No, I Do Not Need to Forgive My Abuser to Heal

People get deeply uncomfortable when you say you have not forgiven your abuser and do not plan to. Not because you are wrong, but because it forces them to confront how badly abuse has been minimised in our culture. The second you say, “I don’t forgive her,” people start scrambling to tidy it up for themselves. Suddenly they need to explain healing to you. They need to tell you that you are carrying anger, carrying hate, carrying pain. They need to believe forgiveness is the magic final chapter because the alternative is sitting with the reality that some things are so vile, so violating, so life-altering that they should never be softened into something noble.

And a lot of these comments do not even come from random outsiders. They come from other survivors. Women who genuinely believe forgiveness helped them and that is fine. I do not have an issue with that. If that is what worked for them, then that is their path. But what helped you is not universal just because it helped you. That is where the disrespect starts. The moment you stop speaking about your own healing and start telling somebody else what they have to do, you have crossed a line. You are no longer sharing your truth. You are trying to impose it.

That is where the hypocrisy sits for me. I have never once told another survivor not to forgive. I have never gone into someone’s comments to tell them they are healing wrong because forgiveness brought them peace. I have never felt the need to warn them that they are betraying themselves, abandoning themselves or doing recovery incorrectly because their path looks different to mine. I leave people to their choices. So why is that same respect so rarely returned? Why do so many people feel so entitled to tell me I have to forgive, or I will carry it forever, or I will stay stuck, or I will stay angry? Why is their choice a personal one, but mine suddenly becomes a public debate?

And let’s be honest, that is exactly what so many of us grew up with. A mother telling you how you feel. A mother deciding what your reality is. A mother overriding your experience and insisting she knows your inner world better than you do. So when survivors turn around and push forgiveness as a universal rule, it lands badly for a reason. It feels familiar. It feels invasive. It feels like someone else once again trying to climb inside your body and dictate what healing should look like. That is not wisdom. That is repetition.

I have seen the same comments over and over. “There’s a big difference between forgiveness and access.” “Forgiveness is healing for the person.” “Putting that suitcase down is forgiveness.” “You haven’t gone deep enough into your healing if you don’t forgive.” “Continuing to carry what they did isn’t making them pay.” It is always the same script, just dressed up in slightly different language. And every time, the point is missed completely. Refusing to forgive is not me carrying the abuse. Refusing to forgive is me naming it properly. It is me refusing to clean up something disgusting so that other people can feel more comfortable looking at it.

Because child abuse is unforgivable. Years of cruelty, neglect, emotional abuse, fear, humiliation and damage done to a child should not be turned into some moral lesson about grace. It should not be dressed up as a chance for spiritual evolution. It should not be smoothed over with language that makes other people feel better. I am more uncomfortable with the idea that child abuse is forgivable than I am with the fact I do not forgive it. That discomfort belongs there. It belongs with what was done, not with the survivor who refuses to pretend it deserves absolution.

I think that is why this subject gets such a reaction. If I can say I do not forgive my abuser and still be happy, still be healed, still be thriving, still be deeply at peace, then it blows a hole in what people have been taught. It proves forgiveness is not the universal requirement they want it to be. It proves healing is not one narrow road with one approved ending. And some people cannot handle that, because they are attached to the idea that there is one right way to recover. But there is not.

There is also something deeply insulting about being told I will carry anger and hate if I do not forgive. As if those are the only two options. Forgive, or be poisoned by bitterness forever. That is such a lazy, reductionist view of healing. I do not forgive and I do not spend my days raging either. I am living my best fucking life without forcing myself to say words that do not feel true. I have built peace without betraying my own instincts to get there. I do not need to rewrite abuse into something forgivable just to make my healing look more acceptable to other people.

So no, I do not forgive my abuser. And no, that does not mean I am stuck. It does not mean I am carrying her. It does not mean I am consumed by hate. It means I have told the truth about what happened to me and I refuse to dilute that truth for other people’s comfort. If forgiveness helped someone else, fine. That is theirs. But the second they start pushing it onto other survivors as the only healthy way forward, they are doing exactly what our mothers did. They are telling us how we should feel. And after a lifetime of that, I have no interest in handing that power to anyone ever again.