By Carrie Halladay
“Just forgive and move on.”
It sounds simple, but anyone who has been deeply hurt knows that forgiveness is rarely that easy. In counseling, I sometimes meet people who believe they should have forgiven someone by now. They may even feel guilty because anger, hurt or resentment remains long after the event itself.
Part of the problem is that we often misunderstand what forgiveness actually means.
Forgiveness does not mean saying that what happened was okay. It doesn’t excuse harmful behavior or erase the consequences of someone’s actions. If someone betrayed your trust, abused you, lied to you or repeatedly crossed your boundaries, forgiveness doesn’t require pretending those things didn’t happen.
Forgiveness also doesn’t automatically mean reconciliation.
Reconciliation requires two people. It involves accountability, changed behavior and rebuilding trust. Forgiveness can happen entirely within one person, even when the other person never apologizes, takes responsibility or changes.
You can forgive someone and still decide that they no longer have access to your life.
That’s an important distinction, particularly when we’re talking about relationships that have been harmful. Sometimes people feel pressured to restore a relationship because they have been told that forgiveness requires giving someone another chance. It doesn’t. Healthy boundaries and forgiveness can exist at the same time.
Forgiveness isn’t forgetting either. Our brains don’t simply erase painful experiences because we decide to forgive. In fact, remembering what happened can help us recognize unhealthy patterns and make wiser choices in the future.
So, what is forgiveness?
I tend to think of forgiveness as gradually releasing our need to carry the offense with us every day. It is choosing, sometimes repeatedly, not to allow another person’s actions to continue occupying so much emotional space in our lives.
That doesn’t necessarily happen all at once.
You may decide to forgive someone and discover a month later that you’re angry again. That doesn’t mean you failed. Forgiveness can be a process. Sometimes we have to make the same decision many times as different emotions surface.
It is also important to recognize that forgiveness should not be forced. Telling someone who has experienced a significant betrayal or trauma that they “need to forgive” can minimize the seriousness of what happened. Before forgiveness is even considered, a person may need time to feel angry, grieve what was lost and understand how the experience affected them.
And sometimes the person we struggle most to forgive is ourselves.
We replay old decisions and think, “I should have known better.” But we often judge our past selves using information and wisdom we only gained afterward. Self-forgiveness means acknowledging our mistakes, taking responsibility when appropriate, learning from them and allowing ourselves to move forward.
Ultimately, forgiveness isn’t about giving the person who hurt us a gift. It is about deciding how much power that hurt will continue to have in our own lives.
You can forgive without forgetting. You can forgive without reconciling. You can forgive and still have boundaries.
And most importantly, forgiveness doesn’t mean what happened was acceptable.
It simply means you don’t want to carry it forever.
