A few years back, I sat with a truth I’d been avoiding for most of my life.
I was still angry at my mother.
Not loudly. Not in a way anyone would have noticed. It lived underneath everything — in how I braced around certain conversations, in how fast my chest tightened when her name came up, in the way I kept score without meaning to.
The little boy in me didn’t want to let it go. He had good reasons. That hurt kept him safe. It kept him ready.
But holding on wasn’t protecting me anymore. It was running me.
What Forgiveness Actually Does
Most people think forgiveness is about the other person. About letting them off the hook. About pretending it didn’t happen or saying it’s fine now.
It isn’t any of that.
Forgiveness is what happens in your body when you stop bracing.
Dr. Stephen Porges, the researcher behind polyvagal theory, has shown that unresolved resentment keeps your nervous system locked in a low-grade sympathetic state. Your body treats the memory like a live threat, even years later. Every time it resurfaces, your heart rate climbs. Your breath shortens. Your system spends energy defending against something that already happened.
Forgiveness isn’t about excusing what someone did. It’s about telling your body the danger is over.
The Inner Child Doesn’t Let Go on Command
You can’t think your way into forgiveness. Believe me, I tried.
I told myself I’d already forgiven her. I said the words. I meant them, or thought I did.
But my body hadn’t caught up. And the body doesn’t lie.
The part of you that got hurt young isn’t interested in your logic. It wants to know it’s safe first. It wants proof, not a decision.
That’s why forgiveness usually isn’t a single moment. It’s a series of small moments where your body tests the water and finds it’s actually okay to soften.
When I finally let go of the resentment toward my mother, it wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. And it was the biggest relief I’ve felt in years. Something in my chest that had been clenched for decades just stopped clenching.
What Our Asheville Group Taught Us
A group of us gathered recently in Asheville. Different backgrounds, different stories, different wounds. But one thread ran through nearly every conversation.
Forgiveness is hard.
Forgiving a parent. Forgiving a partner who left. Forgiving a version of yourself who made a choice you still replay.
Almost everyone in that room was carrying something they hadn’t put down yet. And almost everyone believed forgiving meant they’d have to say what happened was okay.
It doesn’t mean that. It never did.
What kept coming up instead was this: forgiveness is the moment you stop asking the past to be different. Not because it deserved acceptance, but because you deserve to stop fighting something that already ended.
Forgiving Yourself Is the Harder Work
Here’s what nobody tells you. Forgiving others is often easier than forgiving yourself.
You know exactly why you did what you did. You know the fear, the exhaustion, the version of you that made that choice with less wisdom than you have now.
And somehow that makes it harder to let go of, not easier.
Ask yourself honestly: is there a version of you that you’re still punishing? A decision, a year, a relationship where you keep handing down the same sentence over and over?
That punishment isn’t justice. It’s just more bracing.
How Working with Plant Medicine Opens This
Tepezcohuite works directly on the heart. It doesn’t force forgiveness. It softens the calcification around old wounds so your body can finally register that the threat has passed. People often describe a physical sensation of the chest opening during this work, followed by a wave of grief and then, unexpectedly, relief.
Cacao supports this from a different angle. It opens the heart gently, without forcing anything to the surface before you’re ready. Many people find that resentments they’ve carried for years surface naturally during cacao ceremony, not because they were pushed, but because the heart finally felt safe enough to show them.
Together, these medicines create the conditions for forgiveness to happen in the body, not just the mind.
Something to Listen To This Week
“Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls. A song about being truly seen, wounds and all. Let it be the soundtrack for whoever you’re working on forgiving this week, including yourself.
Action Prompt
Write down one person’s name. It can be someone else. It can be you.
Then write one sentence: “I am ready to stop bracing against what happened.”
You don’t have to feel ready. You just have to write it. Let your body catch up in its own time.
Now We Want to Hear From You
Who are you still bracing against?
