Forgiveness is one of the most challenging inner tasks we face. We know it is meant to bring peace, yet for many of us it feels almost impossible. Old hurts stay alive inside us, replaying themselves in our minds long after the moment has passed. We want justice, understanding, to be seen, but what we receive is often silence, indifference, or dismissal.
This article explores why forgiveness is so hard, why even justice cannot make whole what was lost, and how we can begin to release the grip of the past so we can move toward healing and inner peace.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is hard. I know this from my own experience, and I suspect you know it from yours.
We all understand that forgiveness is the nobler response, but knowing that does not make it easier. The old saying, “To err is human, to forgive divine,” captures something essential: forgiveness often feels beyond ordinary human reach. We may even wonder how people manage it at all.
Part of the difficulty is that resentment or self-justification can feel like the only form of justice left to us. Somewhere inside, we may believe that holding onto our anger, our certainty, our indignation, keeps those who hurt us accountable. To forgive or forget can feel like giving them a free pass, especially when they may never reflect on what they did, may believe they were in the right, or, most painfully, may not care at all.
So we rehearse the story.
We replay it again and again, searching for the right outcome, the right words, the moment when justice finally arrives and we are seen.
When the outer world does not deliver that justice, we attempt to create it in our minds.
But does getting justice and “closure” ever truly make things right?
Does a murderer brought to trial, convicted, and punished, return the lost life or make the family whole again?
This is not an argument against the pursuit of justice. As individuals and as a society, we must continue to seek and secure it. But there is another dimension that belongs entirely to us: our inner relationship to what happened.
We may not be able to change the past—but we can, and must, change our relationship to it.
For many years, a defining feature of my own inner life was the repetition of old stories—stories of injustice. Somewhere inside, I believed, almost childishly, that these inner rants protected me from pain. In truth, they constrained me. They projected an outdated worldview onto present life, repeating patterns learned long ago. This, I think, is not my story alone.
That repetition took up enormous space. It was exhausting. The effort to defend myself internally—over and over again—left less room for enjoyment, engagement, and presence. And when those feelings were pushed too far down, they sometimes burst out in unexpected and damaging ways.
There is another path.
Compassion does not excuse what happened. It does not rewrite history. But it softens the inner landscape. It loosens the grip of harsh judgment—toward others and toward oneself. It restores a sense of shared humanity, where both the wounded and the one who wounded are no longer frozen in the roles of victim and victimizer.
Looking across human history, justice has occasionally prevailed. But even when it does, it rarely brings the peace we imagine it will.
It is never quite enough.
Peace and reconciliation, I have found, come from something else entirely: releasing the fantasy of how the world should be and learning slowly, imperfectly, to accept it as it is.
We can cultivate this peace through a meditation that centers the part of our being associated with inner balance and equanimity—the area around the solar plexus. In the ancient symbolism of the Biblical Tree of Life, this region corresponds to an energy center related to inner peace and reconciliation of opposites.
Engaging this center through sound can help us loosen our grip on old narratives and move toward a forgiveness that is less about settling the score and more about freeing ourselves to live more fully and more joyously.
Closing Meditation: Coming to Peace
Take a moment now to settle yourself.
Let your shoulders loosen.
Allow your breath to find its own natural rhythm.
Nothing needs to be forced.
Gently place your attention on your breath…
Inhale and exhale, slowly and deeply, five or so times.
Place your hands on your solar plexus, the area below your rib cage and above your waist.
When you feel ready, sound a soft “OH” through this center.
Repeat this sound nine times, in intervals of three—slowly, gently, never forcing.
You are not trying to sing.
This is not performance.
This is a quiet realignment, a conversation between you and yourself.
Do not direct the sound toward a specific purpose.
Simply make the sound.
Then relax… and reflect.
©2025 Shulamit Elson