Thank you for sharing your story. Feelings and thoughts brought on by impact, hurt or otherwise just fucked up behavior are hard to wrestle with. Thank you for helping me reposition my head.
Thank you for telling your story. I agree with you. Forgiveness is not an act, it is a process, a two-way process. It isn’t earned or deserved because time has passed or an easy “Sorry” has been uttered. Without a true confession that harm was done to another, a true contrition, remorse for the physical and mental injury suffered by the victim, and a true commitment to change behaviour, the perpetrator has not earned forgiveness. And even if this process has been satisfied, the victim still has no obligation toward the person who has wronged them. because for them the consequences may never be resolved.
Thank you for this. I’ve been struggling with this for 30 years give or take. Healing is such a tricky thing and this pressure to forgive just muddies the water. I’ve gone back and forth about the benefit of forgiveness for myself and what I’ve learned is so close to what you are saying. In addition, I was too busy struggling to forgive that I couldn’t focus on healing. Much love to you on your journey toward whatever healing looks like to you and even more love for sharing this journey with us. Your posts always remind me that I’m not alone and that gift is tremendous. Thank you!
Abusers need to go through their own transformation. They caused the trauma. Where a person is in dealing with that trauma is their own private business. The focus on "forgiveness" is so that the abuser doesn't have to do the work, and the community can get on with it.
I, for one, don't believe in forgiveness -- it has been presented to me too often as a way to keep myself "beautiful inside." Like, "don't be bitter, it's not pretty. Don't be angry, it's unattractive. If you don't forgive, you'll be ugly inside." I think forgiveness is an invention by oppressors, designed to keep us defused, disarmed, afraid and harmless. So, I never forgive, I always remember. Fuck forgiveness.
And lest we misunderstand: I have a few friends who have made a mistake or two, and to them I say, just don't do it again. And if they do, they're out. By mistake, I mean a breach of trust, or abuse, not, say, shrinking my favorite wool pants (a friend did that!): in response to that, we laughed together, and make felt trivets that we both use every day since the day it happened two years ago, and we still smile at them, remembering that moment fondly. There was nothing to forgive. I bought new pants. Does this make sense?
There seems to be a whole forgiveness industrial complex - and it does get weaponised way too much.
I'm not even sure what forgiveness means. What is it, when you dissect it?
I guess the effect is meant to be that after the forgiving is done, both parties can go on with the rest of their lives, as the saying goes... and isn't that a kind of structural problem? That it's often just a cheap magic trick played on the victim? With all the heavy lifting done by them?
Why not, for the victim, the option, "I have spent enough/too much time with the pain and the fucking injustice of this thing - so now I will move one..." ?
No need for any 'forgiveness' there. The victim can go on with their life and the perpetrator can still drop dead, fucking themselves.
I admit I'm primitive at heart but doesn't that feel more right, more natural even?
People who get something from the forgiving thing can still do that, obviously - and many people are part of a religion where forgiveness is important - but I'd say it would still be a good thing for them to really think for whose benegit they are doing it.
Hey, I'm even a huge fan of petty revenge when it's easy and doesn't harm anyone on either side. My brother and I glued a table's legs onto the top to make sure it would never fit through the door of the dining room it was in after a landlord messed with me, and we have laughed about it ever since. I also took some textbooks from a boyfriend who had been calling me "stupid and inarticulate, and unable to form a sentence" before dumping him and leaving a note saying I obviously needed them more than he did (since I was so stupid) and that I had broken their spines, written my name in them, and that if he contacted me to ask for them back I'd just throw them out. I used them well, I might add! (I ended up giving his favorite one back so he could give it to his son when I heard he'd had one ten years later with the woman he'd been two-timing me with, but only because I was good and ready.)
Thank you, and yes, fuck forgiveness as default response.
I also agree forgiveness may work for some.
Which reminds me of the face & body covering clothes parts of all three best known monotheistic desert tribe religions insist that women wear.
A lot of women claim it is their choice to wear these clothes and that they find this choice empowering. As with women choosing forgiveness, that is totally up to them - but let's not rewrite history: it's men who first forced them into these clothes, as it also was and is men who insist that it's the role of women to forgive men whatever they do.
I took a photograph of one of those signs that churches use to announce the theme of the upcoming sermon, and it says one of the most evil things I've ever seen: "Forgiveness is the best revenge."
That's when they take it one step further and try to convince you that you're actually getting your revenge by forgiving. How sick is that? I see people misguidedly thinking they've weaponized forgiveness all the time, and it's just so pitiable. The person forgiven only feels the pain of forgiveness if they've also been brainwashed into thinking being forgiven is a form of humiliation. Ughhhh.
