had reached we impasse. However, I've noticed a few thoughts have been going through my head. I have therapy next week.

Thought 1 -
I've noticed that I think I am afraid to take the next step in therapy because this newer, wiser version of myself will see that all along, I have been mistaken. That I have been wrong. And as stated above, I cannot say I am sorry. I cannot make mistakes.

This has been floating around in my head along with...

Thought 2 -
I feel that if I am kind to be people to have hurt me that I am opening myself to being hurt again. For example, if someone hurt me in any way (a boss, a friend, a boyfriend) I have a very hard time just being civil to them. It seems deceitful because I don't want them to think they "got away" with it. But at the same time I have a hard time carrying a grudge. And yet at the same time I can be very judgemental out of this defensive desire to not be hurt.

And this leads to Thought 3 -

But I don't get to feel hurt. Because I am not perfect and because I do make mistakes and because I can never be forgiven for them, I do not get to criticize others. For example, a relationship ended a few months ago wherein the guy most likely had a bout of cold feet based on his own insecurities. We were together for several months, discussing moving into together, spent all our time together and then he just vanished. He later explained it wasn't him, he was in a "bad place" with work (which I believe, it's a soul sucking job with lots of hours). Then I found out he was on Tinder again. So what he meant was he was in a bad place WITH ME. I was angry for awhile. Blocked him on fb and deleted his number. But lately, I've been finding I miss him. When thoughts come up I would try to be angry and think judgemental thoughts of him and jam away the nice memories but last night I just let myself feel and realized that I had loved him, that I may still love him, and that I forgive him. I didn't unblock him on fb or anything drastic like that. But I am very confused by these feelings. How can I love someone who hurt me? How can I forgive him when it was probably my fault and my insecurity drove him away, so it seems a bit presumptuous on my part to even forgive him because that assumes he did something wrong. Am I wanting to forgive him just so he'll come back? This doesn't make any sense.


My question:

I've had a hard time understanding what black and white thinking was. I know that I do it and I can see some of it above. However, I feel there's something else going on here and I'm not sure what. I'm feeling all this tension between wanting to be a nice compassionate person to myself and others or being what the voice in my head calls "honest" which means unforgiving and demanding and hold to high standards.

I feel that if I try to do the self-soothing techniques or read and believe the self help books that I am "lying" to myself and letting myself get away with things... that I am essentially saying "I'm sorry" when I shouldn't have done it in the first place. (I shouldn't have stood up for myself to my boss, I shouldn't have held on to hope when Dude ghosted, I shouldn't have this that or the other thing).

I've been reading Daring Greatly and so much of it resonates with me. But I am still stuck at this place of feeling unworthy of being forgiven before I can even move on to the forgiving and self compassion part.

Have you gotten through this part? Did you just soldier on through mantras and quotes and self-help books and therapy and one day BAM you are like a whole person who isn't dragging baggage around? I almost feel like I'm just going through the motions in therapy because that is another place that is telling me I'm worthy of forgiveness and that heck, I may not need any at all in the first place and I just have such a hard time believing that.

posted by inmyhead to Grab Bag (16 answers total)

Well, all humans are unworthy of being forgiven. That's why we need it.
posted by tel3path at 6:19 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm going to suggest something totally different, by suggesting you examine what forgiveness is itself; the stew of feelings you had about the guy who you were dating makes total sense, but it sounds like part of what's holding you back from forgiving both him - and yourself - is that you have a strict idea of what forgiveness is itself.

I recommend this book a lot during discussions about forgiveness. It's not a self-help book, but rather it's a really thought-provoking collection of essays about the topic, and how a lot of different politicians, religious leaders, and thinkers define it. You'll agree with some of the essays and you'll disagree with others; but you will definitely have your definition of forgiveness expanded and changed, and once that happens you'll probably have a different perspective on your own situation.

Good luck.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:20 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does it help to realize that you can forgive a person and still not trust that person? Like, if someone does you wrong, you can forgive them, but that doesn't mean you have to allow them hurt you in the same way again.

