Forgiving Abusers as a Trauma Survivor

Forgiving Abusers as a Trauma Survivor

There is a difference between forgiveness and acceptance and I don’t think that they are mutually exclusive. I have a massive issue with the word forgiveness and to be as transparent as possible I think that it is a term that is used as a scapegoat to avoid facing the reality of our pasts and the truth of our present.

In the scope of trauma, the word forgiveness is touted as a “must do” of sorts. To heal you have to forgive. I think that’s bullshit. I don’t believe that forgiveness changes anything that has happened in my life. Forgiveness doesn’t give me my finger back, it doesn’t take away the scars of being beaten, and it doesn’t make my CPTSD any easier. Forgiveness is reserved for those that are the punishers, not the punished. Why do we "have" to forgive the people that hurt us? What's in it for us? There is nothing of value for me in excusing the atrocious acts that I suffered at the hands of the people who were supposed to love and protect me.

I realize that this thought process is likely the polar opposite of everything that you may have been told or read about trauma and dealing with your past. So many people scream forgiveness from the mountain tops. So many people say that forgiveness is the key to finding inner peace and being able to move on. Fuck that. I think accepting what happened and being associated with your trauma is the way to move on. It is only through acceptance that I genuinely have found peace. When I forgave I was still haunted by the memories of the things that happened to me.

I choose not to forgive, and it’s not because I hold a grudge or want vengeance. Hell, even as I write this, I am not upset about the past. I let go of so much of what was holding me back because I chose to do so. I decided to honor myself and give myself that space to do what I consider to be the most important thing that I could do for me and that is accepting the truth of the reality of the past. The truth will set you free, and I believe this more than anything.

Acceptance makes things real. You can’t hide from recognition. The very definition of acceptance is “willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation.” The first 28 years of my life were painful and unpleasant but my high school years were the hardest, and I have come to accept the things that molded me into the person that I am today. It is without a doubt in my heart and mind that accepting is a million times more challenging and cathartic than forgiving. It was not until I laid within the darkness and took it on wholly that I became enveloped in the light of potential, possibility, ownership, hope, and self-love.

In the photo above I was at the base camp for what would become the Everest of self-imposed suffering that was the next ten years of my life. This is the day that I graduated high school. Making it to that day was a feat in itself, and I could write an entire book on that alone. I struggled so hard to make my way to that moment. Between having a vicious drug addiction, suicide attempts, and an identity crisis, I was sure that I was not going to make it to the end.

This photo is bittersweet for me. On one side of the coin, I had done the seemingly impossible and made it to my last day of high school. The drugs, guns, break-ins, robberies, and fights had not kept me from reaching my goal. If anything they were a driver because I knew that the path I was on was going to lead me to prison or a coffin in the same way that it had for so many of my friends.

The other side of the coin is that my mother and grandmother were who are on either side of me were ripping me apart from both sides. My mother had been in and out of rehab from the time I was 11, and not long after my 18th birthday, I told her that I never wanted to see her again after she attacked me in the middle of the night when she was high and drunk. Despite her constant beratement and abuse I never fought back even though I was twice her size; at least until that night.

My grandma’s racism had sent me into a spiral of trying to understand who I was. Most teens face an uphill battle in trying to figure out who they are, but in her home, I wasn’t given the space to discover who I was. It’s kind of hard to do that in a house that also has a copy of Mein Kampf in it. I wasn’t allowed to be biracial in her home, and we fought about that until the day she died.

I felt like the world was constantly testing me. There was always something about what was happening around me that felt like another obstacle that I had to overcome. I didn’t know at the time, but those challenges would shape who I was and give me insight into understanding how trauma can genuinely affect a humans mind, body, and spirit.

Should we have to forgive abusers to heal?

During my sophomore and junior year of high school, I was placed in a program called TechWest that taught me real-life skills like how to write a resume and prep for a job interview. I also had a restraining order on my mother and step-father, and they were not allowed to contact me. When I was removed from the chaos of their existence I flourished in school and sports. I even did better at selling drugs. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.

When my mother became sober for a brief period during the beginning of my last year of school, I allowed her back into my life, but that didn’t last long. Her addiction took her once more. My grandma allowed her back into our home, and I was once again in the vortex. My grade began to slip, I lost interest in everything around me, and fell back into using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. This resulted in failing most of my classes and missing over 70 days of school that last year. I was once again in the vortex.

I ran out of space to offer forgiveness to my mother and grandmother. I know that they tried their best and the truth is their best was shit. I accept that. The cold hard fucking fact is that some people should not bring children into this world. They were the embodiment of those kinds of people. Abuse begets abuse, and neither of them had the strength to stop it. For that, I can’t forgive them. That doesn't mean that their actions still hold power over me; it merely means that I have come to terms with what happened. If not for what they did I would not be here doing what I am doing.

I have accepted that we as humans are innately flawed. There is no way around it. We often find ourselves living up to the environmental expectations of what it is that we come from. Ultimately we are responsible for our actions and the things that we do. There are no excuses that we can make for what we do or don’t do. There is only truth and reality. I look back on my actions, many of which I find deplorable and unfathomable in consideration of the person that I am today and I am viciously ashamed of the person that I used to be. I will not forgive myself for what I did or the way I behaved because my actions were unforgivable but what I can do and what I choose to do is to accept the person I was.

Acceptance carries so much more weight than forgiveness in my eyes because when we accept we allow the truth that we often try to hide from to be real. I think about how many times I have told someone that I forgive them and didn’t mean it. I think about how many times I asked others to forgive me and felt like I didn’t mean it. Forgiveness seems arbitrary in the shadow of truth.

I accept that my mother was a drug addict and alcoholic. I accept that my grandma was a racist and bigot. I accept that I harmed hundreds of people through my actions. I accept that the trauma I suffered was not my fault. I accept that the only way I am going to die happy is to use every ounce of energy that I have to make the world a better place.

For some reason, we are taught that we must forgive people. I don't think we "must" do shit except whatever is best for the people around us and us. This isn't to say that apologies don't have a time and place and maybe I'm too jaded to forgive people that have viciously harmed me and maybe I don't deserve the forgiveness of the people that I harmed. That is fair to me. It would be one thing to “forgive and forget” but I’m on a mission to accept and create change.