Tagged: “forgiveness is a choice”
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
Insights on Forgiveness & Childhood Trauma
Photo by Pixabay, Pexels.com
In a comprehensive literature review, a group of researchers found that forgiving others for adverse childhood experiences can be difficult. Yet, they conclude in their Abstract, “…..forgiveness of specific perpetrators was associated with better outcomes across studies, though survivors with severe abuse histories typically reported greater difficulty with forgiving. Studies revealed harmful effects when survivors felt pressured to forgive, or not to forgive.”
The reference to this work is:
Kanter, R. L., & Wortham, J. S. (2026). Forgiveness and Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Scoping Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380251410088
Addressing the “Both/And” Approach to Family Conflict: Why This Is Insufficient for Healing
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya, Pexels.com
I recently read a self-help article about family conflict. The author was advocating for what is called the “both/and” approach to healing. It means this: Acknowledge the hurts against you, but also focus on times of positive interaction. Both are truthful, and if you can live with both side by side, this will promote healing.
I write this essay to respectfully disagree with this approach to family healing. I think it can be a first step, but it is incomplete by itself. It is so incomplete that I think it could lead to future conflicts rather than deep emotional and relational healing.
Let me start with an analogy. Suppose you damaged the cartilage in your knee. It annoys you and diminishes your quality of life because you cannot work out as rigorously as before. Yet, you have strong shoulders. If you take a literal “both/and” approach here, you will live with the broken-down knee and the strong shoulders. You can still work out, such as bench pressing or bicep curls. Yet, your ability to run now is hampered. Should you simply live with all of this or try to heal the knee? I vote for healing the knee.
It seems to me that this analogy applies to the “both/and” of family conflict. Yes, you have the challenge of injustice and the happy times, but isn’t it more beneficial to go for the healing from the resentment that has built up in the heart from the injustices? As with knee surgery, resentment in the heart can be healed by forgiving those who caused the pain. Yes, you still have a memory of the injustice, but now the emotional reaction to that memory is healed. The “both/and” is not likely to eventually lead to the “and” of resentment overpowering the “and” of fond memories. After all, resentment is a formidable foe. It can last for years and grow, overpowering any positive thoughts about the other person.
So, yes, let us be aware of the “both/and” as we do with a torn knee and strong shoulders, but let us move beyond that to forgiving those who caused the damage to the heart through unjust actions. “Both/and” focuses on insight. Moving forward with forgiveness focuses on healing once the insight is understood, confronted, and the forgiveness is accomplished.