Likewise, you can forgive yourself while still wanting yourself to do better.
posted by mskyle at 6:47 AM on June 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think that you will require help from a therapist to really get past this - although I'll add that I think that if you stick with it, you will get past this.

I have two comments, though:

How do you come around to not just forgiving yourself, but believing you are worthy of forgiveness?

For me, personally: if I screw up, but learn from the experience, and do everything I can to never repeat the error, then I feel I'm worthy of forgiveness. Practically speaking, I may not be able to convince other people of this. But at least I can forgive myself.

And that to forgive is not some fault of a weak person who just wants others to like them?

You mentioned going to church. Do you think that God and Jesus forgive us sinners because they are weak and crave our adoration?
posted by doctor tough love at 6:48 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I'm not your therapist but I am a therapist.

Your question seems to be something like, "How can I forgive myself if I really feel (i.e., I've learned on a deep level) that I'm unworthy of forgiveness?"

So one thing is that you're asking how can you be the arbiter of your own forgiveness, since you're not good enough to be a judge of who's good and who's bad, because you've been taught that some authority external to yourself is the one with the power to judge -- not you. There's a huge issue of authority there that we can guess comes from your family (I'm referencing what you said at first, the part about "I was told as a child"). So -- if you forgive yourself, who cares, because you have no authority. And if somebody else forgives you, who cares, because the very fact that they're seeing you as a good person means that they're deluded or weak or something else that negates their authority -- and that even applies to a therapist.

So what do you do? Okay, here is a helicopter view:

You learn that your thoughts and feelings about this are just thoughts and feelings, and when you learn that, you change your mind (and your feelings) about all this. But how do you get there? What is the process?

If you're in cognitive behavioral therapy (or read those kind of self-help books), you believe that you can get right to the thoughts and feelings, through logic. But you're lucky, because you seem to know intuitively that that's a kind of short-circuiting of a much deeper process that, for many people, has to happen before real change can occur.

If you're in a more "psychodynamic" (coming from psychoanalytic theory and practice) form of therapy (or read those kind of self-help books), you start to substitute the power and authority of the therapist for your own internalized authority that's been making you feel so lousy all your life. Psychodynamic therapy isn't just different from cognitive behavioral therapy because the former wants to short-circuit the emotional process by appealing to "logic" -- it also differs from psychodynamic therapy because it wants to minimize the authority of the therapist and say that the instruments of change is the content of the therapy -- changing your thoughts. Psychodynamic therapy knows that, whether you admit it or not, the major instrument of change is the *relationship* between the patient and the therapist, and a large part of that relationship has to do with transferring the lousy punitive internalized authority that is making you feel so horrible about yourself to a more benign, understanding authority of the therapist.

(If you're reading self-help books that have a Buddhist/Eastern/New Age flavor, you're getting a message that you are your own authority (which you say you don't trust) (but of course the writer of the book is telling you that, so there is still an outside authority (that is you don't trust, but that's supposed to be wise and benign and you're supposed to come to trust him/her))

Okay, so back to therapy.

How can you get to a place where you see that what you've been taught, about how you're basically bad and if anybody, including yourself, tells you otherwise, they're full of shit?

By trusting a new kind of relationship with a compassionate person who can see through this extremely fragile, rigid belief system you hold, ***but who knows that you are holding onto that belief system for dear life because it's all you have to anchor you, and that, if you try to give it up too quickly, you will not change -- you will just get anxious/depressed/disillusioned with the therapy/quit the therapy/go back to Square One***

So basically you have to keep your eyes open in this therapy you have just begun and, if the therapist tells you that your beliefs are not "correct", realize that either you're going to have to run away from that situation (because that formulation is superficial and has no meaning within the context of your ***needing those beliefs***), comply with the therapist (because you've been taught to obey authority, and if you like the therapist, you won't want to lose her regard by defying her), or any other tactic you're going to have to do in order to maintain those beliefs (that you ***need***).

So what is the solution?

