Throughout the years, the times I tried speaking to people about things that happened with my parents and my sister, I always got the same responses. This was one of them- “But that’s your family. You need to forgive them.”
Those moments can make you feel like you’re an outsider in your own life. You can’t help but to question your own reality- maybe you’re being too emotional and sensitive, maybe it’s not really as bad as it seems, maybe you should overlook someone else’s character flaws.
Eventually, I got exhausted of hearing the same things and because of my own insecurities and unhealed wounds, I ended up distorting the definition of forgiveness. So, I forgave to the point that it was no longer about forgiveness. It was masochism.
A while back, I decided to look up the definition of forgiveness because I didn’t want to overcomplicate it. I wanted to be able to intrinsically forgive others and myself without feeling like I had to sacrifice my values and morals.
According to Miriam Webster, this is what to forgive means:
1: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender): PARDON
2a: to give up resentment of or claim to requital for
b: to grant relief from payment of
Forgiveness means you no longer harbor ill will towards someone for hurting you, whether it was a mistake or not. That’s it.
It isn’t about us suffering to satiate someone else’s toxicity. And it definitely does not mean that we should overlook someone’s depraved nature because of a dictionary definition. It’s about finding peace within ourselves, despite the circumstances that disrupt it.
Forgiveness is also about releasing the shame and disgust we have for ourselves for having stayed in abusive and toxic relationships much longer than we should have, feeling the need to prove our worth to people who will never want to see it, and ignoring the inner voice that continuously told us to walk away. We need to reconcile with the parts of ourselves that’s holding onto the pain, to release the voice that tells us we need to stay resentful.
You can still feel the pain and disappointment while mourning the loss of a relationship you romanticized. You can still feel embarrassed for what you tolerated while nurturing your heart. And yes, you can release resentment while still wanting justice for what was done to you.
Walking away from the people we love isn’t easy. If it were, all of us would have walked away at the first sign of disrespect. We stayed because we held onto hope that one day, things would get better. We also tell ourselves the same stories passed onto us, “family forgives.” So, we need to rewrite those stories too.
If you don’t have it in your heart right now to forgive someone, that’s ok. With time, you will. Your heart needs to feel through the emotions so it can mend itself. In the meantime, focus on becoming the version of you that you daydream about. And one day, when you’re not even thinking about it or trying to force it, you’ll realize the heaviness in your heart lifted.
I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.
