Rethinking Forgiveness

Hey Cadre. I have been thinking a lot about this idea of forgiveness. So my line of work as a dietitian, a lot of times when I talk about forgiveness with clients, it's related to food. So they have some sense of guilt from black and white thinking around, you know, healthy or unhealthy foods. There's body dysmorphia or poor body image. There's just something about the, the food aspect in their body that they either blame themselves or blame an external entity for. So, you know, I give recommendations and thoughts around it within my scope of practice.

But then when I took a step back and really thought about like my approach to forgiveness, I realized that it's not as black and white as maybe I've always thought of it to be. So I think of this from like a queer lens. And as a gay man, recently someone attempted to apologize to me. It's very close to me in my life for the way they treated me when I came out. And the way that they had presented the supposed apology was relatively indirect and in passing, but also in front of other people. And my, you know, my thought as to that rationale was it was done in a way that they're used to addressing complex and uncomfortable feelings, making a joke out of it, keeping it light hearted, but doing so in a way that like, it's kind of like when you have a dark sense of humor because of trauma, right?

Like you try to beat other people to the punchline. So in a way I feel like his attempt at an apology was to sort of rip the banded off really fast, but do it in a way that was the least painful for them. And I was really worked up like emotionally about this. I like couldn't believe that had happened. But then I also was angry in a way that maybe the forgiveness they were expecting from me was going to come so easily from like what I would think of as like a half hazard attempt. But then another part of me in a way is like thankful that they even had the insight to reflect that far back into history and feel like there was an apology warranted.

And maybe that's the only version of apology that I would ever get. So the reason I'm thinking about forgiveness so much is like maybe the degree to which we forgive and we let go of whatever tension and energy we're holding on to related to an adverse event isn't always in the way that we've conceptualized it. So maybe the idea of like when to forgive or how to forgive isn't as glorified as Maybe we see in the movies or on TV or on social media or whatever. But as a gay person, I'm finding through anecdotal experience with patients who come from marginalized populations, as well as my own lived experience, that giving forgiveness feels different when it's just something that happened to me and the person didn't know.

Right. It's an accident or it had nothing to do with my character. So it was like, I don't know, getting cut off on the highway or somebody making a rude comment about a grocery shopping volume at self checkout or something stupid like that, or simple and light hearted. But in this case, because this offense the person's apologizing for has to do with who I identify as, I guess I feel like it needs, I need more to forgive. So I'm really curious from other people's perspectives and experiences on the idea of forgiving and forgetting.

You know what, what, what's been an example when like you had to forgive somebody and how did you come to terms with the forgiveness? And maybe in addition to that, if anybody has had this similar paradox that they're in where there's a desire to forgive, but the idea of forgiveness doesn't feel like it fits in every, in every context. And I appreciate other thoughts and feedback as I'm still sort of working through this myself, despite often talking about this with clients.