How Forgiveness Can Set You Free: Letting Go of the Pain You Did Not Cause

For a long time I misunderstood forgiveness. I thought it meant declaring that what happened was acceptable, so I refused to give it. What I did not realize is how forgiveness can set you free, not the person who hurt you, but you. It became one of the hardest and most important steps to healing I have ever taken, and it sits at the very heart of my memoir Chance. Beginnings.

Carrying resentment is like gripping a hot coal in order to throw it at someone else. The one who gets burned is you. Letting go of resentment is not weakness; it is how you finally set the coal down.

Forgiveness is for you, not for them

The greatest myth about forgiveness is that it lets the other person off the hook. It does not. Forgiveness is an act of emotional healing you do for your own sake. The other person may never know, may never change, may never deserve it. You forgive anyway, because staying chained to the hurt costs you far more than it ever costs them.

What forgiveness is not

Forgiveness is not forgetting, and it is not pretending the wound never happened. Healing from emotional trauma requires telling the truth about what was done to you. You can hold someone fully accountable and still choose to release your grip on the bitterness. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

Forgiveness does not change the past. It changes the grip the past keeps on you.

The slow work of letting go

For most of us, forgiveness is not a single dramatic moment but a practice. Some mornings you release it, and by evening you have quietly picked it back up. That is normal. Like all real steps to healing, it happens gradually, and it often helps to put it into words. Many people find that writing about forgiveness, in a journal or a memoir, is what finally begins to loosen its hold.

Where faith comes in

For me, faith was what made forgiveness possible when my own strength ran out. I could not manufacture grace on my own, but I could ask for it. Writing my memoir about forgiveness became part of that practice, a way of laying down what I had carried for decades and walking out lighter on the other side.

If you are ready to set down something heavy, my story might help you begin.

Read Chance. Beginnings by Roberts Essex

A true story of faith, family, and the freedom found in letting go.  Visit robertsessex.com.