Allow Yourself To Fully Forgive, But Never Forget

It takes a lot of strength to forgive the people who’ve hurt us. The people who discard our feelings and try to make us think we’re being irrational or overly emotional. The people who will always be too selfish to ever think of our needs instead of their own. The people we let in our lives, our hearts, our minds, only for them to bring destruction. It takes so much to forgive them, but if we don’t, we can’t fully let them go, we won’t be able to move forward if we’re holding on to anger and resentment. 

Forgiving someone who hurt you badly doesn’t mean you have to be on perfect terms with them. It doesn’t mean the slate is wiped clean and that what they did doesn’t matter anymore. Because the truth is, sometimes you have to forgive people who’ve hurt you who aren’t even sorry about it. The people who never will recognize their fault, or what they did, or even feel any remorse. And that can be one of the hardest forgivenesses of all.

In your time of pain and hurt, I pray that God grants you the strength and peace to forgive, and the awareness to never forget.

Some people use the phrase “forgive and forget”, because they think that they can choose to forget the hurt they experienced. They think they can erase the memory of it or make it seem as though it never happened. But you can’t erase the pain you experienced. You can’t eliminate it from your history, but you can heal from it and move forward. It happened, accept that, and know that everything that happens to us in our lives shapes our reactions, next steps, and creates a new form of awareness.

So forgive the person who broke your heart into what felt like a million pieces, making you think the heartbreak was irreparable, making you unsure that you could ever love again.

The person you made you question your sanity until you finally caught them being unfaithful. The person who manipulated you so badly for so long, using you for their own desires, giving you a glimmer of hope that they really cared. The person who you gave your smile, your heart, your trust, and they treated it with the utmost disrespect. Forgive the person who made you doubt yourself, made you unhappy within, made you insecure that you could ever be loved again.

Forgive this person, because it will help you heal. But don’t ever forget them.

Don’t forget what you learned from experiencing that pain, from going through that heartbreak. Don’t dwell on the memory of it, or over think everything that happened, or continue to be sad to the point you can’t even discuss it. Rather, lock it away in a place in your mind and always remember. Remember the pain but also how strong you were, and how you got to the other side of that pain. Remember how you grew, how you learned to never go against your instincts and always stand by the standards you set. Keep the memories as lessons, as warnings, as reminders of what you will never accept again. Remember your pain, your strength, and know that you are worthy of something pure and good.

Just as we never give ourselves credit for how strong we are, remember that your heart is more resilient that you think, and not only will you survive, but you will thrive.