Setting Down the Stone: Self-Love Through Forgiveness
Releasing Resentment to Reclaim Our Lives
Imagine holding onto a heavy stone inscribed with the word “resentment.” Or maybe yours reads “shame”—every single day.
This post explores how to set that stone down through forgiveness.
Key Points:
All forgiveness is self-forgiveness.
Acknowledging the past is over allows us to move forward.
All of us, including those with difficult childhoods or those on the margins, can forgive.
People often perceive forgiveness as a transaction they can earn or exchange. This belief has significant consequences tied to suicide attempts, eating disorders, and substance abuse.
Reader: forgiveness is self-love.
Setting down the stone liberates you, allowing self-love and deeper healing to begin.
Understanding Forgiveness as Self-Care
To forgive is to let go of the "what-ifs," fully embrace the present, and extend compassion to oneself.
In A Wise Heart, psychologist Jack Kornfield suggests, “Forgiveness is fundamentally for our own sake, for our own mental health. It is a way to let go of the pain we carry.”
Kornfield tells a story about two prisoners of war who later had this exchange:
First POW: “Have you forgiven our captors yet?”
Second POW: “No, never.”
First POW: “Well then, they still have you in prison.”
Clinging to suffering, building an identity around it, illustrates the urgency of embracing forgiveness.
Forgiveness means breaking out of the prison of your thoughts and living now.
When is Forgiveness?
Rigidity binds us to pain in the past, anxiety gets us to place future ultimatums. So, like in Kornfield’s POW example, the question becomes: When are you right now?
I will only forgive him if….
They can only be forgiven if…
I’ll never forgive…
Consider the verb tense here: future, future, future. We are any time but now.
It is not only possible to forgive right now, it is only ever available right now.
But forgiveness doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences.
Challenges and Benefits of Self-Forgiveness
How have your experiences shaped your view of forgiveness?
But I Don’t Want To: Adverse Childhood Experiences
Raise your hand if you escaped childhood without scars. Oh great, no hands here.
By some measures it is more rare to be NOT traumatized. But how that emerges today, and how we work with that, is going to be different for each of us.
Trauma expert Gabor Maté writes in When the Body Says No
Emotionally draining family relationships have been identified as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and autoimmune disease. The purpose is not to blame parents or previous generations or spouses but to enable us to discard beliefs that have proved dangerous to our health. […] Not blame of others but owning responsibility for one’s relationships is the key.
Because so much of this is developmental, people with challenging childhoods rarely got compassionate lessons in being responsible for their emotions and relationships. As such:
Many of us struggle to trust ourselves.
Many of us struggle to self-advocate or ask questions.
Many of us struggle to believe others when they communicate affection or praise.
“Thank you for saying that,” is a phrase I’ve coaxed out of my system after receiving a compliment.
It was easier to insist on my own inferiority and that the speaker was lying or spouting words to make me feel better (note I equated this latter act, a basic act of friendship and care, with lying).It took years after studying speech acts in graduate school to realize this denies the compliment and casts the complimenter as deceitful or illiterate.
A more concise “thank you,” allows both to retain dignity. Saying it while feeling the impact of those words of kindness allows the gift to land.
As agential adults, it is our right and responsibility to take care of ourselves.
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift
- Mary Oliver
Living at the Margins
When I began forgiveness practice, I resented the suggestion to forgive myself. Like what?
I’m the victim here.
For many with identities tied to being dominated or erased by oppressive systems, this kind of letting go can feel threatening. Who are we without the stories we tell ourselves? Stories like
We cannot rest, because resting would mean facing an abyss of time we do not know how to fill. Labor structures our time, right?
We must grind to sustain our ability to afford the things we are told to want through advertising our basic needs. Consumption is culture, right?
We compete with our “friends.” Quantifying validation by downloads, likes, and shares is self-esteem, right?
(Commercial break: I would love it if you found this and shared this with someone who might benefit.)
