Why have we become obsessed with forgiveness? Why is one violent abuser sometimes forgiven, but not another? And why do we bear a grudge for a much lesser evil? Jeff Foster explains it so eloquently:
YOU DO NOT NEED TO FORGIVE
Do not force yourself to practise this thing called forgiveness.
Forgiveness comes in its own way, in its own time, or not, as you do the difficult work of becoming more present to yourself.
This is the real practice of forgiveness: Feeling, meeting, expressing, hearing, validating your own pain, listening to the hurt one inside, the angry one, the betrayed one, the one who was too young or too afraid to speak up or fight back.
You cannot do “forgiveness” just like you cannot force the heart to open, there is violence in prising open a closed heart even for “spiritual” reasons. The heart opens when it is ready and not a moment before. Don’t do fake forgiveness or rush to premature “compassion” for your abusers, just to appear nice or good or enlightened or healed or to get spiritual points from a punishing or rewarding God. Scream to the heavens, that is more true. Rage at all that is false, that is more real. Cry a river of tears, that is more healing. Mourn your lost childhood, that is kinder. Set firm loving boundaries and hold to them. Remove people from your life if you have to, and bring others closer. Forgive yourself for what you could not do, could not think, could not speak from where you were. Forgive your own mistakes, or your own inability to see what you could not see from where you were looking.
And maybe one day, when you feel safe enough, and not a moment before, and when you are ready, forgiveness will begin to bloom.
And you will see your enemy’s pain, their own trauma and the trauma of their ancestors, and you will understand they had no choice but to act out, to find perhaps a moment of relief from their own inner hell, and perhaps you will work to make sure nobody else has to go through what you did ever again. And perhaps your heart will soften one day, yes, perhaps your heart will soften and perhaps you will begin to utter the words, “I forgive”.
But there is no “should” here, no violent demand for forgiveness, not on the mind’s timeline anyway, and until true forgiveness happens, you do not need to forgive what was done to you. Listen to me. You do not need to manufacture forgiveness right now or force it into being.
But there is this sacred inner work of self-compassion that can create more favourable conditions for the blooming of forgiveness, and that is your work now.
You are forgiven, always, for not being able or ready to forgive, and you are forgiven for prioritising your own healing today.
