Alignment Pathways

Forgiveness was Mine

I used to think my hatred protected me, that if I held onto it tight enough, maybe it would shield me from ever getting hurt like that again.

For a long time, I hated my mother.

I hated her for her addiction, for leaving me, for the abuse, for the unsafe environments she put me in. I hated her because her best wasn’t enough, and as a kid, it was impossible to understand. How do you make sense of a mother who isn’t who she’s supposed to be? As a kid, it was even harder to digest when I looked at the other kids around me—friends at school talking about their parents, or having them come to school events with them, or seeing families shopping together at the store. I saw what other kids had, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have that too.

As a teenager, I started to get it—or at least, I thought I did. I had enough self-awareness to recognize that she wasn’t just choosing to be the way she was. I became a mother for the first time at 15, and the moment I laid eyes on my baby, all of that understanding shattered. I held my baby in my arms and thought, how? How could a parent ever make the choices she did?

That anger came back stronger than ever.

For a long time, I carried that resentment with me like a weight I refused to set down, and then life humbled me, as it does. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve messed up, and I came to the realization that if I didn’t have the level of self-awareness that I do, or if I had inherited her bipolar disorder, struggled a little harder with addiction, or faced any of the same battles that worked against her, I could have been her.

That thought hit me like a brick. It didn’t erase what she had done, but it allowed me to see her as more than just my mother. For the first time, I saw her as a human being—not the woman who had hurt me, not the parent who let me down, but as a woman carrying pain of her own. A woman who had been struggling long before I came along, drowning in her own demons, and fighting silent battles that had nothing to do with me, but still shaped everything I knew.

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The Moment Everything Changed

I forgave her quietly, before I ever said it out loud and long before she even knew. My realizations that she had her own demons, her own battles, things that worked against her in ways I would never fully understand. She was a victim of her own mind, a product of her own environment, and for the first time, I saw her as a person, not just the mother who had failed me.

I came to her expecting absolutely nothing, not even an apology. I told her I understood. I told her I forgave her for not being the mother she needed to be.

She cried.

Then, to my surprise, she truly listened. And then she apologized—not just for the things I had once confronted her about, but for the things I had never even spoken aloud. For the first time ever, I felt heard by my mother.

She told me she was proud of me, that despite the role she had played in my life, I had become someone she admired. She was sorry, but she also admitted that she wouldn’t go back and change the past—not because she didn’t regret the pain she caused, but because those experiences had shaped me into the person I am today. As much as she wished things had been different, she believed that every struggle, every hardship—even the ones she had a hand in—had contributed to my strength and resilience. She saw the woman I had become, and despite everything, she wouldn’t change that for the world.

That’s when it hit me. My forgiveness wasn’t for her. It never was. It was for me.

Because at the end of the day, having my mom in my life matters more to me than holding onto all the things she had done wrong. The truth is, I had been carrying anger, hatred and resentment toward someone who didn’t even exist anymore. She had changed. Not because I begged her to be better, or forgave her, but because her own journey led her to growth and transformation. Yet, I spent so much time clinging to the ghost of the woman she once was, unknowingly depriving myself of the woman she had grown to be, and the mother I had always wanted.

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The Poison We Drink

I held onto my pain for so long that I didn’t even realize what it was doing to me.

It bled into my parenting in ways I didn’t recognize at the time. I never mistreated my kids, but I built walls without realizing it, keeping a distance that neither they nor I understood. I was afraid of becoming what I resented, afraid of repeating the cycles that I swore to break. So I held myself back, convinced that if I kept some space, if I controlled every piece of myself, I would never risk failing them the way I felt I had been failed. In doing that, I robbed myself of fully embracing them, of the unconditional closeness I wanted so badly but had unknowingly taught myself to fear. But I do consider myself lucky—I realized this while my kids were still young, while I still had the space to make it right. I became more mindful, made a point to take action, and made the conscious choice to be the mother they needed, every single day.

Holding onto this pain also made me more reactive in relationships, quick to frustration over things that didn’t deserve that level of intensity. It made me defensive, always bracing for disappointment, expecting hurt before it ever even happened. It made me struggle to understand people, because deep down, I had spent so long refusing to understand her.

I spent years unknowingly punishing people in my life for things they never did, or pushing them away before they had the chance to hurt me.

And for what?

I’ve always heard the quote, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” For years, I didn’t fully understand this. I thought my pain made me stronger, that my anger kept me safe. I convinced myself that holding onto it gave me control, and that if I carried it long enough, it would somehow make things right. But the truth is, it only consumed me. I spent years drowning in emotions that did nothing but pull me under, believing that if I held on just a little longer, it would change something. But it never did. It never healed me. It never undid the past. It only kept me shackled to something that no longer existed.

When I finally understood, I realized that the only way to free myself was through forgiveness—for myself, for my kids, and for our future. Carrying that pain didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t ease the wounds or bring me the justice I thought I deserved. It only kept me stuck. I had spent so long gripping my anger like armor, believing it protected me, when in reality, it was just another weight holding me down. The past wasn’t something I could rewrite, but I could decide not to let it write the rest of my story. The only way forward was to let go—to loosen my grip on the pain, to stop carrying something that was never meant to be mine forever, and to finally allow myself the freedom to heal.

Forgiveness didn’t mean pretending it didn’t hurt. It didn’t mean excusing everything. It meant making a choice—to stop letting the past dictate my future. To decide that I deserved peace more than I needed to hold onto the anger. It meant allowing myself to feel the weight of what had happened, to grieve, to process, and then to release it. To recognize that I was not what had been done to me. That I could carry the lessons without carrying the pain.

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What Are You Holding Onto?

Really think about it.

Who do you still hold anger for?

Maybe it’s a parent, like me. Maybe they hurt you in ways they’ll never understand. Maybe they left scars they never even realized they gave you. And maybe you’ve been holding onto those wounds for so long that you don’t even know who you are without them.

Maybe it’s a friend who betrayed you, and even though years have passed, you still think about it when their name comes up.

Maybe it’s an ex, someone who shattered your heart and made you feel like you’d never be the same again. Maybe you’re still waiting for them to feel the weight of what they did to you.

Or maybe it’s yourself.

Maybe the person you refuse to forgive is the one staring back at you in the mirror.

Be honest—what has holding onto it actually done for you? Has it healed anything? Has it made you feel better? Has it undone what happened?

And if it hasn’t, then ask yourself—do they even have to be worthy of forgiveness?

Because forgiveness was never about them.

It’s about you.

And you are worthy of letting that go.

You don’t have to keep drinking the poison. It’s okay to let it go.