The solution is to hang in there and form a relationship with the therapist where you can sit there and just watch what's happening within your thoughts and feelings, and let yourself learn to *trust* the relationship and the process, gradually getting to your deeper feelings of vulnerability that you can allow to emerge and share with another human (the therapist). This is a slow process. It can't be short-circuited. It is a little bit logical, but mostly it is emotional in nature. The reason you're hanging onto those beliefs for dear life is that you have nothing else now to hold onto. You can't just give up those beliefs, which are the internalization of your early caregivers, because that's what they gave you and that's what's holding you together right now.

The solution for *right now* is to form a relationship with your therapist, and hopefully your therapist will not get entangled in a loop where you're supposed to "believe" him or her when they tell you your beliefs are "wrong" -- but you don't, because you can't. Hopefully your therapist will be sophisticated enough to start to go UNDER and AROUND those beliefs, to the place where the vulnerabilities lie that have brought you to this place of rigidity in the first place (but many therapists cannot "go there," and the culture of cognitive-behavioral therapy reinforces the idea that they don't have to go there).

Part of the answer is that, if the therapy is working, you're going to feel worse (very very sad and very very scared) before you feel better, but (1) you need a guide who can go there with you. That's actually what psychotherapy is, and, (2) when it's done right, it really does work.
posted by DMelanogaster at 6:53 AM on June 30, 2015 [11 favorites]

You don't have to forgive yourself, or others, but that's not a recipe for a happy life. Or any kind of life really.

Ideally, we wouldn't do bad things to ourselves or to other people. But once done, we can't undo them, we can't change the past. Since the past can't be changed, being sorry for your own mistakes, and forgiving the mistakes of others is the only way forward.

Being sorry is not the easy way out. And it's not an excuse. Being sorry does not undo the past. However, being sorry is the recognition that you did something wrong, combined with the intention to do better in the future. You cannot truly be sorry without the desire to do better. Of course, it is not possible to succeed all the time. Being better is an aspiration, not a destination. We are all flawed, that doesn't make us evil as long as we try to be better.

We forgive others when they are sorry because we know that they are willing to change and that helps to soothe some of our hurt. Furthermore, we recognize that the person who wronged us is only human and screwed up, just like the hundred times we did so ourselves.

I know this is all very metaphysical, but when we are truly sorry and when we truly forgive, then we liberate ourselves from the terrible burden of shame and guilt on the one hand, and anger and hatred on the other.

If you are sorry, then you are worthy of forgiveness. The only people who are not worthy of forgiveness are those who are capable of remorse, but have no remorse for their actions.

So, don't hate yourself for being human and don't hate others for being human.

I'm rambling, maybe everything I said is stupid. I've been thinking a lot about the same topic lately. I think you should forgive him, just like I should forgive somebody who hurt me. It doesn't undo the past, but at least it makes it possible to move forward.
posted by loveandpolitics at 7:07 AM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: One of the things that has helped me, and that may help you, is to view your past actions not as mistakes but as lessons, and to give yourself permission to be kind to the person you were who did not know the things that you now, on the other side of the equation, know about those choices or decisions that you think were mistakes.

If you had known, you might have acted differently, in which case you didn't make a mistake: you acted under incomplete information, which is merely the human condition. If, had you known, you would have acted the same way, then it's not fair to say that your decision was wrong at all. It might be the case, in either case, that you don't like the consequences of your decision, but that is not the same thing as the decision being either wrong or a mistake.

Being kind to yourself is not a matter of weakness but of honesty and justice. It is not just, and it is not honest, to judge somebody on the basis of things they did not know or could not have known. When you were a child, you said and did things that seemed foolish to the adults around you, and that may seem foolish to you now, because you had a child's knowledge and a child's experience of the world. It is no criticism to say that a child is not an adult; it is just a fact. It is unjust to judge a child for not being an adult, and to demand that child be an adult is to demand to live in unreality.

Your relationship to yourself of three months ago is similar in kind to your relationship to yourself as a child: you are older. You know things you didn't know then. You might do some things differently now. But judging yourself as a child by the yardstick of what you know as an adult is dishonest and unjust; so, too, is judging yourself from three months ago on the basis of what you know today. You can live in that unreality if you want to, but that sounds to me like a false and cruel place to be, and you don't have to be there.

