“I Learned Forgiveness by Refusing to Forgive” with Tara Howley and Alexa Kistler

A good person forgives. And I say, fuck that. Nobody should have to forgive. It's not for someone else. It's not to look good in society. Forgiveness is inherently an act of self-care.

That is a very different image of what forgiveness is than what I was taught as a child.

I do think forgiveness is like a 3-step process. And usually once you have the curiosity, the emotional processing, and those clear boundaries, forgiveness is an inevitable byproduct.

Hi, welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the lives we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Alexa Kissler, and I'm here with Tara Howley.

Hi, Alexa.

Hi. I just had a session with a client yesterday where I, I kind of— I was listening to what he was saying and I was like, oh, Sounds like it would be great to forgive yourself. And I watched his whole body go rigid and sit back, and it made me realize forgiveness, it's such a powerful thing, but it can be so charged in our culture. So I thought maybe we could talk about forgiveness. How's that feel?

Awesome.

Yeah.

And so charged, right? So many— as a parent, I watch kids, other parents force their kids You put a kid up in front of someone and say, "Say I'm sorry." The kid's like, "I'm sorry." Right? They're not really. So there's this way that forgiveness has been coerced on many of us. Or I think you and I have similar backgrounds, religious backgrounds, where it was like, oh, forgiveness is— to be a good girl, you have to forgive, or to be pleasing in the church eyes, you have to forgive. And it's like this good— a good person forgives. So there's this pressure to forgive. And I say, fuck that shit. Nobody should have to forgive. Like, it's not for someone else. It's not to look good in society or to make some parent feel good about what their child's actions— like, forgiveness is inherently an act of self-care, and we've lost that. So I say fuck forgiveness.

I think you mean maybe like fuck coerced forgiveness.

I absolutely mean fuck coerced forgiveness.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wow. Well, okay, so if forgiveness is completely for ourselves, maybe there's a new way for people to think about forgiveness. How would you kind of define what forgiveness is? Like clean forgiveness?

Yeah, I would say forgiveness is an act of self-care. It's like, oh, my heart is angry at this person, is blaming the situation or person, is really pissed. And how do I take care of my heart?

Here.

Like, how do I honor my hurt, pain, anger, fear, resentment? And what do I have to do to be good with my heart again, given what happened, given what this person did or this situation? But it's that it's truly inner personal work. It's not ever about making someone else feel good, or forgiveness isn't even about forgiving them. Forgiveness so that our heart and our, our soma, that we can be at home in our body and our hearts can remain open to ourselves and the world around us.

Yeah, it kind of sounds like you're saying forgiveness is about coming back to having an open heart.

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Exactly.

What else would you say is important to going through this whole process, getting back to the open heart?

I do think forgiveness is like a 3-step process. There's probably other microsteps one could take. The first would be looking at the emotions under it, like, "Oh, when so-and-so said such and such a thing, I was really hurt," or, "I'm really angry," or, "I'm scared." And usually there's resentment, there's anger, fear of the thing happening again, which is where boundaries come in. So the first step would be being with the emotions that got brought up, processing the anger, processing the hurt, Being with the fear and processing that, whatever your emotional processing patterns are, and being with that, processing it would be a first step. Second step would be— that would be like the heart step, taking care of the heart and the emotional body. The second step would be more like the head step, and that would be getting curious, like, oh, I wonder what made that person do XYZ. I wonder, like, what was going on for them? Or what— why would they say such a thing? Or what— or even asking them what was happening for them, getting curious, coming to a state of wonder about what wounds or wisdom led them to say or do the action they took. Just getting curious, which is a way of kind of like, usually when we've been hurt and we're not forgiving, our hearts close down because of the hurt and our minds close down and we have a story about the person. So it would be like doing what we have to do to Open the mind and letting go of the story a little bit to get curious would be the second part. And then the third part would be, oh, what are the boundaries I need going forward? That would be like the gut part. Like, oh, I don't ever wanna be alone in a room with that person again. I get that boundary. Or I'm not gonna spend a week with my, you know, my Aunt Alice. Like, that sounds awful on my vacation. I'm never gonna do that. Great. You get your boundaries. And usually once you have the curiosity, the emotional processing, and those clear boundaries, forgiveness is an inevitable byproduct.

And by that you mean it's like the, the heart reopens. Yeah.

I think the reason we don't want to forgive is because we want to make sure it never happens again.

Yes.

We want to make sure like, oh, that, that wasn't okay. And I'm going to be angry at them so that I never put myself in that position again. So that's actually appropriate. Those boundaries are appropriate. But how do we have the boundaries without having to blame the other person or have hatred or resentment or lingering hurt in our own systems? And then with those boundaries, yeah, the heart can open again. It's like, oh right, you know, Aunt Alice was just doing what she does to survive in the world, and I can't change her, and I don't want to be around her, but I can absolutely forgive her because she's just doing what Aunt Alice is going to do. Like, more power to her. I don't have to be around it, but I can forgive her. Which in turn, when we're not holding that blame or resentment or, "Grrr," story, I actually think like it releases our, our, a kind of a toxicity that isn't— it's meant to protect us from doing it again, but it's not serving, truly serving us and our bodies and our hearts and our guts. Blame eats at us. I actually think it releases all sorts of hormones that are not healthy for us long-term.

