When Trauma Meets Forgiveness: Finding the Last Piece of Healing
In February 2020, a couple in Sydney, Australia lost three of their children and their niece when a drunk and drugged driver struck them on a suburban street. Just days after the tragedy, while the country grieved with them, they made a choice that was almost impossible to fathom: they forgave the man who had taken the lives of the four children. Five years later, the father even visited him in a maximum-security prison and said, “If it was up to me, I’d bring him out tomorrow.” His words were not about forgetting the crime. They were about something deeper—the power of forgiveness to break the grip of trauma.
As a therapist, I sit with people who have lived through neglect, betrayal, or unimaginable abuse, and forgiveness is always a theme that always comes up. Almost every time, it is met with resistance. Survivors ask, “If I forgive, does that mean I have to forget?” or “If I forgive, then they win.” These fears are real. How can anyone easily or quickly forgive someone who caused such harm? Anger and resentment can feel protective —as if they are evidence that what happened was wrong. To let go of that anger can feel like erasing the truth or invalidating the experience.
Psychiatrist Judith Herman reminds us that forgiveness cannot be rushed—it is a process. People need to process memories, rebuild safety, and reclaim their voice before they are ready to even consider forgiveness.
But forgiveness is not forgetting, excusing, or even reconciling with the person who caused harm—though in some cases reconciliation may happen. Forgiveness is remembering with clarity and still choosing freedom. Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk writes about how trauma lives in the body, keeping the nervous system stuck in survival mode. Bitterness and resentment keep us trapped there. Forgiveness loosens that grip. It allows the body and mind to rest and opens space for peace and healing. Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it plainly: “Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us.” Forgiveness is what cuts that rope.
Author Danny Silk describes it this way: “Forgiveness breaks the cycle of victimization—it liberates both the forgiver and the one forgiven, ending cycles rooted in shame and fear.” That has been my experience too. Forgiveness does not mean letting someone “win.” In fact, it is the opposite. It is refusing to let them keep living rent-free in your heart and mind. It is releasing yourself from their power and taking your life back.
Most survivors don’t begin their healing journey here. They begin with survival—grieving, setting boundaries, finding safety. Forgiveness usually comes later, often as the last piece of the puzzle. And when it arrives, something shifts. Everyone’s pace is different, but people often describe a lightness in their chest, a deep breath they did not know they had been holding, or tears that flow not from despair but from release.
Forgiveness is hard precisely because it feels like losing. But in fact, it is how we win back our freedom and our sense of self. It does not erase the past—it changes the way the past lives within us. And that is why forgiveness, though the hardest step, is also the one that can complete the journey of healing.