Zoe Butler Clinical Psychologist

13/09/2022

05/09/2022

14/06/2022

27/03/2022

🦋

06/03/2022

No forgive, and forget, works too. It’s okay to not forgive in certain situations. It doesn’t mean you are not spiritual. It doesn’t mean that you are unresolved. It doesn’t mean you will come back in the next lifetime having to live it through again. The assumption that forgiving the abuser is the benchmark of a completed emotional and karmic process is the mistake. It’s another way the new cage movement insensitively vilifies the victim. The real benchmark of resolution is whether we have gone through our emotional process authentically and have arrived at a place where the negative charge around the experience has dissipated. Perhaps we learned some lesson, or perhaps we just feel liberated from the memories- the important thing is that we feel at peace again. Focusing on our responsibility to forgive a wrongdoer sidetracks the whole process. If it’s there, it’s there. If it’s not, it’s not. Just because you don’t choose to forgive doesn’t mean you haven’t let go yet. Maybe you just realize its not essential to your healing and not your responsibility. Forgiveness has to be authentic, or it benefits nobody. (~an excerpt from my book, 'Spiritual Graffiti')