If you live long enough on this earth, inevitably even people you love and trust will end up hurting you or somehow betraying your trust — and so will you to them! That’s just something fun to turn over in your brain on a Monday morning. Forgiving someone when they hurt you is often so much harder to do than it sounds, and sometimes impossible — here are the times when we’ve done it anyway.
Heather Hogan, Senior Editor
When I was 20 years old, my parents got divorced and my dad just… split. It probably seems like that wouldn’t be a big deal because I wasn’t a kid anymore, but my family is more complicated than that. My mother has narcissistic personality disorder and various untreated addictions and it was obvious to everyone that she was going to manipulate my sister and I into feeling completely responsible for her taking care of her during her inevitable unraveling. And boy did she ever. She went completely berserk in ways I couldn’t even have known to worry about. I reached out to my dad and begged him for help in so many ways, even just advice, but he had washed his hands of “the situation” and he didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. By the time I finally extricated myself from my mom’s clutches, I was $10,000 in debt and my credit was in shambles and I was tied in so many emotional knots it would take me years of therapy to straighten myself out.
I forgave my dad for abandoning me, and I have tried to build a good relationship with him in the years since then. I still feel sad about it, and sometimes angry, but it doesn’t have an active impact on my life anymore, and I feel like unforgiveness would eat away at me like a poison. So I chose to forgive.
Erin Sullivan, Staff Writer
The last time someone apologized to me and my response wasn’t to sidestep it but to instead say, “I appreciate you saying so,” was this month and was my most recent ex who apologized for some behaviors that cultivated a pretty traumatic environment for a significant part of our relationship. I forgave her because she’s important to me and she’s taking steps to heal herself, which is what I hoped for at the time. Now I feel like I’d like to go on that new show Castaways on ABC after Bachelor in Paradise and have a plane drop me in the middle of nowhere.
Rachel Kincaid, Managing Editor
In trying to think about this question I had to admit to myself that I’m honestly not sure I really do — forgive, that is. I think forgiveness implies letting go of something, or absolving someone of something even if only for the reason that you know they weren’t capable of anything else or it was the best they could do, and I honestly don’t know that I do that. I think my relationship with someone after they’ve hurt me or done something I find unacceptable can still be fine and even good, and that oftentimes they won’t even know they’ve caused harm, but it’s not because I’ve ever let it go — more like decided I can live with it or accepted that I have to. You just decide to fold it in to your understanding of them and you grant them less trust, or trust them differently, from that day forward. I’m not proud of this about myself; if I’m being charitable I would guess that it’s a product of growing up in an unstable home with a narcissistic parent and having as a foundational experience the fact that when someone hurts you there will never be an apology or changed behavior, that you have to roll with it and make a life and home with them anyway. If I’m being less charitable, I think it might just be who I am.
The thing I think I maybe have forgiven, inasmuch as that’s something I do, is that my mother didn’t leave said parent, my abusive dad, sooner. Their divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me in that my brother and I had at least one home, our primary one, where we were safe, loved and felt secure; at the same time, part of me will always wonder what might have been different in my life if I had had more years of it like that. I’ve spoken with her about it, whether she wishes she had done it earlier, and she said she has no regrets; I trust her judgement and her experience of that time in our lives. I’ll never know what might have been different about my personality or my experiences, but also I’m happy with who I am and how I turned out, and so I can accept this and also forgive my mom for not being able to fulfill my impossible childhood desire of being able to be protected completely and somehow even retroactively from difficulty and pain.
Creatrix Tiara, Staff Writer
The first time my abusive ex pulled a mindfuck on me by hiding everything of hers in her room to make it look like she moved out and left the apartment with nothing but a note about how upset she was (by a text message saying I needed a bit more space to concentrate on uni???), then posted on Facebook to say she was ‘teaching me a lesson.’ Should have broken up with her then and there, instead I made it all my fault because surely I was the one that did wrong?? I just need to be a better girlfriend?? And then it happened again… and again… including one time at A-Camp which is why I can never go back there again… and again… and the whole time I’m getting us to couples counseling and trying to be a better girlfriend and yet it wasn’t enough and it was only when I stood up for myself that she dumped me. And then made it my fault and accused me of manipulating people.
