Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by the concept of forgiveness. Why do people forgive each other? Why don’t they? What makes something unforgivable? I wasn’t raised in a religious household. I don’t think I’ve ever been forced to forgive anyone I didn’t want to forgive. In that, I am lucky. I was able to approach it on my own terms.

Forgiveness is such a strange, subversive beast. On the surface, it looks like saying ‘it’s fine’ after someone has been a jerk towards us. Forgive and forget. But I don’t think that’s it, at all. Instead, I wonder if it’s connected to a longing that can sometimes arise in us, after we have been hurt by another, to have more peace, to hold the pain differently.

With people we love and like, this work is often easy, because forgiveness brings us closer again. There is a motivation to let it go, even if we think the other person was a bit of an idiot and that we’re secretly right. As long as there is an acknowledgement of hurt and the ruptures are rare, we can forgive.

But what about people who are no longer in our lives, perhaps through our own choice? What about the people who once said they loved us and then went and betrayed our trust? What about the dead? In most of those cases, we cannot expect accountability, or even an apology. Forgiveness toward those people might seem like a low priority. That is, unless you find yourself unable to stop thinking about those people and they seem to suck up all the space in your heart with their awful deeds. In that case, you could try forgiveness, but a different kind. Maybe you write them a letter that you never send. Maybe you go for a walk and tell everything to the river. Maybe you dance it out. However you approach it, here is what I have found to be true and useful about this kind of forgiveness, as a list:

1. When I’m forgiving someone who has hurt and harmed me deeply, my forgiveness does not mean I condone their actions. My forgiveness does not mean that everything is now okay, or that I will ever talk to them again. The person does not need to know I’m forgiving them. Forgiveness, if it happens, releases me from the burden of my rage, just a little bit.

2. Forgiveness is not a one-time event. I have forgiven some people over and over, each time thinking I had arrived, only to find another layer of pain. Perfectionist as I am, I used to think this implied failure. But I no longer believe that. It just means I’m trying. Perhaps forgiveness is not about arriving anywhere. It might be just about departing from the place inside myself where I have written the definitive story of my wound. Learning that I can tell it again, anew.

3. Forgiveness is not forgetting. There are things that cannot be undone. But I notice that even my darkest, most hurtful memories take on a different quality once I begin to forgive someone. Small cracks in the empire of my pain.

4. The words ‘I forgive you’ carry their own inherent power. Sometimes, when I wasn’t yet ready to forgive a person, I said those words out loud and felt the air change. Speaking them over a period of time made space for forgiveness inside.

5. Forgiveness cannot be demanded. In that way, it is a lot like love. The Catholic Church, to name just one example, has powerfully weaponized the language of forgiveness to silence and control victims of sexual abuse and to further enable the perpetrators. I’m not interested in that kind of forgiveness. Neither was Jesus, I think. I don’t forgive to be seen as a good person. I don’t forgive to be obedient. I forgive so I can be free.

6. Forgiving a person before you’re ready is an act of self-harm. Get to know your pace, your boundaries.

7. Being unable to forgive someone is not the same as withholding forgiveness. If you feel unable, take a breath; let it be. If you feel withholding, there’s a chance you’re trying to control the outcome of something that has already happened.

8. Not everything is forgiven in this life. Not everything can be forgiven. Some of it is beyond us. Maybe even most of it. Being able to forgive – or not – is not a judgement on our value as a human.

9. Forgiveness is a paradox: An act of self-love done for another. Sometimes when we forgive, we touch the place where the distinction disappears.

In an ideal world, we would see accountability increase in proportion to the harm that was done. That is not the world we live in, obviously. Instead, we are here, in the often unbearable present. The above list is not meant to be a manifesto of any kind. Rather, I see it as a preliminary memo, a this-is-what-I-think-for-now. Forgiveness might teach me new things in the years to come.

Tomorrow, on July 29, is a Full Moon in Aquarius. There is something about it that seems cathartic, as though it strips away the layers of our pretence. We might no longer be able to say ‘it’s fine’ and that is exactly as it should be. Full Moons happen when the Sun and Moon directly oppose each other. Most of us live through it once a month, without incident. But this particular Full Moon has the Moon conjunct Pluto and the Sun conjunct Jupiter, and the entire forceful package is squared by Chiron. A deep hurt may bubble to the surface, ready to be seen. But maybe you also feel a level of courage you didn’t know you had inside you. Wherever you’re beginning from, I wish you tenderness. And if all else fails, perhaps a little forgiveness towards your own beautiful self.