The Most Misunderstood Act of Kindness
And the recipient of that act of kindness is not who you may think.
I need to set the record straight on one of the most polarizing words in existence.
Forgiveness.
Even just reading that word might have caused something to tighten in your chest. That’s how charged this topic is. And honestly? That reaction makes complete sense because forgiveness is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts in the entire human experience.
Over the years, I’ve had some genuinely awful things happen to me that I wouldn’t wish on anyone (if you’ve read my latest book Civil Unity, you have some idea of what I mean). Still though, that doesn’t make me special in this department. If you’re reading these words right now, I’m willing to bet you’ve been there too.
Understandably, you might be confused about why forgiveness is considered an act of kindness. Not to mention, why in the world would I advocate for giving kindness to a person who deeply harmed you?
The drunk driver who killed your child.
The spouse who had an affair with your best friend.
The business partner who stole your company’s money, destroyed your business, and left you bankrupt.
Wait Shola…you want me to give kindness to those people? Are you insane???
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
The forgiveness that I’m advocating for isn’t about extending kindness to the people who harmed you. This isn’t even about them. This is about extending kindness to yourself.
To ensure we’re all working from the same definition here, forgiveness is an intentional decision to release resentment, vengeance, and anger toward a person who harmed you. As the famous saying goes, “holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
In other words, when we choose to hold tightly onto anger, bitterness, resentment, and fantasies of vengeance, we’re actually not harming the other person - we’re only harming ourselves.
Thankfully, forgiveness is the solution to freeing us from a self-imposed prison where we always have access to the key.
I don’t want to romanticize or simplify this, though. Just because the key is within reach doesn’t mean that this process is going to be easy - I can promise you that it probably won’t be (more on that in a minute).
First things first, we need to start with a quick re-education about forgiveness. Most of us can’t (or won’t) even begin the work of forgiveness because we’re caught up in believing unhelpful myths about the topic.
Let me fix that right now.
What Forgiveness Is NOT
Before we can talk about the freedom that forgiveness offers, we need to debunk the five most persistent myths that keep people locked in the prison of resentment:
1️⃣ Forgiveness does NOT mean condoning what happened to you. What happened to you was not okay. Full stop. And you never have to (and it could be argued that you shouldn’t) reach a point where you’re fine with it. Forgiveness is about your emotional freedom, not a validation of someone else’s awful behavior.
2️⃣ Forgiveness is NOT about releasing someone from accountability. Contrary to what many people believe, you can forgive someone while holding them fully accountable, or deciding to permanently remove the person from your life. At one of my speaking events, a woman told me she had recently forgiven a family member, while simultaneously testifying against that same family member in a court of law. Forgiveness and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Not even close.
3️⃣ Forgiveness is NOT a sign of weakness. As Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” Think about it this way: hanging onto resentment and bitterness is actually the easier path, even though it might not seem like it. That’s why so many people choose it. Forgiveness - the real, intentional, excruciating labor of releasing negative feelings after being deeply harmed - requires extraordinary (and, uncommon) strength.
4️⃣ Forgiveness does NOT require reconciliation. As mentioned in point #2 above, you can forgive someone while permanently removing them from your life. Reconciliation requires both people to participate and rebuild trust. Forgiveness? That’s something you can do entirely on your own. Those are two very different things. If you choose to take the path of reconciliation, that is entirely up to you. However, doing so is not a requirement for forgiveness.
5️⃣ Forgiveness is NOT a one-time act. Man…I wish I could tell you that you can declare “I forgive them!” and then skip down the street with birds landing on your arm like you’re in a Disney movie. That’s not how this works, fam. For significant wounds, you might need to forgive again and again as waves of hurt resurface. Just when you think you’ve moved past your pain, something can (and likely, will) re-trigger you and put you right back where you started. That’s why I think of forgiveness as more like a dial than a switch.
Hopefully reading those five points were helpful for you, because understanding these truths was absolutely transformative for me.
I realized I could forgive the people who harmed me without excusing their actions, without pretending it didn’t matter, or best of all, without sending them kindness. That knowledge allowed me to break the chains, find peace, and actively move on with my life.
Only then could I finally receive the gift that forgiveness was ready to give me.
Hi, it’s Shola! Allow me to interrupt your reading to mention that the fastest way to grow this kindness movement is to kindly share this article with others. If you’ve found this article helpful, please share that helpfulness with others. It’s free and it only takes a second.