Molly Priddy, Staff Writer
When I told my dad that I was getting married to my ex, a woman, he went quiet. Then he said he loved me but couldn’t in good conscience consider my marriage a REAL marriage because, you know, gay. This was a major blow; my relationship with my parents post-coming out was tenuous for about a decade, and then things started getting easier, better. By the time I proposed, I thought everyone in my family was on board with who I am and love.
Nope. What a surprise, too, especially when you’re expecting congratulations and love from someone who instead gives you bullshit and platitudes. I was very angry. I still feel flames licking the inside of my stomach when I write about it, which is partly the reason I decided to forgive.
Being angry with him for something he’ll obviously not change — if doing it for the love of your child doesn’t get you there, I don’t know what will — only hurts me. I let my anger sizzle for a while, and he was aware. My mom was aware. My sisters were aware. Everyone was aware that I was upset. So am I just going to keep living that way, anger burning me up? I can’t. I have a life.
We’ve reconciled a bit. He’s told me he loves me and he loved my ex. He gave me his favorite bird painting. He gave me his father’s golden rifle. He didn’t give me an apology, but when my wife left me, and I felt like the world’s biggest fool for not seeing it coming, he simply said, “Love blinds us sometimes.”
Yvonne Marquez, Senior Editor
I don’t like holding grudges or being mad at anyone for very long. I like to acknowledge my feelings, process through them and then move on. I just hate stewing in negative feelings. But there was this one time a few years ago that truly tested me.
I had a friend, let’s call her P, who I thought was super cool. She was a dope queer mujer who did some cool shit in our community. I met her through my partner and her involvement with labor unions. We all had a lot of fun together, laughed a lot, and even learned a new instrument because of her. At the time I didn’t have any QPOC friends in my area so I was so excited that P and I clicked. And outside of having fun, I felt she was someone I could trust and confide in because she listened to me and supported and uplifted me when I needed. And I felt like I was there for her too. When she sprained her ankle, I cooked her dinner and I checked in on her. I would drop her off at the airport on a short notice because there wasn’t anyone else who could take her. I thought she was my homie.
So the trouble began when me, my partner and P tried making a zine together. Ugh, it was gonna be so cool. It was going to be called Sin Filtro and it was gonna feature only woman of color voices — which we all agreed on from the very beginning. But then P wanted to let her white friend from high school contribute and my partner and I were like but why?? We had agreed that we would accept only woman of color submissions and P’s friend could submit whatever she wanted to literally anywhere else. We got into an argument about it in a skype meeting about the zine and the kicker is that P’s friend was with her while having this meeting. At one point, P’s white friend tells us that she should be allowed in our zine because she’s Jewish and has had an abortion before???? LIKE. WHAT. I was flabbergasted and couldn’t believe that P, this really badass community organizer, was just defending her white friend in this situation. It was really weird and I didn’t like it. After that meeting, my partner and I confronted P to talk about what happened and how fucked up we thought the whole situation was. P was of course defensive and she didn’t understand where we were coming from. I don’t remember much about the aftermath of the zine incident because soon after our lives became a wild whirlwind.
After a seriously painful hospitalization and doctor’s appointments, my partner was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. For several months, my partner was grappling with her diagnosis and I tried my best to be there for her while also being incredibly worried. My partner eventually needed to get a big surgery to remove the tumor on her pancreas. And after her surgery, she had to go back to the hospital for an extra week due to complications. It was an extremely trying time.
