FORGIVENESS

H.E.R. DEFINITION
We believe forgiveness is not something we give once and walk away from. It is something we return to, again and again, especially when it comes to ourselves. In H.E.R., forgiveness means choosing compassion over judgment for the woman we used to be.

I've been going through old journals this week, and let me tell you, some of those pages hit me right in the gut. Pang of anxiety, right in the pit of my stomach. Because as I read, all I could think was, what was I even doing?

But then something else crept in. Compassion. For her. For me. That young woman who got married so young, who was scared from things she'd seen growing up, who had babies and was just trying to hold a family together with absolutely no roadmap for how to do it.

She didn't know what she was doing. None of us really do. But she did the best she could with what she knew.

And here's the timing that gets me. My divorce was finalized earlier this month. And this week, our focus word is forgiveness.

I keep thinking about all the people I need to forgive. My ex. Some others, more recently, who I'm still working through. But the truth I keep landing on is this, forgiving myself might be the one that matters most.

And forgiveness, it's not one and done.

Let's just sit with that for a second, because I think we treat forgiveness like a switch. Like one day you flip it and suddenly you're free. But that has not been my experience at all. My experience has been more like peeling an onion. You think you're done, you think you've made peace with something, and then a journal entry from fifteen years ago shows up and there you are again, right back in it.

So what is forgiveness, really, when we're talking about ourselves?

I think for so many of us, especially women who came up the way I did, forgiveness got tangled up with permission. Like if I forgive myself for staying too long, for ignoring my gut, for not believing I could do better, then I'm somehow saying it was okay. That I'm letting myself off the hook.

But that is not what this is. Forgiving myself does not mean what happened was fine. It means I am no longer willing to keep punishing the woman who lived through it.

When I look back at thirty two years, there is a version of me that stood through things no one should have to stand through. Physical and emotional things. Job losses. Years without intimacy or security. And underneath all of it, a quiet voice that I kept ignoring, because I was scared of what it would mean if I listened.

And then there's another layer. There was a point, years before the end, when I actually left. And I went back. For a long time, that was the part I struggled to forgive the most. Not the staying the first time. The going back.

But sitting with my journals this week, something shifted. I realized, going back gave me years with people I would never trade. Friendships that changed my life. Moments with my kids I wouldn't undo for anything. So was it a mistake? Or was it exactly the path that had to happen to get me here?

I don't know that I was strong enough back then to do it any other way. And honestly, that's okay. Because here's what I keep coming back to. She did the best she could with what she knew.

That's it. That's the whole thing. Not she did everything right. Not she had it all figured out. Just, she did the best she could with what she knew. And so did you. Whatever choice you're sitting with right now, whatever decision from ten or twenty or thirty years ago still makes your stomach drop when you think about it, I want you to try saying that to yourself. She did the best she could with what she knew.

Here's the shift. Forgiveness, for ourselves, is not a finish line. It's a practice. It's something we may need to offer again on a random Tuesday when a journal entry catches us off guard, or when an old memory surfaces out of nowhere. And that doesn't mean we failed at forgiving. It just means we're human, and healing isn't linear.

So this week, if you feel that pang, that pit in your stomach when something old resurfaces, I want you to pause before you spiral into judgment. Ask yourself, was she doing the best she could with what she knew? And if the answer is yes, which it almost always is, then let that be enough. Let it be enough for today. You can always come back to it again tomorrow if you need to. That's allowed.

As for the people who hurt us, the people we may still need to forgive, that work is real too. But it can wait its turn. This week, the assignment is just you. Just her. The woman in the journal, the woman who stayed, the woman who went back, the woman who is sitting here right now, finally on the other side, writing a new chapter.

Be gentle with her. She got you here.