Thank you for sharing your story. Feelings and thoughts brought on by impact, hurt or otherwise just fucked up behavior are hard to wrestle with. Thank you for helping me reposition my head.
Thank you for telling your story. I agree with you. Forgiveness is not an act, it is a process, a two-way process. It isn’t earned or deserved because time has passed or an easy “Sorry” has been uttered. Without a true confession that harm was done to another, a true contrition, remorse for the physical and mental injury suffered by the victim, and a true commitment to change behaviour, the perpetrator has not earned forgiveness. And even if this process has been satisfied, the victim still has no obligation toward the person who has wronged them. because for them the consequences may never be resolved.
Thank you for this. I’ve been struggling with this for 30 years give or take. Healing is such a tricky thing and this pressure to forgive just muddies the water. I’ve gone back and forth about the benefit of forgiveness for myself and what I’ve learned is so close to what you are saying. In addition, I was too busy struggling to forgive that I couldn’t focus on healing. Much love to you on your journey toward whatever healing looks like to you and even more love for sharing this journey with us. Your posts always remind me that I’m not alone and that gift is tremendous. Thank you!
Abusers need to go through their own transformation. They caused the trauma. Where a person is in dealing with that trauma is their own private business. The focus on "forgiveness" is so that the abuser doesn't have to do the work, and the community can get on with it.
I, for one, don't believe in forgiveness -- it has been presented to me too often as a way to keep myself "beautiful inside." Like, "don't be bitter, it's not pretty. Don't be angry, it's unattractive. If you don't forgive, you'll be ugly inside." I think forgiveness is an invention by oppressors, designed to keep us defused, disarmed, afraid and harmless. So, I never forgive, I always remember. Fuck forgiveness.
And lest we misunderstand: I have a few friends who have made a mistake or two, and to them I say, just don't do it again. And if they do, they're out. By mistake, I mean a breach of trust, or abuse, not, say, shrinking my favorite wool pants (a friend did that!): in response to that, we laughed together, and make felt trivets that we both use every day since the day it happened two years ago, and we still smile at them, remembering that moment fondly. There was nothing to forgive. I bought new pants. Does this make sense?
Anyway, no! No forgiveness. It's a scam.
There seems to be a whole forgiveness industrial complex - and it does get weaponised way too much.
I'm not even sure what forgiveness means. What is it, when you dissect it?
I guess the effect is meant to be that after the forgiving is done, both parties can go on with the rest of their lives, as the saying goes... and isn't that a kind of structural problem? That it's often just a cheap magic trick played on the victim? With all the heavy lifting done by them?
Why not, for the victim, the option, "I have spent enough/too much time with the pain and the fucking injustice of this thing - so now I will move one..." ?
No need for any 'forgiveness' there. The victim can go on with their life and the perpetrator can still drop dead, fucking themselves.
I admit I'm primitive at heart but doesn't that feel more right, more natural even?
People who get something from the forgiving thing can still do that, obviously - and many people are part of a religion where forgiveness is important - but I'd say it would still be a good thing for them to really think for whose benegit they are doing it.
Hey, I'm even a huge fan of petty revenge when it's easy and doesn't harm anyone on either side. My brother and I glued a table's legs onto the top to make sure it would never fit through the door of the dining room it was in after a landlord messed with me, and we have laughed about it ever since. I also took some textbooks from a boyfriend who had been calling me "stupid and inarticulate, and unable to form a sentence" before dumping him and leaving a note saying I obviously needed them more than he did (since I was so stupid) and that I had broken their spines, written my name in them, and that if he contacted me to ask for them back I'd just throw them out. I used them well, I might add! (I ended up giving his favorite one back so he could give it to his son when I heard he'd had one ten years later with the woman he'd been two-timing me with, but only because I was good and ready.)
Spot on Jessica.
Thank you, and yes, fuck forgiveness as default response.
I also agree forgiveness may work for some.
Which reminds me of the face & body covering clothes parts of all three best known monotheistic desert tribe religions insist that women wear.
A lot of women claim it is their choice to wear these clothes and that they find this choice empowering. As with women choosing forgiveness, that is totally up to them - but let's not rewrite history: it's men who first forced them into these clothes, as it also was and is men who insist that it's the role of women to forgive men whatever they do.
I took a photograph of one of those signs that churches use to announce the theme of the upcoming sermon, and it says one of the most evil things I've ever seen: "Forgiveness is the best revenge."
That's when they take it one step further and try to convince you that you're actually getting your revenge by forgiving. How sick is that? I see people misguidedly thinking they've weaponized forgiveness all the time, and it's just so pitiable. The person forgiven only feels the pain of forgiveness if they've also been brainwashed into thinking being forgiven is a form of humiliation. Ughhhh.