And guess what? We didn’t hear not one peep from P. All my other friends showed the fuck up. Brought us food. Walked our dog. Checked in on me and checked in on my partner. Sent us gifts. Sent us flowers. Visited my partner in the hospital. P knew what had happened and she didn’t even send me one text. NOTHING. NADA. She was probably hanging out with her white friend.
A few months later after my partner was feeling a whole lot better and I wasn’t so caught up in being a caregiver, it finally sunk in — that P wasn’t there. I was furious and sad all at the same time for months about it. I was incredibly heartbroken by her inaction. I thought she cared enough about me and my partner to show up in a dire time. She failed as a friend and for a long time I felt like I couldn’t forgive her. I contemplated sending her an email and telling her all my feelings but I felt so overwhelmed with emotion that I would just cry in frustration. So I never sent it.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m still a little salty about what happened but I don’t hold any anger towards her anymore. It took longer than usual but I had to let it go. I chose not to waste any more time or energy on people like her because she doesn’t deserve it! Instead I focused on the people who did show up for me.
Alexis Smithers, Staff Writer
One of my friends in high school kept telling me I was her boyfriend til her boyfriend came around. I’d come from a background where I wasn’t overly affectionate with people, especially not physically, and high school turned that all on its head for me. She was very physical, but not in any way I didn’t consent to. I think it just messed with my head for a while, because she was one of the reasons I was trying to give up self harm, and was there through very tough shit. But it kind of reinforced my little kid belief that the only way I could love girls was if I became a boy. There is a part of me that was upset that she meant more to me than I probably meant to her, but it’s not overwhelming like it used to be. I forgave her because she still means a lot to me and I don’t want to carry anger against her. I feel mostly embarrassed about everything, but that’s like, how I feel about most things so it’s okay.
Alyssa Andrews, Cartoonist
Forgiveness is a skill that I don’t have much of. I realize how trite that probably sounds, and I’m not particularly proud of it — but I’ve never had an easy time letting go of things that hurt me enough to warrant a need for forgiveness. I often find that forgiveness for me, lacks an authenticity that I wish I had. I carry the hurt around for fucking ever.
That being said, I’m 31 years old and doing the work. And in that work, more than anything I’m working to unpack my relationship with my mother. I’m learning every day to forgive her for not being who I need her to be. It’s a strange sort of forgiveness (to me, anyway) because it’s not about forgiving her for something she did (she’s done a lot), or something she once was. I’m learning to forgive her for all the things that she inherently is — and all of the things that she isn’t.
It’s vague and I know that — but I guess in working to forgive my mom for not being my person, I’m working to forgive more authentically. And I’m learning that building a conscious and intentional wall between us doesn’t mean I have to hate her. I’m learning to accept that it’s okay to love someone who is bad for you, but to love yourself enough to keep them from harming you further. Forgiveness is hard, and for once with this one — I’m trying not to fake it. 
When I was in college I hung out in the campus Hillel house a lot and one day I overheard the rabbi telling his three-year-old son something that has stuck with me ever since.
“You know what we do when we hurt someone? We say sorry. And you know what we do when someone says sorry? We say ‘thank you for apologizing.'”
I literally nearly started crying cause at the time I was going through a lot of shit and every queer on campus was ostracizing me cause I refused to forgive someone who manipulated and emotionally abused me for the better part of a year and basically poisoned my whole college experience, so hearing an actual real adult saying that we aren’t obligated to forgive was A Lot.
(He also incorporated that thought into his Yom Kippur services – that we should ask for forgiveness, but no one is obligated to forgive anyone. I’ve been thinking about that a lot again cause Yom Kippur was last week.)
”—I would guess that it’s a product of growing up in an unstable home with a narcissistic parent and having as a foundational experience the fact that when someone hurts you there will never be an apology or changed behavior, that you have to roll with it and make a life and home with them anyway”.
I feel so called out by this. Thank you, once more, for sharing.
<3
Tiara that relationship sounds so horrifically abusive. I’m so sorry you went through that.
