The Importance Of Practicing Forgiveness For Your Inner Peace

For years, I was stuck in the back-and-forth cycle of learning how to forgive somebody who profoundly hurt me, yet not knowing where to even start.

After being in an abusive relationship that nearly destroyed my self-worth, I was trying to process the trauma I experienced, while also figuring out how to forgive somebody who I felt never showed any remorse to begin with. I thought that if I started to dig deep into the healing process and worked on forgiveness, it would be saying that what happened was okay, like it never even happened.

However, what I didn’t realize at the time was that practicing forgiveness is the complete opposite. When we forgive somebody, we aren’t doing it for them; we’re doing it for ourselves. The process of forgiveness acknowledges that what happened was real, and even when we forgive somebody, it doesn’t mean that it erases the past.

When we can step outside our situation and realize that we’re practicing forgiveness for our own mental health, it can help us regain our power and light back. The road to healing can feel long, but there’s so much importance in learning how to forgive others for your inner peace.

Practicing Forgiveness Can Renew Your Strength

There were many times throughout that relationship that I remember feeling small and weak. Every time I tried to voice my opinion it was wrong, so eventually my voice became nonexistent. After finally gaining the strength to leave that relationship, I knew I had to start the process of learning how to forgive if I ever wanted to truly heal and start moving on.

I didn’t realize how heavy the weight of unforgiveness was on me until it felt like I could no longer breathe. It started affecting my every thought, and it seemed like there was nothing I could do to even try to lessen the pain. Once I was able to recognize how much it was consuming me, I knew that I had to learn how to let go.

My energy and emotions became so fixated on what I went through, that it started harming my mental health and bleeding into other areas of my life. I started finding my strength when I focused on my inner healing and embracing self-compassion rather than focusing solely on the past or what happened to me. 

The process of learning how to forgive helps you become more established in who you are and your values, while increasing your strength. You won’t be the same person who walked into the situation, and you won’t want to be. You’ll know exactly what you will and won’t accept in your life moving forward. Not only that, but you took a situation that tried to break you and saw an opportunity for how it can make you better instead of bitter, renewing your inner strength.

Practicing Forgiveness Can Help You Let Go 

We can’t move on from the past if all we’re doing is holding on. When we put too much focus on a situation or a person we’re struggling to forgive, we’re not allowing ourselves to heal and move on. Forgiveness never means excusing or forgetting what happened. Practicing forgiveness for your inner peace means learning how to look beyond what happened so that you can dig into and unravel the emotions and pain you’ve held onto for so long. Sometimes we focus too much on how to let go and forget that it’s okay to let go little by little. 

Forgiveness requires you to look inward and try to understand why you can’t let go. For me, it felt like my trauma was so deeply embedded that I felt wounded. I didn’t even know how to even start the process of healing—let alone forgive the person who deeply hurt me. But what I learned about forgiveness is that it can look different for everyone. I wanted nothing more than to move on and never look back, but first, I needed to realize the depths of the heavy weight I had been carrying for so long.

Practicing forgiveness helps you start letting go of everything that’s consumed you. To learn how to forgive those who hurt you deeply, or to even begin the process of forgiving yourself for something that you’ve held onto for too long.

Instead of investing all of my energy into wondering when I would be able to forgive and move on, I shifted my mindset into focusing on something positive and what I knew to be true: I didn’t have to forgive by a ‘certain time’. I just needed to remind myself that it was okay to feel the pain, even if I didn’t know how to let go yet. The process of forgiveness unfolds over time, and it won’t always happen immediately.

The pain might lighten just a little each day, until it eventually lifts completely. Slowly, over time, you’ll find that what once bothered you before no longer weighs you down because with each passing day you know you’re starting to move on. You’ll never forget what happened, but you’ll come to accept that the past is in the past because it won’t affect you as it once did.

Practicing Forgiveness Can Set You Free

When we harbor feelings of resentment, bitterness, or anger, we prevent ourselves from moving on. You might not know how to let go when all you’ve been doing is holding on. Not forgiving somebody locks you into a house that you don’t want to be in, without a key to escape. Remember that forgiveness is always about your healing, not theirs. By looking inward and discovering why you can’t let go or why you’re still hanging onto the painful memories, you can start learning how to work through those feelings.

Once I was finally able to forgive the person who profoundly hurt me, I felt more free than I ever have before. One of the hardest aspects of forgiveness is learning to forgive somebody when we aren’t getting closure or the reassurance that they’re sorry for what happened.

Sometimes, you might never receive the closure you’re desperately seeking, but practicing forgiveness can set you free from feeling like you’ll never be able to move on without that apology or acknowledgment about what happened. 

The best closure can come from us learning how to give closure to ourselves, regardless of somebody else’s actions. The longer we hold onto a situation, the harder it becomes to let go. To experience healing and finally feel free from a situation, we need to practice forgiveness without expecting something in return. When our minds are clouded with the painful memories, we’ll continue to fixate only on that. But, if you start seeing the situation in a different light, you’ll be able to put that hurt to rest, setting yourself on the path to healing—feeling more free than you ever did before.

Practicing Forgiveness Can Give You More Understanding

Once you start realizing that what happened has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with how the other person feels about themselves, you’ll begin to separate the situation from your own self-worth. After my own experience, I became more empathetic and understanding towards others who were in similar situations because I understood firsthand how it felt. It’s easy to make assumptions from the outside, but when we’re directly in a situation, we start to see it in a completely different light.

Throughout my healing process, I quickly learned that forgiveness is never black and white. There isn’t one single solution that cures all, or that helps you automatically forgive when you’re not sure how to find the strength to let go.

Each time you face a situation that requires forgiveness, you’ll be faced with the choice of how to move forward and forgive the situation or person that caused you pain. Once you start to understand that practicing forgiveness helps your inner peace, you’ll be able to start healing and releasing all the pain you’ve been holding onto.

Practicing forgiveness for your inner peace takes time. Once you start the healing process, you’ll find over time that it starts to become a little easier to learn how to let go. Especially because you’ll know that it’s not worth allowing anything to consume you that doesn’t positively impact your life.

Remember that you can forgive somebody, and at the same time, choose not to allow their behavior in your life anymore. Forgiveness doesn’t mean erasing what happened; it means moving on and letting go, without allowing it to consume you a second longer than it deserves. 

Some things are too heavy for us to carry. Holding onto feelings of unforgiveness at the sacrifice of your inner peace is one of them. Each time you forgive somebody, you’ll have to learn how to navigate through the healing process. But you’ll always find your way through, discovering a renewed sense of inner peace along the way.