Jenna, I mostly have forgiven myself too – still hard at times.

but the agency…

that one will be a long time coming, that’s all I know.

I am not a birthmother, but I have had to work through forgiving people who have caused me great harm in my life. (I was severely abused as a child.) What I have learned is that forgiveness is a gift that I give myself. The choice to forgive is not about the people who harmed me — it is about ME.

For me, forgiveness is not about pardon or reconciliation. (I cannot even imagine pardoning or reconciling with the people who harmed me as an innocent child.) It is not about saying that it was okay for me to be harmed. Instead, it is about choosing to stop nursing the bitterness and, instead, use that energy to heal my emotional wounds.

As long as I nursed the bitterness toward the people who harmed me, I stayed connected to them because I thought about them a lot. As I chose to let go of the bitterness, I stopped thinking about them and, instead, thought about things that made ME happy. My life became more about ME and less about what I had experienced.

I agree that it is human to continue to hate the people who harmed us, and nobody can tell you when it is time to start letting go. However, I speak from experience — freeing up that negative energy and, instead, using it to love yourself is incredibly healing and freeing.

Take care,

- Faith

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
– George Soros.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
– James Baldwin.

The one who throws the stone forgets; the one who is hit remembers forever.
– Angolan Proverb.

It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.
– Lewis B. Smedes.

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.
– Charles Williams.

When you forgive, you in no way change the past — but you sure do change the future.
– Bernard Meltzer.

We should be lenient in our judgment, because often the mistakes of others would have been ours had we had the opportunity to make them.
– Unknown.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
- Booker T. Washington

Don’t hate, it’s too big a burden to bear.
- Martin Luther King, Sr.