I think it is worth considering, in light of your second point, that your forgiveness of others does not have to include dropping all of your guard around them. You may be resisting forgiveness as a concept because in the past, people have demanded forgiveness of you in ways that meant you were not allowed to protect yourself from them. You can forgive yourself, or have compassion for yourself, without extending those things to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that ever crossed you. Still more, you can forgive those who have hurt you without restoring trust or openness or without even telling them, if you don't want to. You can just hold your forgiveness in your heart, in the place where the hurt is, and know that they are both real and valid and true, and you can have them both at the same time. Forgiving is not the same thing as denying that you were ever hurt.

A good therapist can help you with all of these things. Peace to you.
posted by gauche at 8:18 AM on June 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Gauche's response is smart and compassionate; however, the problem with gauche's idea that you were ignorant then but you'll get smarter with time is that it perpetuates the system that is making you sick (as in existential sickness)

"But judging yourself as a child by the yardstick of what you know as an adult is dishonest and unjust; so, too, is judging yourself from three months ago on the basis of what you know today. "

this implies that you should continue to judge yourself, but adjust the yardstick. forgive yourself for not being able to play a Chopin ballade, because you're just at the level of a beginner's piece. Just practice! Practice! Practice! And one day you'll get there.

No. The word "lesson" is a tip-off that we are still in the realm of judgments and the "hyper punitive superego."* May I suggest this book:

There Is Nothing Wrong With You, by Cheri Huber.

*on the other hand, if the recipient of these thoughts is so enmeshed in that judgment world that he can only hear things that are spoken in that language! then that is the language that must be spoken to him. One hopes with time that his vocabulary will expand.
posted by DMelanogaster at 8:29 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

i will bring these up with my therapist.

i found this part of gauche's answer very helpful wrt forgiving others, esp the part i bolded:

I think it is worth considering, in light of your second point, that your forgiveness of others does not have to include dropping all of your guard around them. You may be resisting forgiveness as a concept because in the past, people have demanded forgiveness of you in ways that meant you were not allowed to protect yourself from them. You can forgive yourself, or have compassion for yourself, without extending those things to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that ever crossed you. Still more, you can forgive those who have hurt you without restoring trust or openness or without even telling them, if you don't want to. You can just hold your forgiveness in your heart, in the place where the hurt is, and know that they are both real and valid and true, and you can have them both at the same time. Forgiving is not the same thing as denying that you were ever hurt.

DMelanogaster - i think everything you said is spot on and what i need to discuss with my therapist. i do still think in the terms of "lessons" and i realize now how judgemental i am of myself that way. i have always excelled in school, despite any typos in this post haha. i wanted to be a perpetual student to get that external validation of "A+" "4.0".

I've read through There is Nothing Wrong With You and some other Cheri Huber books, but I think the idea you mentioned about how I don't trust myself to be an arbiter of forgiveness means I put the book aside as yet something else that didn't apply to me.


Everything everyone has said has helped and i appreciate the time to reply. i knew i didn't trust my own sense of "normal" but to see how much i don't trust myself, to the point that i can't forgive myself, is eye opening and i think that it feels like an appropriate label for the block in my path. i need to name a thing to know it and get past it :)
posted by inmyhead at 8:48 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think of forgiveness as something that has to be earned. That's sort of the transactional, punitive model that we use in our legal system, but it doesn't apply well to personal relationships. If you steal something, yes, you owe something to society for your transgression. We resolve that debt in the form of fines, fees, prison, community service, rehabilitation, etc. The punishment is usually calculated from the value of property damaged, wages lost, and so forth.

When we feel emotionally hurt by someone we trust, we often have a sense that there should be some justice – an eye for an eye, that sort of thing. But I don't generally find this sort of revenge very healing. It doesn't make the original pain go away. It doesn't restore the trust that was lost. The only thing that restores that trust is for the two parties to reach a mutual understanding. "Forgiveness" is what I would call the outcome of such an understanding.

I have had some success with this kind of forgiveness. The "let it go" kind of forgiveness is relatively easy to achieve but it does require a bit of maturity for both parties to acknowledge their role in the apology.

