Chapter 12 - Forgiveness and Release | Eden's Flaming Sword
I grew up hearing this phrase. Forgive others. Forgive your brothers and sisters. Ask God for forgiveness. All that stuff. It was starting to sound cliche. I thought it was just some moral thing put on us. I thought why would I forgive someone that hurt me? Why? I can’t forgive, that would mean losing my power, losing my anger and pain that fuels me.
But in actuality, I was scared. Because if I forgave and moved on, then what would happen to me? I could feel it, whenever the thought of forgiveness came up, my chest would tighten and I’d become anxious; I felt I was disappearing.. But amidst all this, I chose to forgive, against the rage, sadness, and despair that was engulfing me. After that, everything changed.
It was only recently that I realized what forgiveness really is.
Forgiveness is the key to releasing grief. Yes it had to come to this. It’s one of the hardest things to do. True forgiveness that is; when you’re at the peak of the pain, when you’re stuck on the cross. Not the lovey dovey I forgive you kumbaya. No. This is real, when everything in you tells you to be angry, to rage at the world. We try to bypass forgiving, through medication, justification, and other ways of self-soothing, but that’s like covering an infected wound. The wound never heals.
You cannot release your grief until you forgive; because if you don’t forgive, it means you are still unable to let go. The harder it is to forgive, the greater the release. Yes, it’s not easy but I can tell you this. When you go all the way and choose to forgive, something incredible happens which I will explain in the next chapter; but first, let’s talk about some common misconceptions of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is NOT a moral obligation. Whenever you want to add ‘should’, you’ll know what I mean. I should forgive. When forgiveness comes from ‘should,’ it’s performative. You’re doing it for approval, to be seen as evolved or spiritual. It’s a fawn pattern dressed up as spirituality, abandoning yourself to feel safe. Your body knows the difference between genuine forgiveness and forced compliance.
Forgiveness is NOT condoning what happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean what they did was okay. You can still choose to forgive and maintain boundaries while understanding what happened was wrong. It doesn’t erase harm or justify the behavior.
Forgiveness is NOT forgetting. You can’t just pretend nothing happened or it didn’t hurt. Your body remembers even when your mind pretends. The deep wound doesn’t heal because you stopped looking at it. You can’t just ignore it.
Forgiveness is NOT weakness. Many of us think forgiveness makes us weak. And the thought of being weak genuinely feels like danger to our nervous system. I was like this. Because if I forgave, what do I have left? Nothing. But of course this is not true. In reality, I was letting the harm continue. By not forgiving, I was abandoning myself.
Forgiveness often requires immense strength because you choose to move through the process while feeling the full weight of the pain, betrayal, guilt, shame, what you don’t want to feel. But it’s not giving up your power. It’s the opposite. You’re reclaiming it. And surrendering is not cowering. It’s courage. It’s facing the unknown, ready to let go, and choosing life. I say surrender to it. Completely surrender to the process. You’ll be amazed at what awaits on the other side.
So what exactly is forgiveness then?
It’s a choice made before the body is ready. And when that choice is made; genuinely, not performed; something shifts—a physiological event occurs. The nervous system, which has been organized around the wound, begins to register that the grip can be released. The pain may still be there, but you chose to let it go. The pain starts to subside miraculously.
You’ve been holding a defensive posture for years, maybe decades. Your nervous system organized itself around the wound, and every time something reminded you of it, your body activated. Your chest tightened and your heart raced. You were defending against something that already happened. Resentment is your nervous system’s way of saying it’s still on guard, still scanning, still treating the past as a threat unresolved. And it will keep scanning until you make the choice that tells it something different.
Kübler-Ross gave us five stages. And acceptance, the fifth, can feel like the finish line. Like once you get there, the work is done.
But you can reach a place of quiet acknowledgment, yes, this happened, and still carry the wound. Still organize your life around it; feeling the low hum of resentment underneath everything. Because acceptance without forgiveness is just endurance. You’ve stopped fighting reality, but you haven’t released it.
Forgiveness is the key. It’s the choice that unlocks the final one. And unlike the stages that move through you, forgiveness is something you have to choose; on the cross, in the middle of the pain, when everything in you is screaming not to.
When you make that choice, something real happens in the body. The story is no more a current event, but becomes history. The chronic tension begins to release. The hyper-vigilance, the low grade activation, always being slightly on edge; it starts to fade. The body stops bracing and the resentment dissolves. It’s not instant, but one day you notice the charge is gone. The memory is still there, but it no longer has any bite. Energy that was locked in resentment becomes available for living.
This is the miracle.
Forgiveness is the hardest step because it requires you to go back to the original losses; the moments when belonging and control were first threatened and the survival pattern locked in; the pattern you’ve been mistaking for who you are, fueled by anger and defense. You can finally grieve what you lost.
When you forgive the loss of belonging, you have to feel the full weight of the separation. The moment you were neglected, rejected, and abandoned. The terror of not being wanted, not being seen, the fear of remaining forever alone. Your survival pattern organized itself around never feeling that again. Forgiveness means you stop running from it. You face the loneliness you’ve been avoiding your entire life and you let it move through you. You grieve the belonging you once knew, or never had. Forgive those that rejected and abandoned you. They were trapped in their own grief, doing what wounded people do. And forgive yourself for the times you rejected others. You were doing the same.
And forgive God. Or whatever you understood that to mean. The feeling that something larger was supposed to be holding you and wasn’t; that you were alone in something too big to carry. You called out and heard nothing back. That absence shaped you as much as any person did. It’s why you stopped trusting that anything was safe. It’s why the vigilance never turned off. There was no container, so you became your own, and you’ve been exhausted ever since. Forgive that too.
When you forgive the loss of control, you have to surrender the illusion that you were ever in control. That if you just worked harder, performed better, stayed vigilant enough, you could prevent the danger. Forgiveness means admitting you were powerless then, and you’re powerless now over what already happened. You grieve the control you never had. Forgive those that overpowered you, that tried to control you. They were acting from their own pain, from their own wounds, from feelings of powerlessness they couldn’t face. They didn’t know what they were doing. And forgive yourself. We have all tried to control what we were afraid to feel.
These are the two original wounds. Everything the survival pattern was built to protect against. Forgiveness means walking back to those wounds without the armor and feeling it; and choosing, in the middle of that feeling, to let go anyway.
This is why forgiveness feels like death. It is. It’s the death of the defended identity—pride—the version of yourself built to survive the wound. The one who achieved, who pleased, who stayed small, who fought back. That version of you has been giving you a role to play. Forgiveness means the role ends. The Ego, the dragon, the protective structure you’ve been living inside, makes its last stand here. It will tell you that letting go means losing everything. It’s not lying. From where it stands, that’s true. But you are not the Ego. You were there before it formed. And if you choose forgiveness, you walk through that last gate.
And once you step beyond the gate, you will meet someone familiar.
Someone that's been waiting the entire time through. Patiently and lovingly, for the meeting that's long overdue.
That someone, is you.
So drop the weapon. The War is Over. Allow the flood and don't fear the water.
This is your transformation. Your rebirth.
The fire of grief that burned you, now purifies you for your return.