Also if you ever decide to go back to A-camp I hope you will be surrounded by love and support and that it will be the best damn overwrite ever.
Thank you. It seems I took the opposite tack from everyone in this roundtable – everyone else talked about someone they forgive now, meanwhile I talked about a situation where I kept being more and more forgiving to my girlfriend after every damn incident and it just cost me instead.
Living in Australia makes coming to A-Camp complicated but thank you <3
My mother reacted to my telling her about her abusive husband by shock and then almost immediate denial/ pretending nothing had ever been said.
The interesting thing is that my learning to really forgive her, to understand that it comes from her own background of having been abused has also allowed me to forgive myself. It’s allowed me more space to see the ways in which I’ve avoided confrontation and tried (subconsciously) to make situations “safe”. By forgiving her it’s helped to show me ways I can choose to move forward, and especially to forgive and understand that younger version of myself, and to have compassion. Compassion for both myself and my mother navigating our lives without maps, searching for our own horizons.
“it’s okay to love someone who is bad for you, but to love yourself enough to keep them from harming you further.” -Alyssa
I tried adjusting boundaries with friends who were taking advantage of me but it was never enough, so I always end up cutting them off entirely. I wish I had more skill in making boundaries, but I love people deeply, so it’s hard for me to be aloof. I do miss those jokers though, and it doesn’t sit well with me that I have cut so many people out of my life.
How do you do it, Alyssa? Any additional wisdom and advice to share?
the short answer is (a probably disappointing): not all that well.
i goof up constantly, have very high highs in feeling optimistic about my boundary setting, and then very low lows where i feel that my choices to set them have left me genuinely alone in the world.
but i think what i mean is that i have really started to genuinely unlearn this concept that needing to be away from someone has to mean that you don’t love them, or that loving someone is enough reason to continue fostering a toxic relationship (i also deeply resent the idea that bad people are undeserving of our love so we just shouldn’t love them, for that matter) fuck that. i am deeply tethered to a number of people that i am better off without, and will love them -from a distance – every day of my life.
some days that is an easy thing to do. but most days it’s unfathomably hard. i think it always will be.
This was so helpful and lovely, thank you so much for your reply Alyssa! <3
I’ve forgiven my parents for not being perfect. They got a lot more important things really, really right than they did wrong. They loved each other, they loved us, they prioritized our family, they did the best they could for us and that was a lot. I don’t forget the ways they failed, because I need those lessons for my own parenting. But whenever I’m tempted to get angry or disappointed about any of it, I try to come back with the love and compassion that was the foundation of how they treated me.
I used to think forgiveness was a single act: you forgive someone for something, and then everything is fine and you don’t have any bad feelings around the act or the person who did whatever it was – or if you do, then you’re a bad grudge-holding person who didn’t really forgive. (Recovering Catholics represent!) But I finally realized that for me at least, that kind of forgiveness only exists for things so unimportant it’s barely worth calling it forgiveness anyway. If you did something that hurt me in an important way, then depending on a whole lot of things perhaps I will make a sincere effort to forgive you, but it’s going to take time and it won’t happen if you keep repeating whatever it was that hurt in the first place.
oooo, your comment was really helpful for me to read. thank you for sharing!
There’s this skill in dialectical behavioral therapy called “radical acceptance” and it’s one of the most powerful, forgiveness adjacent things I’ve learned. It’s acknowledging the facts of something that happened and letting go of judgements of how it should’ve gone. It’s not giving a messed up situation a pass or agreeing with it, it’s just accepting that it happened. It’s something I struggle with (did someone mention narcissistic/unstable parents?), and it’s an ongoing process, but it helps manage suffering around really shitty situations. I commend all of you for doing the work and for sharing.
