In our mind, only.

The first time I heard that forgiveness is “giving up the hope that the past could have been any different,” it resonated with me deeply. Something just made sense about that. 

Oprah Winfrey expands on this by saying in the book What Happened to You?, “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, but we cannot move forward if we’re still holding onto the pain of that past and wishing it was something else.”

How often do we replay painful moments in our minds, wishing they had gone differently? We hold onto the past as if clinging to it will somehow change it. But the past isn’t something that exists outside of us—it only lives in our minds, in the thoughts we continue to revisit, in the stories we tell ourselves about the past.

It’s not the past itself that creates our pain. It’s the way we THINK about it.

Every time we recall a painful memory, we relive it in the present. Our body might tense up. Our emotions associated with that story rise. The hurt resurfaces as if it’s happening all over again. But it isn’t. The only thing happening is that we’re thinking about what happened. And those thoughts and the painful story are creating our suffering.

This isn’t about denying what happened. It’s about recognizing that right now, in this moment, we have a choice. We can keep carrying the weight of an unchangeable past and the story we have about it, or we can release it. We can stop arguing with what was and begin giving ourselves the care, love, and peace we want now. This is an option that’s available to us.

Forgiveness isn’t about excusing what happened. It’s about freeing ourselves from the pain of our stories about the past.

Your turn:
What painful story have you been holding onto? How does thinking about it make you feel? What if you chose to loosen your grip—just a little? What might open up for you if you allowed yourself to move forward or tell the story of the past in a different way?

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