Queer, Black Lama Rod Owens writes in Radical Dharma
When I hear folks’ distrust of healing, especially in marginalized and traumatized communities, I hear the subtle and nuanced workings of internalized oppression that distract us from imagining liberation that is not about struggling against systems and regimes but about transcending the trauma of struggling […] For when I define healing as freedom, I mean to interrogate how I am slave to my own self-depreciation fueled by internalized oppression.
Forgiving yourself means rejecting oppressive systems that insist respect must be earned or that your experiences came in last place at the secret trauma Olympics where you were judged but not invited.
So for transracial adoptees endlessly scanning for safety and belonging, for transitioning academics living under the urgency of the “publish or perish” dictum, for trans people of color trying to love themselves amid claims their body is sick and wrong:
We deserve our own time.
You deserve your own time.
Self-forgiveness reclaims it.
Equanimity and Boundaries
In “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay,” Whitney Houston becomes a beacon of equanimity:
It’s not right, but it’s okay
I’m gonna make it anyway
Close the door behind you
Leave your key
I’d rather be alone than unhappy
The chorus first acknowledges what happened isn’t “right,” yet asserts things are still “okay.”
She’s going to “make it” because she sets boundaries and respects herself enough to uphold them.
She kicks the cheater out.
Boundaries preserve your independent integrity and autonomy, so that you can love yourself (and by extension, others) more fully.
The chorus concludes: her happiness is not dependent upon some external thing, some other person.
Her own actions create the conditions for her happiness.
Because she’s a boss. And that’s literally how karma works.
This is an anthem for forgiveness. What’s one of yours?
How to Practice Forgiveness: A Step-by-Step Guide
Our time is finite. How do you want to spend it?
Forgiveness begins with first recognizing our limited time and, second, in the words of Audre Lorde, “Revolution is not a one-time event.”
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha advises: “If someone has abused you, beat you, robbed you, abandon your thoughts of anger. Soon you will die. Life is too short to live with hatred.”
How much of your life has been dictated by anger and fear?
How much more time do you want to lose?
How do you begin to change?
Forgiveness is cultivated through practicing small forgivenesses.
This is a mindfulness practice.
Below is my variation on Pema Chödrön’s steps to cultivate a forgiveness practice:
Recognize if the harmful thing is actively happening.
If something harmful is actively happening, remove yourself immediately or speak up to change the situation.
If it isn’t happening now, acknowledge what is felt: shame, anger, embarrassment.
“Then,” Chödrön writes, “we forgive ourselves for being human.
Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don’t have to carry the burden with us anymore.”
Forgiveness releases ourselves from the pain of the past and lets us live more fully while we still can. You will never have as much time remaining as you do now.
Simple, but not easy.
But I promise: your resentment is no Olympic medal, friend, it is an albatross.
You’ve got better things to do than carry around that stone.
Forgiveness is fundamentally for our own sake, for our own mental health. — Jack Kornfield
Takeaway Practice
Beginners
Practice small forgivenesses.
Did some other driver cut you off? Did you get a “We regret to inform you…” letter? Someone show up late(r than usual)?
Honor the impact of the act and how it made you feel.
Then see if it’s happening now. If not, see if you can send yourself compassion to counter the negative emotion and release the event.
Everyone else
What boundaries do you owe yourself to uphold? Are there any common emotional triggers in your life? Patterns?
No need to do anything. Just notice. See what happens.
…And that’s what I think today. Thanks for reading.
Questions, comments, concerns, compliments (don’t worry, I’ll thank you kindly!)?
Currently Reading
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Katherine Morgan Schafler
Bio and Coaching Info
Logan Juliano, PhD (they/them) is a mindfulness and integration coach at Light Hive Integration and continuing lecturer in Writing Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles. They help people communicate, connect, and belong.
If you found this post helpful and would like to discuss practical tips for applying this to your own life, please sign up for a free 30-minute consultation at Light Hive Integration.