Yeah, it reminds me of some cliché that's like, holding onto your anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Well said. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Holding onto resentment because, or blame or hatred. Feels protective, and it is protective, but it doesn't necessarily serve us long term.

Yeah. The other thing that I'm— I think I'm hearing is sort of like, it's almost like the anger or the resentment is taking the place of boundaries. So once you have the boundaries, then you can let go of all this sort of charge that you're otherwise holding on to.

Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't eat at yourself. It's a boundary.

Wow. Yeah, that is a very different kind of image of what forgiveness is than what I was taught as a child, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, me too. But it feels good. You know, the few times that I've gone through big— we had a situation with a housemate where I was like, constantly getting challenged and challenged and challenged, and I really hated this person. I blamed them 100%. And when I could Move all those emotions and see where it— like, part of my process was also seeing where I was responsible, not taking responsibility for the other person, but seeing where I was responsible. That actually empowered me to go, oh, I'm— here's how I'm hooking. When I'm responsible, I can hold the boundary and just go, yeah, I don't want that. And then I don't need to blame the other person. I can just have my wants and my needs and my boundaries. And it's very simple.

Wow.

Okay.

At risk of like kind of going too deep into the rabbit hole here, it sounds also like that required you to forgive yourself.

Ab— Yeah, it's beautiful. It's very true.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And have the same thing, that wonder and curiosity about the other person for myself too. Like, oh, compassion. Because wonder is really about coming to compassion for the other, but compassion for self. Like, of course that I did that with boundaries. Like, I wasn't taught healthy boundaries. I didn't think it was okay to have boundaries. So yes, I could have complete compassion for myself and for the other person and forgiveness for self and the other. Yeah, I, yeah, for me it was very much a two-way street.

It has me thinking about people who've been through something really where they really feel betrayed. And I imagine that there's a way that this language of like, how I was responsible, could, could like hit up against something pretty deep there. But what I do hear you saying that I really like is, is it's like, yeah, when you found where you weren't having a boundary that allowed you to be open-hearted and still be safe or get what you need, that it allowed you to reorient the way that you're living moving forward. It doesn't I just want to say, I don't think that makes you responsible for whatever happened before you found that boundary, but it does give you that agency moving forward.

Yeah. So language here is really, um, slippery. And for me, you're right about response. Like, no one's ever responsible for things that happen to them, but for knowing, oh, here is what I did that enabled this to happen. Yeah. I can actually then take action and create a boundary around it so that I'm not in that position again.

Yeah.

Like with this person, I wasn't clearly stating my boundaries because I felt guilty about them. So I was like, oh, it would be really nice if I just had some quiet time alone with the kids, as opposed to like, no, it's Saturday and please don't come to the door, please don't come by. Like, this is a— this is family time only, period. Like, so me not wanting to hurt anybody's feelings led to less clear boundaries, which enabled the whole situation to happen. So I, I, for that situation, could go, oh, I'm responsible for not having really clearly communicated my boundaries. And then in taking that responsibility, which is gonna be different.

Yeah.

In different situations, but in taking the responsibility for it, for me, it's actually an incredibly empowered action. Because then I'm really responsible for that happening again in the future. Like, I can say, oh, here's that— that thing again is happening. It smells familiar. And right now I'm going to say this doesn't work for me. I'm sorry if that sounds really hard. Everyone, boundaries are hard for me, but this doesn't work for me. And I'm taking Saturday off, period.

I love it. Something that that pings in me is like, yeah, and I get to be iterative here. This is changing my identity. So I'm going to try a boundary. And see if that clears it. And I don't have to get it right on the first try.

In fact, I might not get it right for the first 10 tries. Yeah.

Right.

And I'm going to keep going until my gut's like, that's the boundary. Oh, the boundary is that I get my boundaries. That's what I learned.

Yeah.

Oh, the actual boundary isn't about Saturday or Sunday. It's I get my boundaries. Yeah. That mm is the protection, right? Like, I'm not going to let it happen again. And if we get our boundaries, then we don't need that. If we know that we can have our boundaries. Right, I get my boundaries.

Yeah, it makes me realize that this— it's, it's an ego structure that is meant to be doing the control through means of holding on to that charger. It's almost like a— if you're looking at an internal forgiveness process, it's almost like these people are choosing to punish themselves for the thing, and they're afraid that if they stop punishing themselves, then they won't XYZ. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And sometimes not even aware that they're punishing themselves, right? Because it's all aimed outwardly. Er, but that er, you know, what do they say? One finger pointed out is, yeah, however many, three fingers pointed back.

I don't know, how many fingers do I have? Am I a product of AI?

Yeah, so that er is, it eats at us, right? Blame, blame eats at us. I actually think it releases all sorts of hormones that are not healthy for us long term.