But depending on the nature of the transgression, it can be really, really hard to actually forgive someone. To really, truly let it go. Sometimes you have to settle for just saying you forgive them and moving on, even though the relationship is damaged and the trust will never be restored, and you still kind of hate this person. Sometimes that's the best you can do; it's just too ruinous to continue being angry, so you "forgive" the person by letting them off the hook, mainly for your own sake.

Just my two cents.
posted by deathpanels at 8:48 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I had a few disconnected thoughts about how you present the problem of self-forgiveness, which I've listed below. I hope you don't mind the religious angle in the final two. I think the point holds if you think in secular terms about the variety and scale of the world out there and about human love and relationships, but I've put it in religious language because that comes easier to me and because you mentioned the forgiveness story in church in your question.

1. Some of the things you seem to believe you need forgiveness for are not wrong at all. For example, being hopeful about a new relationship is reasonable and right. If it doesn't work out, that's bad luck but not the result of a mistake on your part since you aren't telepathic and don't have a time machine to see into the future. I think you need a category, in your mind, between "perfect" (=ideal outcome) and "my fault" (=disappointing outcome): call it the "oh well, damn" category. There's a whole bunch of things that can go wrong in life, especially around predicting what other people do, which are not by any stretch of the imagination your fault. They don't require forgiveness, only sympathy.

2. You mention going to church but I don't know if you still do/are religious at all. If you are, then you may find it helpful to take a step back from the work you think you have to do - self-forgiveness etc - and think of it as something that is just objectively done, out there in the universe, beyond and outside you. It isn't something you have to work at all the time, it's something already accomplished that you may sometimes just need to remind yourself of. I know exactly what you mean about feeling like you're lying to yourself, and like all this self-kindness etc stuff is just self-serving garbage, but when I feel like that I tend to tell myself that my inner harsh authoritarian voice is equally self-serving and subjective. If you are religious, it may help to think of God as a silence outside and beyond and greater than all the voices of authority and criticism and self-justification and whatever in your head. I find Monty Python's Galaxy Song surprisingly on-point here, when I want to remind myself of an objective world out there in which my judgments of myself, good or bad, are not the decisive thing.

3. I have an aesthetic and emotional objection to the idea that one shouldn't be sorry because one shouldn't have done the bad thing in the first place. I feel like sometimes relationships are deepened, and wisdom gained, by people making mistakes and then being sorry: "O felix culpa". Sometimes we would have been worse off, impoverished, if our mistakes had never been made. Obviously deliberate mistreatment of others is different, and it would be better if it never happened, but when it comes to normal mistakes and stumblings I feel like there's something to be said for apology and reconciliation as positive, strengthening elements in relationships and not just attempts to cancel out the bad. There are some people with whom you can't reconcile, because they aren't sorry or aren't ready to accept your apology, but I still think the mental act of apology or forgiveness does something active and enriching and isn't just a late attempt to try and undo the bad thing.
posted by Aravis76 at 8:56 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

One book that was kind of mind-blowing for me, when I was ready for it, was Jean Vanier's Becoming Human.

I am not sure I can do it justice but one of the (many) ideas, basically, is that when humans help other people, they feel good about themselves. So one reason in his view we're all put on earth (I don't personally subscribe to that element) is not just to help others but to be helped by others. In this view, the mistakes we all make and the failures we have -- physical, intellectual, emotional -- actually position us to connect with others deeply not by being right or being wrong, but simply by being open and entering into relationships with others.

I grew up a lot like it sounds like you did. Either I was right/perfect/well-behaved/a credit or there was something horrifically wrong, probably with me. It took me ten years at work to be able to say "I don't know," or "I may have been wrong about that" without throwing up in the bathroom afterwards. Since kind of getting over that hurdle I've observed that the best quality of people I've known are comfortable with both asking for help (needing it) and giving it.

How does that relate to forgiveness? I think the thing about forgiveness is really is that it's about accepting failure and weakness as a part of the human experience. The idea that those moments are actually just as critical and valuable as being right in just an ordinary day way was huge for me.

