I no longer consider forgiveness to be a prerequisite for healing. Sometimes healing means saying: “What you did to me was wrong.”.

There is a phrase that is constantly heard in the realms of self-awareness, therapy and spirituality: «Forgive and move on.» For years I took it for granted, almost as if it were a higher stage that every person who truly wants to heal must reach. As proof that they have left their anger behind, that they harbour no ill will, that they have moved on, and that they no longer allow what happened to affect them.

Over the years, however, I have come to see this phrase in a different light. Not because I think forgiveness is a bad thing, but because it often becomes an obligation for the person who has been hurt. And when that happens, forgiveness ceases to be a personal choice and becomes yet another way of asking them to come to terms with what has happened to them.

Someone may have lied to you, betrayed you, mistreated you, taken advantage of your trust, or repeatedly crossed your boundaries. And yet, before you’ve even had time to realise exactly what happened and how it affected you, it’s very likely you’ll be told that you must forgive «for your own good», that you shouldn’t hold on to negative energy, or that perhaps this person came into your life to teach you something.

The problem arises when these phrases are used before there is any room for pain, anger and injustice. When the person who has been hurt feels they must very quickly find understanding, seek out the «lesson» and return to a state of inner peace, then spirituality can act as a way of sidestepping what they are actually feeling.

And this is particularly dangerous, because anger is often not a sign that you have failed to heal. It may be exactly the opposite. It may be the moment when you finally begin to realise that something you’ve put up with for years wasn’t normal, that certain behaviour you had been excusing was unacceptable, or that someone had crossed boundaries that you hadn’t yet learnt to defend against.

There are people who are exceptionally good at understanding others, but far less good at protecting themselves. They will look into the other person’s childhood, their traumas, insecurities, difficulties and shortcomings. They will try to explain why the other person behaved as they did and, because they can see the human side of them, they will find it difficult to admit that what they did still has consequences.

However, understanding someone does not mean that you have to make excuses for them. You can understand why someone became the way they did, whilst at the same time recognising that you are under no obligation to bear the cost of their wounds. Empathy is valuable, but when it isn’t accompanied by boundaries, it can very easily turn into a constant abandonment of our very selves.

This is also one of the areas where I believe spirituality can be misused. When «everything is love» is used to avoid a difficult conversation, when everything is labelled a «karmic lesson» or when we immediately start looking for which of our own wounds attracted a particular act of bad behaviour, there is a danger that we will lose sight of something very simple: people make choices and are responsible for them.

Not every injustice needs to be turned into a spiritual lesson straight away. There are times when the most healing words are not «I forgive you», but «What happened wasn’t right». Before we try to make sense of an experience, perhaps we first need to restore a sense of reality within ourselves, stop belittling what happened and cease taking on responsibilities that are not ours.

Nor do I believe that forgiveness should be regarded as a prerequisite for a person to move on. You might forgive at some point; it might come naturally, without any effort; you might look back years later and no longer feel anything. But it may not turn out that way, and I’m by no means certain that this means you’ve failed to heal.

Perhaps the cure is to be able to say one day: «What you did to me was unfair. I don’t condone it and I don’t need to forget it, but I won’t let it continue to dictate my life.» For me, this attitude is far more valuable than a word of forgiveness spoken simply because someone has convinced us that this is how we ought to feel.

The same applies to the idea of reconciliation. Moving on does not necessarily mean that you have to repair a relationship, speak to someone again or let them back into your life. You can not hate them and, at the same time, no longer want them in your life. You can wish them well, without that meaning they have a place in your future.

Boundaries are not about revenge, and distance is not always a bad thing. There are relationships that end because, at some point, you stopped giving up on yourself in order to keep them going. There are doors that close, not because you’ve learnt to hate someone, but because you’ve finally learnt to protect yourself.

If there is, however, one form of forgiveness in which I still believe deeply, it is forgiveness of ourselves. Let us stop demanding that the person we were back then should have known what we know today. Let us forgive ourselves for staying longer than we should have, for believing promises, who gave one more chance, who failed to recognise the signs in time, or who confused love with tolerance.

This forgiveness does not ask us to deny the pain or to gloss over what happened. It simply asks us to stop turning against ourselves everything that has already hurt us enough.

And perhaps, in the end, the real meaning of «moving on» isn’t that you forget, that you make excuses, or that you come to terms with it. Perhaps it means that you remember without continuing to live within that experience, that you no longer need the other person’s validation to believe your own truth, and that at some point you stop wondering whether you have forgiven them.

Because the most important question might, after all, be a different one:

Have you finally found yourself again?;