…Okay, how have we not had a Raised By A Narcissistic meet-up at A-camp
Call me emotionally immature, but “forgiving” is a very loaded word for me right now. My dad was very emotionally abusive / unstable all through my childhood. He’d go for a month or two without speaking a word to my mom; just simply ignoring her, then when he did start talking again, it would be 2-hour lectures filled with put-downs that often ended in breaking dishes and other violence. So yeah, I’d totally attend the “Raised by a Narcisist” workshop, LOL! My mom never admits that anything was ever wrong, still thinks he was a good father, and was so terrified of being poor that she never left him, and never put my needs above his! She thinks I’m just supposed to say some affirmation like “my inner self forgives you”. The problem with those words is that to me, they mean that the behavior is okay, and acceptable, and that no life changes are needed. She would utter those words to give her the strength to continue upholding the status quo. I have many, many years to grow and mature before I can forgive either one of them! I don’t believe I let my anger consumee me though. I’ve turned it into action by finishing grad school and sementing my career so I NEVER have to be like my mom. I also find peace by meditating, exercising and playing the piano, not by saying I forgive anyone. Just my own experiences. I’m proud of all of you who are able to forgive.
I agree with you completely! I think I’m not entirely sure about what forgiveness actually means – if it’s getting rid of the anger you’re carrying around and letting it go, I think that’s a good and healthy thing, but I don’t think it necessarily involves the person who hurt you at all.
Is it saying to someone “What you did hurt me, but now it doesn’t hurt me anymore and so it was an okay thing to do”? Or saying “It still hurts me, but I am willing to overlook it and treat you as if it hadn’t happened”? Good luck with that one. I genuinely don’t know what it means, and I think forgiveness gets thrown around a lot but is actually a pretty vague concept.
I’m sorry this was/is your experience—and evidently bares similarity to many of our experiences. Personally, there are certain things that have happened to me that I actively work on “radically accepting” (I posted about it separately) rather than forgiving. I don’t think one versus another is a mark of emotional maturity, just different approaches to reconciling past wrongs. I also think it’s all deeply personal and about what you need to move forward.
Great thread. For me, forgiveness of abusive parents looks like “I hope you have a nice life, but stay the fuck away from me.” I’ve cut them off entirely for more than ten years, and I’m better off. I don’t owe them anything anymore. It’s enough for them to know that I’m happy and healthy, but they don’t get to be a part of my life.
I think I was reading the other day that Buddhism distinguishes between anger and hatred. Anger can be positive and healthy such as righteous anger when justice is not done. Hatred is never helpful. So my forgiveness looks like anger but not hatred. I’m pretty alright with that.
the fact that i could not think of a single incident to contribute to this roundtable says a lot, i think.
scorpiooooooooooo
I went through a long phase in my early 20s of refusing to forgive pretty much anyone for just about anything because I’d realized I spent my entire childhood preemptively forgiving my parents for things they never offered apologies for, in order to survive. Over the last few years I’ve swung away from that, and it’s felt much healthier, though I think the unforgiving phase was also necessary.
AHHH I’m extraordinarily late reading this, but —
Molly. Shit, my stomach was in knots reading that, because while mine isn’t anywhere near that intense, one of my deepest, ahh, would we call it a grudge? hurt? idk? involves thinking that my super-conservative father had come around to my now ex-partner and was supportive of me being out as a lesbian and in this long-term relationship with a woman I definitely at the time intended to marry and have kids with, and then, ahh, having the fucking rug pulled out of me when he casually dropped it into conversation one summer, out drinking beers in the yard, that he “wasn’t in the front row cheering” about the whole me being gay thing. WOW. Considering how much he professed to love her and support us, I was fucking gobsmacked. It felt like a punch to the gut, and I’ve never got over it. When I broke up with her a few months later (unrelated reasons, obviously), he was COMPLETELY unfazed. Like, did not particularly care. My mom was devastated, and he was like “You’ll be fine” and somehow also seemed to entertain the idea that I’d be open to dating dudes.
Suffice it to say, I no longer particularly value his opinion about whoever I date.
ANYWAY. Forgiveness, man. It’s a thing.