I don't know if that will help but I hope it's a tiny bit for your puzzle. You really sound on the right track to me.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:58 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's also not really practical to say being sorry sucks because you shouldn't do bad things to begin with. That assumes you can exercise perfect control over your affect on other people. Which is just not true. Any intimate relationship is going to involve a lot of unintentionally hurt feelings. It's just part of life, and one of the risks you run with any kind of relationship. If every transgression in your relationships is treated with a draconian severity, you will not have relationships for very long. Forgiveness is a practical tool for allowing us to get on with the business of having relationships with other human beings.
posted by deathpanels at 10:01 AM on June 30, 2015

There is a lot of complicated issues that sometimes get tangled up in forgiveness. Boundaries, safe people, self protection, why and how and when to forgive, who deserves forgiveness...

1) Boundaries. If you forgive someone, you DO NOT need to let them hurt you. Forgiving them does not mean you let them trample all over your boundaries. This can obviously get more complicated if these people are your bosses or spouse/SO.... but at a certain point, you have to protect you. If someone refuses to respect the sane boundaries you have, why would you want to be around them?

2) Safe people. My pastor friend tells a joke- what happens when a jerk accepts Jesus as his/her savior? You have a saved jerk. Unsafe people are going to be unsafe. You can't change that. If my (imaginary) uncle punches me in the face every. single. time. I see him, I don't expect him to stop. I choose not to be around him, because he's unsafe. I can choose to forgive him because I'm tired of carrying around the anger and hurt and fear he causes.

3) Do they need to be sorry or repent or promise to stop for you to forgive them? NO. They don't. They likely will not. Unsafe people will be unsafe. You cannot change them. You can change you. Carrying anger and unforgiveness is like carrying a hot coal to throw at the people who hurt you. Sooner or later, it will do more damage to you than it ever could to them. Also, good people tend to not ACTUALLY throw the metaphorical coal, so we just... keep carrying it. They don't deserve forgiveness, which is good news, since it isn't for them. It is for you, to make your life better.

4) Self love. I find that perfectionists often have issues with loving (and even liking) themselves. Look how imperfect I am! look at all these huge failures! They cry. How could anybody love this mess? I also find this usually comes from the parents, somehow. I'd challenge you to think long and hard on if you love yourself.... if not, why? What is so wrong with you that you don't deserve forgiveness, peace, and joy? Or at least that you don't deserve to have boundaries, and be around safe people?
posted by Jacen at 10:08 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

I also see people get struck on "I think I forgave them but I still feel angry and hurt." I like to separate this into two things: What they did, and how it made you feel. We are a lot better at forgiving the more surface incident- Bob did something bad, and I can forgive him for that. However, we tend to hide or avoid or bottle up the feels Bob caused- anger, fear, helplessness, betrayal, feeling unloved or unwanted, etc; and the real costs of it- Bob lied and got me fired, or my dad never loved me, or my spouse cheated on me and caused a whole mess of shit- and for healthy, complete healing, we do need to acknowledge the hurts, and the pain. This is no fun! Its miserable and scary. But the damage has already been done, and examining it closely (for a short time, like, an hour) and forgiving because you don't want to carry it around any more... that, I feel, gets it out of the more intellectual 'I forgive your actions" into the more heart/soul/true you of "I really, fully forgive the pain, because I want to move on. Because I am worthy of better things"
posted by Jacen at 10:17 AM on June 30, 2015

Our minister once gave a sermon on forgiveness and he said that we don't have to forgive all at once. It's not either/or-- either I forgive you or I never forgive you. I can forgive you 10% or 53% or whatever I want. That percentage may increase over time, or it may stay the same.

The other helpful idea I gleaned from this sermon was that forgiveness isn't really about the other person. It's about me. It's about me not carrying around the hurt and anger and resentment caused by that particular person or event. I can let it go. I don't have to like the person/event now, and I don't have to ever tell the person that I have (partially) forgiven them. It's something that happens in my heart.
posted by tuesdayschild at 11:17 AM on June 30, 2015