Can we truly forgive?
I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. And so has artist and prophet,
who recently posed some questions about forgiveness on her instagram. Can we truly forgive the most ultimate betrayals?Can we ever come back from that?
A couple of years ago I asked some of you if you think everyone is forgivable. I still return to your answers as I continue to percolate on this subject. Not sure I am ready to write a book about forgiveness or if I even want to - but I do believe forgiveness is such a huge facet in our ability to transcend interpersonal and communal harm. Forgiveness plays a key role in how we heal and how we evolve as human beings. Without evolvement we stay stagnant, scared, ignorant, engaging in habits (and relationships) that don’t serve us, we grow resentful or even vengeful. But forgiveness is also weaponised a lot - often in religious spaces - and I think it can be used to coerce people into silence and abandoning themselves in order to maintain peace.
Desmond Tutu’s The Book of Forgiving challenges me to the nth degree. It features people that cause the most heinous harm to individuals and communities and shines a spotlight on how survivors find their way to forgive.
Forgiveness is hard.
I ping pong with it. Perhaps because forgiveness, in my view, has often been used to bypass pain, absolve responsibility and enable problematic behaviour in favour of perceived harmony.
India Arie asks: “have you ever truly forgiven someone? As in have no energy around the things done to you?”
It’s complex.
As someone who moves in buddhist spaces, I’d love to say I have forgiveness on lock - but I don’t. Sometimes forgiveness can be conditional for me depending on the assault. Sometimes people get on my last nerves, I want to see them punished and there is not an inch of me that is remotely interested in forgiveness.
But I digress slightly. In response to India’s inquiry my thoughts are:
Forgiveness is not about being neutral or having ‘no energy’ or hurt feelings about what happened. It’s not about bypassing my emotions - but recognising them. If I do forgive I have to recognise and acknowledge that I am still hurt, otherwise it feels dishonest. I have to acknowledge and also honour that sometimes it can take me a long time to process and trust again. I am a Libra and an empath. I feel deeply, I love deeply and I give deeply, that’s reflected in the depths of which I feel emotional pain. I am not one of those people who can just pretend things haven’t happened, or are fine, when they aren’t.
Acknowledging my feelings and then tending to them is key - my feelings are mine - while apologies and atonement would be the ideal - it doesn’t always happen when we forgive someone. It is not linear. Plus that gives too much power to another person and places the ability for me to be at peace and heal, on them doing the right thing. Most people do not do the right thing, because they are more invested in being right.
You see the predicament.
Now - if the impact of harm and hurt feelings are still there in a big way, then that is often a cue for me that I need to be heard or that I need space. Maybe the relationship needs time. Maybe the relationship needs to change. I’ve learned forgiveness doesn’t mean merrily we roll along happily ever after and returning to how things were - relationships alter when there is a rupture.
When I do forgive, forgiveness is not a magic wand either. It doesn’t fix the rupture in relationship, it doesn't miraculously bring me peace and it doesn’t take away the injury or the impact of the injury.
I’ve come to accept that forgiveness is very much about developing our own relationship to the word and what it means to us in practice.
Forgiveness for me sometimes means temporary or permanent separation from a person or community. It means choosing myself and forgiving myself for the choices I’ve made to keep the peace instead of speaking up or stepping away, that may have prolonged harm or enabled misalignment.
I want to say I forgive people who I no longer have relationships when they haven’t been able to demonstrate accountability and oftentimes, basic care and where I haven’t been able to meet/ accept them where they are at. But I don’t. My heart breaks every time and it never quite goes back together again. Forgiveness is hard. But it’s less about a person who has engaged in wrongdoing and more about us.
“We don’t forgive to help the other person. We don’t forgive for others. We forgive for ourselves” Desmond Tutu - The Book of Forgiving
And then there’s self-forgiveness.
Oh boy.
Now this is where I really struggle. It’s ‘easier’ (not easy) for me to forgive other people - but myself?
It’s ongoing work for me to forgive myself for all the times I didn’t and couldn’t say no.
To forgive myself for all the times I have abandoned myself to please others.
Or to forgive myself for all the times I ignored and betrayed my own body.
The list is long. So that is where I need to spend more time in the practice of forgiveness - with self. For it is here that I think my relationship to forgiveness with other people - particularly for those big almighty betrayals - might evolve. To be able to forgive those big almighty betrayals is not necessarily because they deserve access to me again. But because, instead of losing time ruminating over their bullshit, I deserve to reclaim my energy - for me - and in doing so, I become my own liberator and reclaim more of my humanity.
That’s my practice.
Much love
Nova
xx
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Nova Reid is a writer, mental health advocate, TED Speaker and Producer. She is author of The Good Ally and host and executive producer of Hidden Histories with Nova Reid. You can find out more about her work on www.novareid.com
This is such a poignant piece. I feel the self-forgiveness line hard, and that in fact was the driving force for me deciding to invest in long-term therapy this year.
I ruminate on whether I’ve forgiven people in my past a lot too, but I never want them to be punished, I want them to realise what they’ve done, maybe sometimes to receive a genuine apology, because people committing harm and not caring/realising is the bit that jars me the most.
Lastly, if you ever do write a book on forgiveness, I will 100% read it!!
Forgiveness is so difficult - in the moment it feels so much easier to hold on to resentment and anger. But I learned quickly that the forgiveness is for me. And as soon as I let it go, not meaning granting the opportunity for someone to hurt me again, I feel the ease. I think because I’m a Jesus believer, I’m compelled to forgive because I realize I’m seeking forgiveness all the time beucuse I do wrong too.