Raspberry Iced M

I used to believe that my struggle to forgive certain people had to do with the depth of the hurt they caused me.

And to be fair, the hurt was real.

Some things that have happened in my life have genuinely wounded me. Words have been spoken over me that crushed my spirit. Trust has been broken by people with whom I believed I was very close. Situations have unfolded that have left marks on me that I carry to this day.

But being the overthinker that I am, I have started sitting with discomfort of my hurt. And I realized that it isn’t just the pain that keeps me hanging on. It’s what the pain represents.

Unintentionally, and as years have passed and more hurt has piled on, I began wearing my hurt like a badge.

Not in a dramatic or obvious way, but in a quiet way that announced, “Look what I have survived.”

And that story gave me something. Validation. A testimony. Justification for my anger. And a clear explanation for certain behaviors and reactions. As long as the hurt remains central to my story, I haven’t had to look too closely at anything else.

There is a strange power in being the person who was wronged. I felt like it gave me moral high ground. I have been allowed to say, with complete accuracy, “What happened to me wasn’t fair.”

And at some point that truth became the foundation of how I have seen myself: The survivor. The wounded one. The person who endured something difficult.

Over time, though, that identity has become limiting – because the story always circles back to the offense.

Forgiveness is not just about letting someone off the hook, at least not in the way we often imagine. Forgiveness requires releasing the offenses that have shaped our identity. And that’s hard, because once the hurt is no longer the defining story, something has to take its place.

Slow but surely, I have started releasing the role of “the one who was wronged,” and the spotlight has quietly shifted. It’s moved inward. So instead of focusing on what someone else did, I have had to start asking myself different questions:

What patterns did I develop because of my hurt? What reactions became automatic? Where have I used my wounds to explain my own behavior?

That kind of examination has been uncomfortable for me, because the moral high ground sometimes feels safer than a mirror.

The hurt I’ve experienced has become a crutch, not because I’m weak, but because it offers an explanation as to how I have handled circumstances that have surfaced throughout my adult life. If I’m struggling in a relationship or if I’m guarded or if I react too strongly, all of that hurt explains why.

And even though those explanations are often valid, they have become long-standing, which has stunted my growth. When my pain became part of my identity, I started protecting it, revisiting it, reinforcing it, and using it to interpret new experiences. I don’t enjoy suffering, but the story had become familiar, and familiar things are surprisingly hard to release.

Forgiveness does not erase what happened. It doesn’t pretend the offense didn’t matter. But it does remove the offense from the center of my life story, which then allows the narrative to change.

So instead of “This is what was done to me,” my story becomes, “This is what I learned. This is who I’m becoming. This is how I’m moving forward.” And then forgiveness isn’t the end of the work – it’s the beginning.

I have released so many offenses, truly and wholeheartedly, in the last 7 months. With or without an actual apology, others’ debt has been canceled. All grace. No blame. And lots of conviction. And since those offenses no longer define me, the responsibility I have to grow has become entirely mine. And that requires a level of courage I never thought I had.

The testimony I once had – the one that helped me explain myself – is no longer rehashed in my mind. I have realized that the most meaningful healing comes when that testimony is no longer the headline.

It’s not that the hurt never mattered. It’s just that who I am becoming matters more. And I’m taking credit for that – without giving those offenses as much as a sidebar.