What Forgiveness Actually Gives You
This is the most important point of this week’s article, and it bears repeating until it is seared into your soul: forgiveness was never about the person who hurt you.
It’s about you.
For years, I carried deep resentment over something extremely traumatic that happened during my childhood. And I was convinced that forgiving meant minimizing what happened, or that it somehow suggested the harm wasn’t that bad.
The thought of forgiveness made me feel physically ill. That is not said metaphorically.
But I had it completely backwards.
When you hold onto resentment, you’re giving the person who hurt you continued power over your emotional state. You’re allowing a past event to keep harming you in the present. Every day you carry that anger, they’re still winning, living rent-free in your head without paying a single dime in rent.
Forgiveness is how you reclaim that power.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, people who forgive experience less depression, anxiety, stress, anger, and hostility. Meanwhile, holding onto grudges is linked to serious health issues including severe depression and PTSD. The science is clear: forgiveness is a mental health-enhancing move.
And here’s the part that liberated me most: you don’t even need an apology to begin.
Waiting for someone to say sorry means giving that person full control over your healing process. What if the apology never comes? What if they genuinely don’t believe they did anything wrong? What if they’ve passed away?
That apology might never arrive. You can’t afford to keep waiting.
Think of it this way. If someone physically wounded you, would you wait for the person who harmed you to apologize before you treated the wound and gave yourself the care that you need? I hope not. You need to think of emotional wounds in the same way.
This is where we need to separate forgiveness from the apology. They’re not the same thing.
Let me be clear about the difference: An apology is about the offender taking responsibility. Forgiveness is about you releasing resentment. One doesn’t require the other.
So what does forgiveness actually look like in practice? Start here:
Acknowledge the full impact of what happened and allow yourself to feel of all of it. The anger, the grief, the sadness, and anything else that comes up for you.
Make a conscious decision to release the resentment, not for them, but for your own peace and freedom.
Shift your focus from the past to where you are now, and where you want to go.
Remember, forgiveness happens on your timeline. There is no schedule for healing, and significant trauma often requires professional support. It did in my case.
Please don’t rush yourself, but also, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to this process. This is incredibly challenging work, and any step that you take toward healing and peace is worth celebrating.
As Lewis B. Smedes once wrote, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
Most of all, forgiveness is about freedom.
Freedom to reclaim your peace, your sanity, your happiness.
Freedom from having that person live rent-free in your mind.
Freedom from being consumed with resentment and vengeance.
The work is really hard, it’s some of the hardest we’ll ever do. But if you’re willing to engage in this work, your freedom and peace of mind are likely waiting for you on the other side ❤️.
Ubuntu,
Shola aka Brother Teresa
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It’s free, it’s fast, and most of all, it tells me you value this work and that I should keep writing every week in pursuit of a kinder world.
Have you found freedom through forgiveness, or are you still wrestling with it? Jump into the conversation in the comments below!
Thank you.
You have articulated this so beautifully.
When I have opportunities to visit with sex offenders, as someone who has kidnap and rape in her litany of experiences, this topic often comes up. I think many of the people who bring forgiveness up are looking for a way to make themselves feel better about the horrific trauma they have thoughtlessly imposed on another human life.
I agree wholeheartedly that forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself, and that it doesn’t dismiss or diminish the severity or seriousness of the someone else’s care-less-ness.
It is a gift that comes in small and large packages… thank you for your gift of words organized into ideas intended to promote kindness.
I also had a traumatic childhood caused in large part -/ but not entirely —by my parents. As adults, my sister and I were still enraged by how anyone could have treated their children as they had. We wanted to punish them — we even considered suing them.
But after she died, I no longer felt the need to protect her (she was disabled by muscular dystrophy) and instead I started asking myself what could cause two humans to behave as they had. And the answer to that, of course, was their own childhood traumas, which left them unable to cope with having two seriously ill children by age 25. Something all parents would find extremely challenging.
As a result I didn’t “forgive” them, but I lost my ability to hate them. And I started wanting to bring a little joy into their lives. (holiday baskets, cards, photos etc.).
By the time my mother died of Covid I could even remember the moments she did show love and had acted on my behalf in positive, life altering ways. I just felt sad that she’d had such a depressing unhappy life. But she’s not excused.
Is this forgiveness? Maybe so after reading your post. I know that I’m a different person without the rage and with the increased compassion.
Thanks for your thoughtful posts!