On Forgiveness

There are many reasons why I resist forgiveness. Even writing that sentence feels uncomfortable.

I am proud of it and resentment is not enchanting.

But because forgiveness, to this day, still feels heavy in my body.

It feels like a burden.

Over the years, I have come to believe that perhaps we have misunderstood the word. We have repeated it so many times, across generations, across cultures, across religious teachings, across self-development spaces, that we rarely stop to ask a simple question:

What do we actually mean when we ask someone to forgive?

Where did this idea come from?

Is it a sacred invitation?

Or has it gradually become a social expectation?

A moral obligation?

A quiet form of oppression disguised as wisdom?

Sometimes I wonder whether forgiveness has become less about the person who was hurt and more about making everyone else comfortable.

The perpetrator is allowed to move on.

The family finds peace.

The community restores harmony.

The conversation ends.

Yet the person who carries the wound is often left with another burden: the expectation to forgive before they have even had the chance to honor what happened to them.

As if choosing not to forgive makes them the problem.

As if their anger is the offence.

As if their grief is excessive.

As if protecting themselves is somehow less virtuous than excusing what hurt them.

There is something profoundly unsettling about that.

Even now, after years of studying human behavior, emotional healing, somatic work, and conscious living, I still notice a reaction inside me whenever forgiveness is offered as the answer.

People often assume that because I work in self-development, I should naturally embody forgiveness.

As though healing automatically means becoming endlessly peaceful.

As though peace is something we arrive at by overriding our humanity.

I no longer believe that.

Peace that demands I silence my anger is not peace.

Peace that asks me to abandon my grief is not peace.

Peace that requires me to betray my own experience is not peace.

That is emotional bypassing wearing the language of wisdom.

I do believe healing is possible.

I believe freedom is possible.

I believe our bodies were never designed to carry resentment forever.

But I also believe that healing cannot be forced.

Forgiveness cannot be demanded.

And no one has the authority to decide when another human being should be ready.

Healing is deeply personal.

It is intimate.

It is subjective.

There is no universal timeline.

There is no moral deadline.

There is only the quiet intelligence of a human being discovering, in their own time, what their heart and body are finally ready to release.

Until then, honoring your pain is not failure.

Honoring your boundaries is not bitterness.

Honoring your truth is not a lack of spiritual maturity.

It is a sacred act.

Nothing—not culture, not religion, not family, not society, and not even the healing industry—should ask you to abandon that before you are ready.