One compelling quote
"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to realize the prisoner was you.”
- Lewis B. Smedes
One personal story
I was a prisoner and didn’t even know it.
There was no courtroom, no verdict, no physical cell.
But I was in prison.
I was a prisoner of my own thoughts and emotions.
I built courtroom arguments in my head where I always won, and somehow always walked out feeling worse.
I replayed conversations in the shower.
I drafted texts I never sent.
They kept looping on repeat. Over and over again.
I was harboring feelings of anger, disappointment and resentment.
Without going into all the details, can say that I fully experienced the weight of these 12 words:
"Nothing hurts more than your favorite person turning into a life lesson."
As fate would have it, I had the courage to share what I was going through with someone at my co-working space in Mexico City. She was a relationship coach and recommended I talk with her friend who was a grief coach.
I’d never even heard of a grief coach, but I knew I had to do something. I figured I had nothing to lose by talking to her, so I set up an introductory call with her.
During our first conversation, I knew I was talking to the right person.
I needed to let go. I needed to forgive. But I didn’t want to.
I wanted justice.
I wanted an apology.
I wanted acknowledgement.
I wasn’t wrong to want those things, but I’d built my own prison by not allowing myself to be happy until those conditions were met; conditions that were never going to be met.
What makes forgiveness so hard
Forgiveness isn’t forgetting, excusing, or reconciling.
It's the decision to stop carrying the emotional debt someone owes you.
Whether they ever get access to you again is a completely separate decision.
Forgiveness is the gift that we give ourselves to stop holding on to the hot coals of anger and resentment.
Every hour spent re-hashing the past is an hour billed to you, not them.
Your sleep. Your blood pressure. Your peace.
The person who hurt you isn't paying that tax. You are.
That's why forgiveness takes courage. Because there are usually several fears that we have with forgiving someone.
I asked AI about this and here are a few that resonated with me:
Fear they'll hurt us again. "If I forgive them, they'll think what they did was okay." But forgiveness and reconciliation are different. You can forgive someone and keep firm boundaries.
Fear of looking weak. "People will think I have no backbone." We equate forgiveness with submission, when it often takes more strength than retaliation.
Fear of invalidating the pain. "If I forgive them, I'm saying it wasn't that bad." Forgiveness doesn't erase what happened. It acknowledges the harm without letting it define your future.
Fear of losing justice. "They deserve consequences." Forgiveness doesn't mean abandoning accountability. Someone can be forgiven and still face consequences.
Fear of betraying yourself. "If I let this go, I'm betraying my younger self who was hurt." Sometimes we hold anger because it feels like honoring the part of us that suffered.
Fear of becoming vulnerable again. Forgiveness lowers our emotional defenses, even if only internally. After a betrayal, that feels risky.
Fear that the pain was meaningless. Forgiving may mean accepting there's no satisfying explanation or cosmic fairness. Resentment can give suffering a sense of purpose.
Fear of losing our identity. We can build part of who we are around being the person who was wronged. Letting go can feel like losing a piece of ourselves.
Fear of regret. "What if I forgive them and they do it again?" Forgiveness feels like a gamble, but it's an internal decision, not a prediction about their future behavior.
Fear of grief. Anger numbs sadness. Once the anger fades, we have to face what's underneath: the relationship we lost, the trust that broke, the future we imagined.
Ultimately, every one of those fears is really the same fear: that the prison cell, as miserable as it is, is still less painful than whatever's outside that door.
The keys that were always there
Working with my grief coach was definitely beneficial, but to be clear, grief isn’t a linear process. Emotions still show up from time to time.
This chart sums it up perfectly.
In case you’re going through something too, I encourage you to check out Letting Go by David Hawkins, The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, and Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant. They’re all excellent, but the thing that has probably had the biggest impact was an ancient Hawaiian prayer called Ho'oponopono. It roughly translates to "making things right".
Hawaiian families have used it for generations to repair rifts, and healers like Morrnah Simeona, honored as a Living Treasure of Hawai'i, adapted it into a practice one person can do alone.
The whole thing fits in four phrases:
“I'm sorry.”
“Please forgive me.”
“Thank you.”
“I love you.”
That's it.
You simply repeat those 4 phrases over and over again, while thinking about the person you want to forgive.
It sounds too simple to do anything, but it works.
In a 2008 dissertation study at Walden University, Dr. Matthew James split 79 people into two groups and had one group practice
Ho'oponopono while focusing on a specific person who hurt them. The practice group showed a statistically significant drop in unforgiveness. The control group showed no change.
If you need to forgive someone, I highly recommend listening to this and giving it a try everyday for 30 days and seeing what happens.
What do you have to lose?
The power of forgiveness
The power of forgiveness is real.
It’s not just anecdotal, either.
Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that forgiveness is linked to lower heart attack risk, better cholesterol and sleep, and less pain, blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and stress. Dr. Fred Luskin, who specialized in forgiveness for 20+ years, led the original Stanford Forgiveness Project, and it showed the same thing.
It turns out, Lewis B. Smedes was right.
We don't forgive because they deserve it. We forgive because we're strong enough to stop paying for what they did.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
The door isn't locked. It never was.
It just takes courage to walk through it.
One reflective question
Here's your reflection for the week:
Who is one person you need to forgive? How much has not forgiving them cost you?
One weekly challenge
Here's your challenge for the week:
Put on this Ho'oponopono prayer on YouTube. Close your eyes, picture your person, and let the four phrases wash over you once through. If you want extra credit, try copying this prompt into the AI tool of your choice:
I'm carrying anger and hurt toward someone who [describe what happened in one or two sentences]. I want to learn to forgive them for my own peace, without excusing what they did and without necessarily reconciling. Act as a compassionate forgiveness coach. Ask me 3 to 5 questions, one at a time, to understand the situation and which fears make forgiving hard for me. Then build me a simple two week plan with one small daily practice under 10 minutes, drawing on forgiveness research, journaling, and the Ho'oponopono prayer. Keep it practical and kind, and remind me of the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.
With courage,
Jonathan
How did today’s message resonate with you?
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