The Role of Forgiveness in Healing

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A Moment of True Peace

Near the beginning of January, a perfect conglomeration of events-all coming together at exactly the right time-brought me to what felt like a true acceptance, peace, and understanding.

It was in this moment that I felt I had fully integrated the trauma that had made the last 6 months of my life a living hell. I saw how I had grown stronger, more understanding, more capable of helping others in need.

I had made peace with the impact of my experience.

Suddenly, I remembered a podcast I had listened to a week or two before. In passing, it had mentioned Eva Mozes Kor, a holocaust survivor who had endured unimaginable trauma during her imprisonment in Auschwitz.

Kor became known for her decision to forgive the Nazis, including figures like Josef Mengele, who subjected her and her twin sister to inhumane medical experiments.

She emphasized that her act of forgiveness was a personal choice aimed at self-healing and liberation, rather than absolving her perpetrators of their crimes.

I had long since forgiven myself, and having just forgiven the impact of what happened, I wondered if forgiving my rapist was the next step. I wondered if it was necessary to unlock some even higher level of peace.

As I began to work through my feeling about this, it felt impossible to let go of the anger that I held in my heart. I knew he certainly didn’t deserve my forgiveness, and I despised him for what he was.

The Truth About Forgiveness

The role of forgiveness in healing is layered and deeply personal, and the conversation of forgiving unforgivable acts is nuanced and deeply complex.

Some forms of forgiveness are essential to reclaiming yourself, while others are entirely optional. But all of them share one thing in common-they are never about excusing what happened. They are about choosing what you will carry forward.

Forgiveness is Not:

• Absolving your perpetrator of their crime(s).
• Excusing what happened or pretending it wasn’t harmful.
• Forgetting, minimizing, or invalidating your pain.
• Letting someone back into your life if they don’t deserve to be there.
• Something you owe to anyone-it’s a choice, not a duty.

Forgiveness is:

• A way to free yourself from carrying the weight of anger, shame, or resentment.
• A path toward peace-not because they deserve it, but because you do.
• Something that can exist without reconciliation or continued contact.
• A deeply personal process that happens on your timeline, in your own way.

The Weight of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood parts of healing. It’s often framed as something we “owe” in order to be good, kind, or strong. But true forgiveness is never about obligation-it’s about liberation. There are three kinds of forgiveness I would like to highlight today.

Forgiving Myself: The First Step to Healing

This is a type of forgiveness that I believe is crucial to healing. It’s about releasing self-blame: for the ways you’ve coped, for the things you didn’t know, for the blame you may have wrongly carried.

This type of forgiveness may come easier as time brings understanding, and may feel much more natural to some than to others.

This came in layers for me. It was fairly early on that I forgave myself for what happened, and released self-blame for someone else’s decision to hurt me.

For a long time though, I expected myself to heal perfectly and linearly. I blamed myself for not doing as well as I thought I should be, and because the coping mechanisms I was heavily relying on were hurting me in the long run, I thought I was failing for using them.

I thought struggling was failing and I blamed myself for not doing better.

It took much longer to forgive myself for struggling. But when I did, the difference was vast and undeniable. I saw how the coping mechanisms had helped me to survive, and I saw my struggle through a lens of self-compassion and understanding.

This specific type of forgiveness brought peace, healing, and understanding in troves.

Making Peace With the Impact

This type of forgiveness may not be necessary to healing, but I believe it is beneficial beyond words. It’s not about excusing what happened, but making peace with the impact that it has had on your life.

Before I forgave what happened, I felt that I was nothing more than a byproduct of my trauma. Making peace with the impact of my experience was essential to my healing, and it allowed me to reclaim my life as mine.

Throughout my healing journey, I thought that I would never be able to forgive what had happened or the way it had impacted me.

Truthfully, I felt that it had destroyed me-and at the time I believed the damage to be irreparable. I missed the version of myself that didn’t know this pain, who didn’t carry this weight. I knew that it had changed me forever, and that I would never be the same as I was.

Eventually, I learned that while it had indeed changed me forever, that wasn’t a bad thing.

Through this hardship, I have learned so much: about myself, about life. I found strength and resilience I never knew that I had. I learned how to adapt, hold on to hope, and seek light in the darkest places.

And as I look back on the darkest times of my life, I just can’t help but feel so thankful. Thankful for the way that I have overcome, proud of the person I have grown into, and thankful that through the unspeakable hurt, I am still here today with a voice.

When I forgave what happened, when I integrated and made peace with the impact of my experience, I found a level of healing and acceptance that I truly thought would never be possible for me.

What About Forgiving Them?

This type of forgiveness is never necessary.

It can be about accepting that your perpetrator is human, that they are flawed and perhaps even capable of change. While it can be an empowering choice for some, forgiving a person can feel like a release of moral accountability.

I think that this type of forgiveness is not because they deserve it, but because you do. If you are carrying hate in your heart for them, it can feel like a release.

Eva Mozes Kor forgave her perpetrators to release the grip of her trauma and live a full life. For her, it was a means of healing, self-liberation, and self-empowerment. A way to live free of the pain and burden of her past.

This type of forgiveness can be empowering and healing for some! But lets talk about why I don’t think it’s necessary:

Letting Go Without Forgiving

I hate my rapist. I despise what he is, and I hate what he did to me. And I am tremendously angry; that for all the suffering I have done at his hand, he will never see a single consequence. With every cell of my being, I hate him and what he is.

What led me to the question of forgiving him is this: I have forgiven the impact of this experience. I love the person that I have become, the way that I have evolved. If I have found peace with the outcome of his actions, why am I still so angry at him?

I don’t deserve to carry anger, hate, or disgust in my heart. I know that holding on to it is not serving me, but I just don’t know how to let go.

Maybe, letting go isn’t about feeling any less-just changing what I feel. When I think about him, I am overcome with a tidal wave of negative emotions-it overtakes me.

I don’t know how to forgive him, and I’m not sure I ever will. Regardless, learning to not be weighed down by these emotions was essential to my well-being.

He doesn’t deserve a place in my life, and for me, letting go meant not giving him one.

Instead of focusing on how much I hate what he is, I focus on how proud I am of the person I have become. Instead of allowing myself to be overcome by the hate and disgust that I feel for him, I choose to feel overcome by the gratitude that I have for how much I have learned, grown, and healed through my hardship.

Forgiveness or Not, I Am Free

I used to think of forgiveness as a single, all-or-nothing decision. But I’ve come to realize that forgiveness exists in layers-and not all of them are essential to healing.

Some forms of forgiveness, like forgiving yourself or making peace with what happened, may be crucial to reclaiming your life. Others, like forgiving the perpetrator, are deeply personal choices and are never required for healing.

You don’t have to force forgiveness before you’re ready, and you don’t have to forgive at all if it doesn’t serve you. But what I do know is this: Healing requires finding a way to release the weight of what happened-whether that means forgiveness, acceptance, or simply shifting your focus toward the life you do want to live.

Forgiveness is not the measure of healing. The real victory is in reclaiming yourself, your heart, and your peace, in whatever way feels right for you.

And at the end of the day, forgiveness is not about them. It’s about me. It’s about making space in my heart for peace rather than pain, for growth rather than resentment. Whether or not I ever find the kind of forgiveness that releases him from my thoughts, I know this: I am free. I have reclaimed myself, and that will always be enough.

Thank you for being here. If this post resonated with you, I’d love for you to share your thoughts or connect with me-your voice matters too.