"Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies”
Nelson Mandela
The day I stopped pretending I was okay
Two years ago, I was not okay. I would not have admitted that then. I would have smiled, kept going, held it all together. That is what we do, right? Especially those of us who spend our professional lives helping others navigate theirs. But beneath the surface of all that forward motion, something in me was stuck. Deeply stuck.
There were people I needed to forgive. Events I needed to make peace with. And I was not ready. Not even close. The story that played on repeat in my head was loud and certain: “I do not deserve to be treated like this.” Round and round it went. Every time it did, I felt smaller, more righteous, and more imprisoned. What I did not yet understand was that I had become the architect of my own cage. Then I picked up a book…
The book that cracked me open
Edith Eger’s The Gift found me at exactly the right moment. Eger is a Holocaust survivor and a psychologist, and one of the most quietly powerful human beings I have ever encountered through the written word. Two things she wrote stopped me completely.
- Her refusal to allow victimhood to be the final word. No matter what had been done to her, and the things done to her are almost unimaginable, she always returned to one question: “What now?”
- And her image of covering garlic with chocolate. Do not do that, she says. Do not pretend the pain is not there. Instead, say it plainly: “this hurts, and I have been hurt before in my life and managed to get over it. I will manage again”.
Simple. True. And in its simplicity, profoundly liberating. That was when my real journey with forgiveness began.
What the Wise Ones knew and know
Mother Teresa: “If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.”
Alan Paton: “When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.”
Desmond Tutu: “Forgiveness is not weak. It takes courage to face and overcome powerful emotions.”
And then Oprah Winfrey said perhaps the most radical thing of all: “true forgiveness is when you can say thank you for that experience”. Thank you. For the thing that broke you. For the person who betrayed you. For the experience you would never, ever have chosen.
For a long time I had confused holding on with being strong. I had it exactly backwards.
The Man Who Walked Out Free
Nelson Mandela. Twenty-seven years. A quarter of a century of his life, taken. And when he walked out of that prison he thought: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I did not leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I would still be in prison. Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Mandela did not forgive because those people deserved it. He forgave because he understood something fundamental: forgiveness is not a gift you give to someone else. It is a gift you give to yourself. His ability to forgive was not separate from his leadership. It was the very foundation of it.
Radical Forgiveness in your own life
This capacity for radical forgiveness is not reserved for extraordinary people. It lives in all of us. What if everything in your life happened for a reason? What if life was always happening for you, not to you? What if even the pain had a higher purpose in the growth of who you are becoming? Did you experience something so painful you would never wish it on anyone, and yet, because of that very experience, you developed a depth of insight, a resilience, or a quality of compassion that, to this day, shapes who you are and how much you are able to give to others?
I am willing to bet the answer is yes. When we find that higher meaning in our past pain, we do not just forgive. We move beyond the experience itself. We free ourselves. We raise our own standard, and discover a freedom that no one can ever take away again.
What I know now
Two years on, I am not the same person who sat with that loop playing in her head.
I did the work. Slowly, imperfectly, sometimes with enormous resistance. I sat with the garlic. I asked “what now?” when every part of me wanted to ask “why me?” I found the higher meaning in experiences I once only associated with loss.
Authentic leadership is never just about strategy or presence in a boardroom. It is about who you are on the inside. The stories you carry. The weight you have had the courage to put down. Because the leaders who build the deepest trust are the ones who have done the inner work.
Forgiveness is not weakness. It is not forgetting. It is not saying what happened was okay. It is saying: I refuse to let this define me. I choose myself. I choose freedom. I choose what comes next.
"What now?”
That is the only question worth asking…
A question for reflection: I wonder. If you sat quietly with yourself today, just for a moment, what would your own "what now?" be?
Frequently asked questions
Forgiveness is the intentional, voluntary process of releasing feelings of resentment, anger, and vengeance toward someone who has harmed you, regardless of whether they deserve it. It is a conscious decision to shift from negative emotions toward compassion or neutrality, focusing on personal peace rather than condoning the offense or reconciling with the offender.
Forgiveness means different things to different people. But in general, it involves a combination of acceptance and an intentional decision to let go of resentment and anger. Ultimately, forgiveness is about reclaiming personal power, allowing the injured party to move on, and freeing themselves from the control of the person who harmed them.
The four types of forgiveness are: exoneration, forbearance, release, and compassion.
Moving forward together
As a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, I work with leaders who are ready to build a leadership presence rooted in trust, authenticity, and the kind of inner freedom that only comes from doing the real work. If any part of this resonated, I would love to hear from you.
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