Answering the Question: What Does it Mean to Say "Sorry?"
"Forgiveness is not necessarily about resolving a conflict, it’s about allowing yourself to heal. Forgiveness is for you."
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Normally I try to prepare these reflections for y’all on Thursday night, hoping to use it as the final opportunity to synthesize my thoughts from the week. This time around, I find myself sitting at my laptop at 8AM on Friday trying to compress nearly 25 pages of journaling into a concise note to share with y’all.
This week’s topic knocked me out, and from some of the messages you’ve shared with me, it seems like it did the same for many of you. So let’s get to it.
This week we tried to figure out:
What does forgiveness mean to you?
Answering the Question: What Forgiveness Means
This week’s prompt was inspired by something I read in Yasmine Cheyenne’s The Sugar Jar:
“…forgiveness is not an energy exchange. Forgiveness is often a release of energy within you…Forgiving them doesn’t mean that they were right and you were wrong…forgiving them doesn’t mean you’re letting them off the hook. Forgiveness is a form of letting go and releasing emotions that you’re holding…forgiveness moves the energy within you…”
It’s worth reading the book in full (this is from Chapter 7: Letting Go as a Self-Care Practice), but this excerpt captures something I found to be revelatory and transformative. Forgiveness is not necessarily about resolving a conflict, it’s about allowing yourself to heal. Forgiveness is for you.
I don’t know about you, but this was a mind-expanding revelation for me. The idea that I can give myself the apology, the forgiveness, someone else won’t? Free myself from that pain? Incredible.
To be clear, this is not an abdication of experience or responsibility. Granting forgiveness is not about denying what happened to you or your perception of something that happened. Instead, it’s making peace with what happened on your own terms and with your own authority.
Waiting for the apology that never comes puts the power of your healing back into the hands of others. Your self-care journey is now reliant upon the pre-condition of someone else’s growth. This puts you in a position to continue to expose yourself to harm, possibly worsening the very wound you are trying to mend. Likely, you’re waiting for an apology and acknowledgment that will never come.
At this juncture, I think it’s important to consider what we are often looking to an apology, to forgiveness, for. Typically it emerges from a dispute with someone we actually care deeply about: a partner, a parent, a friend. As these conflicts rage we end up drifting far from the initial argument, and as a result inflict deep wounds, physical or emotional, upon one another.
Is the apology we are looking for after all this one that says “Hey, you’re right and I was wrong, I’m sorry for disagreeing,” or is it “Hey, I know I hurt you and that you’re in pain, I’m sorry for causing that.” In my reflections, I’ve come to realize it’s often the latter. The terms of the debate often come secondary to the toll, and forgiveness is an acknowledgment of our experience.
But what if you could give that gift to yourself? Forgiveness doesn’t have to be a gift granted from an external actor, it can come from within. As with any trauma or experience, we have the power to recognize our own wounds, and honor and hold space for them. Granting that forgiveness on our own terms doesn’t minimize what happened, in fact we are pausing to honor the experience we went through.
Ultimately, this type of forgiveness is freedom. We are free to move on from a conflict. Free to grow without the pre-requisite actions of others. Free to emerge from the past and dismiss emotional baggage that doesn’t serve us. Forgiveness is letting go.
Answering the Question: Who Is Responsible
A secondary topic I explored this week with regard to forgiveness, and one I have not yet fully formed my response to, is trying to understand who I am really looking for forgiveness from.
As just explored, we have the power to give forgiveness. But it’s important to know where we need to aim that forgiveness: is it at someone we were in conflict with, or ourselves.
Reflecting on some unhealed adverse relationships in my life, I came to realize that in a select few my anger and grudge was not held at another person, but at myself. I was angry with myself for the way I responded to their actions, whether they were intended to rankle me or not. I was angry at myself for continuously exposing myself to harsh treatment from them, and that I tolerated less than I deserved. I was angry with myself for not sticking up for myself.
In light of that, how could I continue to expose myself to harm by waiting for them to apologize? Instead, I need to put myself in the driver’s seat. That forgiveness can only come by me, for me.
Answering the Question: Our Readers Speak
Happy to say we have some reflections from some of our readers this week, and I feel privileged to be able to share some of what they had to say with all of you.
“forgiveness is for you - not for them. forgiveness is a release. it allows you to move on from the situation with grace. it’s an acknowledgement that this person messed up, and whether they asked for it or not, you are letting it go. it doesn’t even mean you have to let them back in your life.
which means forgetting is also for you. i think when people say they’ll never forget, they think carrying that memory will save them from being in a situation like that again. the more i thought about it though, the more i think “not forgetting” closes us off to people and the experiences.
it’s carrying a grudge. and if you’re still carrying a grudge, then are you really forgiving folks? i don’t think so.”
Thank you so much for sharing, and as always if you ever want to share something just drop me an email or a DM with your story.
Something for the Weekend
The most delightful thing on the internet right now is the Cheese Tax. If you have a dog, you already know what this is. For the initiated, Cheese Tax is a trending sound on TikTok catching fire with dog owners right now. The audio speaks to the truth that is dogs rushing into the kitchen for scraps whenever a fridge opens, especially when the cheese comes out.
Highly suggest you browse these clips on TikTok ASAP. Before, you know, you can’t.
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