Forgiveness Is Not for Them

One of my greatest mentors, Courtney, used to return to forgiveness again and again. She would say that when you refuse to forgive, you lock yourself in a prison, and the strange part is that you are the one holding the key. She would remind me that holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I heard those words many times before I understood how literally true they were.

Most of us think of forgiveness as something we extend outward. Someone hurt us, and forgiveness is the gift we may or may not decide to give them. But that framing quietly keeps us stuck, because it makes our freedom dependent on whether the other person deserves it. Forgiveness is not for the other person. It is for us. It is how we take our energy, our attention, and our peace back from the past.

What Resentment Actually Costs

Resentment feels justified. That is what makes it so hard to release. Someone genuinely wronged us, and the anger is proof that we know it. But resentment does not stay contained to the person who earned it. It leaks.

I know this because I lived it. There was a season of my life when I held on to resentment, and over time it filled me with contempt. The world itself took on a darker hue. I was not just angry at one person. I was becoming someone who saw through anger. That is the hidden cost. The bitterness we hold toward one situation slowly becomes the lens we hold toward everything.

This is where Courtney's poison metaphor stops being a nice saying and becomes a description of what is physically happening. Resentment keeps the nervous system braced around an old wound. Even when the immediate threat has passed, the body may continue responding as though it has not. It keeps paying for a debt someone else created.

Forgiveness Is Visceral, Not Just Cognitive

Here is what I misunderstood for a long time. I thought forgiveness was a decision. You reflect, you understand, you choose to let go, and it is done.

But forgiveness is not only a cognitive event. It is a visceral one. The mind can begin the process, but it cannot order the body to complete it on command. You cannot think your way through every layer of pain, and you cannot rush your nervous system into feeling safe. The mind may decide to forgive in an afternoon. The body takes as long as it takes.

Someone once deeply betrayed my trust, and in some ways betrayed who I was. I wanted to forgive them. I genuinely did. But I could not, because I was still constantly showing up for them. Every time I did, the resentment I was repressing grew a little more, and repressed resentment does not dissolve. It ferments. It was quietly poisoning me while I told myself I was being loving.

It was only after I separated from that situation that real forgiveness became possible. Even then, it took years for my nervous system to stop carrying the bitterness and pain that situation held. That is not a failure of willpower. That is simply how deep wounds heal. Forgiveness is a process the body completes, not a sentence the mind declares.

If you have been telling yourself you should be over something by now, let that expectation go. You are not behind. You are healing at the speed a human being heals. Forgiveness cannot become another weapon you use against yourself. You do not owe anyone peace on a deadline.

The Part Nobody Talks About: Discernment After Forgiveness

For some people, forgiveness comes easily. If that is you, your challenge is usually not letting go. It is what comes after. Forgiving someone quickly can slide into letting them back in quickly, and those are two very different decisions.

This has been my hardest lesson. Forgiveness was always somewhat intuitive for me. Discernment was not. The real work was learning who I allow into my life after forgiveness, and what place I allow them to hold.

Forgiveness releases the past. It does not obligate you to repeat it. You can fully forgive someone and still not give them access to you. You can wish someone well and still decide they will never again hold a position in your life where they can hurt you the same way. That is not a contradiction. That is wisdom doing its job after compassion has done its own.

The people who hurt me most deeply are no longer in my life. But I have released my attachment to the pain they caused, and in releasing the pain, I released them. Both things are true at once. The door is closed, and my hands are open.

What Actually Helps

Two things made forgiveness real for me rather than theoretical.

The first is practice. Traditions such as hoʻoponopono remind us that forgiveness and reconciliation are rarely completed through a single declaration. They involve honesty, responsibility, reflection, and the gradual work of restoring harmony within ourselves and, where appropriate, within our relationships. Even a simple repeated practice of compassion and release can give the process a form. You are not convincing anyone. You are slowly teaching your own nervous system that it is safe to put the weight down.

The second, and the one that has always helped me most, is seeing the person who hurt me as human. Flawed, conditioned, carrying wounds of their own, just like I am. This is not excusing what they did. It is refusing to let them remain a monster in my mind, because as long as they stay a monster, they stay powerful. When I can see them as a struggling human being who acted from their own brokenness, the story begins to lose its grip on me.

Removing the Shackles

Here is the truth underneath all of it. Every resentment you carry has a cost, and you are the one paying it. It takes energy to keep an old injury alive. It takes attention to keep rereading a story that already ended. That energy and attention belong to your life now, not to someone who may not have thought about you in years.

Forgiveness is how you take it all back. Not because they deserve release, but because you do.

So if there is a name that still tightens something in your chest, start there. Not by forcing yourself to feel something you do not feel, but by asking one honest question: what is holding this costing me? Then give yourself permission for the answer to unfold over time, in the body, at its own pace.

Courtney was right. The door was never locked from the outside.

If you are carrying resentment you cannot seem to release, or struggling to decide who still belongs in your life after forgiveness, this is exactly the kind of pattern work we explore through New Ashla Coaching. You can book a coaching session there and begin working through what your mind understands but your body may still be carrying.

With love and gratitude,

Michael Perry

Ad Lucem

The door was never locked from the outside.

If you are carrying resentment you cannot seem to release, or struggling to decide who still belongs in your life after forgiveness, this is exactly the kind of pattern work we explore through New Ashla Coaching. You can book a coaching session there and begin working through what your mind understands but your body may still be carrying.

With love and gratitude,
Michael Perry
Ad Lucem

Continue Exploring This Theme on the New Ashla Podcast

The Bridge Between Pain and Peace: The Art of Forgiveness With Courtney DeMatteo

Courtney joins Justin and me for a deeper conversation about resentment, vulnerability, self-compassion, and why forgiveness is not about excusing what happened. It is about reclaiming the peace and personal power we may still be surrendering to the past.