Tagged: “family”
What Is the Difference Between Forgiving and Walking Away?
Rahime Gül, Pexels.com
I recently received a thoughtful letter from someone who has suffered gravely and extensively from others’ unjust actions. The letter was a response to an article in the Washington Post newspaper, published on Thursday, April 23, 2026 entitled, How to let go of grudges—-and why it could be good for your health.
Because the letter writer asked such an interesting question (What is the difference between forgiving and walking away?), I wanted to share my response while protecting the privacy of the person. Here is my reply:
I am sorry to hear of the terribly unjust actions that you have experienced in your life. You certainly deserve none of this.
Forgiveness is a moral virtue in which you try to be good to those who have not been good to you. Basically, it is trying to cultivate mercy toward them. Walking away is different in that people can walk away with indifference, or even annoyance or hatred in their hearts.
I find that when people are treated very cruelly by others, it is difficult to walk away with a healed heart. Forgiveness is a powerful medicine for reducing, and even curing, the resentments that can literally last for the rest of a person’s life. Some people reject the idea of forgiveness or are not ready for it. In my experience, people who reject forgiveness actually misunderstand it, equating it with excusing what others did, with automatically reconciling (which a person does not have to do when forgiving), or with throwing justice under the bus. A person can forgive and seek justice.
So, if you think you are ready, you could start with a person who was not exceptionally cruel to you. Learn the forgiveness process with this one person. If forgiveness then seems reasonable to you, try another person, again choosing someone who was not extremely cruel to you. If you want to continue, keep choosing others who have hurt you a little more than the previous person you have forgiven. Eventually, you will be at the top of the pyramid, forgiving those who were exceptionally cruel to you.
If you accomplish all of this forgiving, you will stand triumphant, with a reduced resentment that might surprise you. Those who treated you cruelly then will have no emotional power over you in that the resentments remaining in your closet will be substantially reduced or eliminated.
If you go on this journey, I wish you the very best. Please let me know if you have any other questions about forgiveness.
What Does Forgiveness Entail?
Photo by Ann H, Pexels.com
On January 26, 2026, Richard Balkin, a professor at the University of Mississippi, published an article on the website The Conversation discussing forgiveness. In two places on the site, he defines forgiveness this way:
- “At its core, forgiveness is internal: a way of laying down ill will and our emotional burden……”
- “……forgiveness comes when we relinquish feelings of ill will toward another.”
Is this philosophically correct? We would say no because it is reductionistic, focusing on only half of the equation when it comes to the moral virtue of forgiveness. If forgiveness is a moral virtue, then, as a moral virtue, it concerns goodness toward others. More specifically, when it comes to forgiveness, the person is exercising goodness toward the one who behaved unjustly. This would involve not only the free-will attempt to reduce or eliminate “ill will” but also, to be more complete, its essence needs to include the struggle to offer positive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors toward the other person as well, even if the other is no longer in the forgiver’s life. In other words, even without reconciliation, a forgiver can speak well of the offending person to others. Reducing ill will and offering goodness captures the essence of forgiveness more accurately than the appropriation of either one alone.
The article can be read here:
Announcing a New Initiative: Families for Forgiveness Education
Mary Lou Coons
In conjunction with Mary Lou Coons, who runs the Puppets for Peace Foundation, we are launching a new initiative entitled Families for Forgiveness Education. The point of this effort is to encourage interested parents (or other adults in the family) to teach children and adolescents about forgiveness at home. The website for this is being built now.
Here is an excerpt from the website explaining the necessity for forgiveness education for children and adolescents:
We need to take the learning of forgiveness very seriously in our troubled world, so that adults are already schooled in the practice of this heroic and vital moral virtue. This is why we started Families for Forgiveness Education: to assist adults in families in passing on forgiveness to their children, and to equip them with the readiness to tackle the serious injustices they might face in adulthood.
The central points of Families for Forgiveness Education are these:
1. We are interested in the development of appreciation and practice of the virtue of forgiveness within the family as a whole, as well as within each person.
2. Forgiveness needs to be established as a positive norm within the family for its members to have an appreciation for and practice of it. This means that the parents must cherish the virtue, have constructive conversations about it, and regularly show it to the family by asking for and granting forgiveness.
3. Forgiveness needs to be taught in the home using age-appropriate and engaging materials for both parents and children, for every member of the family to develop an appreciation for and practice of forgiveness. This is why we have forgiveness curriculum guides for ages 4 to 18, all free of charge for you. This is why I have written self-help books on forgiveness for adults.
4. If children are to grow up to be strong enough to pass on the moral virtue of forgiveness to their own families as adults, parents must continue to teach, practice, and appreciate forgiveness.
5. In the end, Families for Forgiveness Education may prove to be a gift of love that is passed first to the children and then down the generations for years to come. Perhaps this forgiveness might extend to one’s local communities, reducing interpersonal friction and fostering more peaceful encounters.
What about you? Is it your turn to give this gift of love to your family?
More information about Families for Forgiveness Education will become available here as we develop this idea.
Protecting Yourself if You Want to Forgive
Dr. Robert Enright
Given the recent criticism of forgiveness, Robert Enright recently published an essay on the Psychology Today website titled “Protecting Yourself if You Want to Forgive.”
It can be found here:
Protecting Yourself if You Want to Forgive, February 19, 2026
Enright Forgiveness Motivation Inventory Available Soon!
Photo by Ann H, Pexels.com
A new forgiveness measure has been validated and soon will be on this website, free of charge for those who ask for a copy of it. The scale is called the Enright Forgiveness Motivation Inventory (EFMI). It assesses people’s reasons for forgiving. As examples, is the person primarily forgiving to heal from emotional challenges? Is the person forgiving to help the one who was unfair to improve behavior? The reference to the journal article on the validation of this scale is this:
Li, Y., Kim, J., Song, J., & Enright, R.D. (in press). Validating the Enright Forgiveness Motivation Inventory (EFMI). Current Psychology
