Learning to Forgive

Forgiveness used to feel impossible to me. For years, I carried anger, resentment, and shame like a second skin. It was heavy and exhausting, but it felt safer than letting it go. I replayed old hurts, the things people did to me, and the things I did to others — and I punished myself over and over again for all of it.

I remember sitting in one of my first therapy sessions when the topic of forgiveness came up. I completely broke down. Through tears, I said, “How do I forgive someone who isn’t sorry? How do I just let go of things that have molded me into who I am — the way I react, the way I process pain, the way I am so hard on myself?”

My therapist didn’t have some magical answer that day. She didn’t hand me a 3-step guide to forgiveness. Instead, she just let me cry. That was the first step — letting myself feel the weight of it all instead of pretending it didn’t hurt.

For so long, I had been told, You just need to let it go. But you can’t just wish away abandonment issues. You can’t erase childhood abuse or verbal and mental abuse in relationships. You can’t ignore betrayal and heartbreak. Those things leave scars. Those things shape the way you see the world. Telling someone to “just let it go” is like asking them to pretend it never happened — and I couldn’t do that.

I’m not saying forgiveness is easy — because it’s not. It is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. Forgiving people who caused deep trauma in your life requires intense healing. It requires sitting with pain you’ve buried for years. And it is especially hard when the person never asks for forgiveness, never apologizes, never even acknowledges the hurt they caused.

That was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn: I’m not forgiving for them. I’m forgiving for me. So that I can move on. So that I don’t have to carry that weight anymore.

There was one moment that changed everything for me. I was praying one night, crying out to God about the pain I was carrying — the anger toward someone who had deeply betrayed me. In that moment, I felt God whisper to my heart, If you keep holding onto this, you’re only hurting yourself. It’s time to let me carry this.

I didn’t feel instant relief. Forgiveness didn’t wash over me in a single moment like a movie scene. But I made the choice that night to start forgiving — and I’ve had to make that choice again and again since then.

Forgiving myself was a whole other mountain to climb. That meant processing the shame I had learned to carry for years. It meant facing my mistakes and accepting that I can’t go back and undo the wreckage I caused — the moments I missed with my kids, the people I hurt with my words, the times I let people down.

But I can make an intentional decision to be a living amends — to prove, not just to others but to myself, that I am determined to be better than my past self. I can’t change what I did, but I can change who I am today.

This took years of therapy, hard conversations, and more prayer than I can count. Because the truth is, I couldn’t have done any of this without a loving and merciful God — the One who taught us all the greatest lesson in forgiveness. If He could forgive me, with all my mistakes and failures, then I could choose to forgive those who hurt me.

Forgiveness has not been a one-time event for me. It’s a process — a choice I make over and over again. And every time I choose it, I feel a little lighter. The anger has less of a grip. The shame loses its power. And little by little, peace takes its place.

I won’t lie to you: this road isn’t easy. It takes work — gut-wrenching, tear-filled, exhausting work. But it’s worth traveling. The freedom on the other side of forgiveness is worth every step.

If you’re carrying pain, anger, or regret today, maybe this is your reminder to start. You don’t have to forgive everything all at once. You don’t have to have all the answers. Just take one step. One conversation. One prayer. One moment of release.

Do it for you. Because you deserve to be free.