Yeah. What about if you— I'm imagining a person who, uh, is afraid that this— that whoever they're having trouble forgiving is going to hurt somebody else in the same way.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really good one. And so then it's like, what's the boundary? I'd go to— if you've done all the emotional work, like, ah, What's the boundary? And it might be speaking with children, like, okay, we're not going to spend Thanksgiving with so-and-so, and I really don't want you ever to be alone in a room with this person.

You can accept someone as part of the tribe, part of the group, and the tribe can have boundaries.

Boundaries. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I would say that actually invites that person's behavior to change more than anything else. Like, oh, I'm going to forgive you. I see your goodness. I see your inherent goodness. I don't like this kind of behavior, but I'm not going to exile you forever. I'm going to just have these clear boundaries to take care of me, my family, my community.

Yeah.

But I'm not going to make you bad. Right. That, that is inviting the perpetrator into a different reality.

That is what I'm interested in.

Yeah.

Uh, there's such a fear that people have that if they forgive someone who's done something bad, that, um, they won't be protected, other people won't be protected.

Yeah.

And there is a question of boundaries, like, yeah, maybe I can protect my family, but I can't protect the other families. Maybe I can protect my company from this guy, But actually, I don't, I don't want this to happen to my friend's company who now hires this guy.

And I think the "when is it right to" can fuck us from feeling the real boundary. That's my easiest way to fuck myself from finding the boundary is for me going, "Oh, is that the right thing?" Because then I'm in, like, right/wrong as opposed to what's my boundary? Oh, my boundary is that something happened there and that wasn't the right move. And I need to tell the marketing department at this company that I had a really bad, or I need to tell the sales department at this company that I had a really bad experience with this new salesperson I just hired. And I'm gonna tell the head of sales. Yeah. What they choose to do with it is their responsibility.

Yeah.

But my system is gonna feel clear if I share it. And I've watched people actually share that information, watched it with a company, someone, They hired someone for sales. The sales guy had fucked them at another company. They warned the CEO, head of sales, everybody. And then the sales guy cooked the books and fucked their IPO. But that person had warned leadership and they hadn't taken action. So he felt totally clear and like, I spoke to them, I told them what I saw and what I'd seen. Yeah.

I did my part.

What they choose to do with it is theirs. And so the boundary just is me sharing, not their action or reaction. It's in a way, it's like, okay, what can I— what am I going to— at the end of the day, what can I live with? So it's kind of different than a boundary. It's like, what do I have to feel good about at the end of the day to keep my heart open to myself and others?

Yeah, or just how do I know that I'm living my truth in such a way that I feel good and clear and I can occupy the whole space of me.

Exactly. And if I try to think what's the right thing to do, I have lost how can I feel clear. What's the— what feels good for me gets lost in what's the right thing. Yeah. But the truth of the matter is that guy's going to go into another company whether we like it or not. Just because we're not forgiving him, that doesn't change his behavior. It's— he's— we haven't— unless we put him behind bars. But he can actually go and he's free to work where— and go off into other communities, even if we exile him from our own. So we haven't truly protected anybody. And we're just holding this false idea of not forgiving so that we can think we're protecting something we're not actually protecting.

That is a big statement. It makes me want to ask, so is there a way to actually do the protecting, or is that an illusion?

Well, I would say the only way to protect is to get someone, a perpetrator, behind bars, which sometimes is actually 100% appropriate. But even then, we can forgive, right? That's the boundary behind bars. If they've done something that's literally breaking a law, injuring, physically injuring other people. We can— that might be the boundary. And my deepest belief is if we do the forgiveness thing, hold our hearts to this openness and invite someone else into a different reality, that that is potentially inviting them into a different reality than if we just cut them off and chose not to forgive. Yeah. Like And you've— I've, I've heard stories of this time and time again where sometimes they're behind bars, but like someone murdered someone and then the grandmother went and forged a relationship with the murderer to— for her own healing and her own heart. And a relationship unfolds and she can see like, oh, he grew up in this horrible situation. Like his behavior, you don't condone the behavior, but you can understand and have compassion for where the behavior came from. And it does change you and it does change them. I mean, you can't think, I'm gonna do this to change someone else, but being in, especially if you stay in relationship with someone else through your forgiveness process, they are changed more often than not is my experience from that process, from seeing your heart open to them.

Wow.

Okay.

Let me just make sure I understand. They are changed by our holding this process as sacred and for ourselves, that it does the forgiveness that we are going through that process changes them.

Yeah, I do. I do believe that, that that's the, that's the sacred possibility.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean don't Don't grab the— you get the boundary, you get the boundary.

I mean, it seems like that's a really important part of the process. You have to have the boundary for the dynamic to have the ability to change.

Yeah. In fact, you— it will not change if you do not have boundaries. Yes. Yeah.

It also really helps me to see just how compassionate it can be to have really strong boundaries.

Yeah. Yes, two ways. Yes, compassion to itself and other. Oh yeah, I mean, boundaries are one of the greatest acts of compassion.

Yeah, it's, it's really interesting to think that if you're in a situation where you're kind of like not sure you want to forgive somebody, that staying in that state, holding the charge they're just bad, whatever the thing may be, is more likely to perpetuate the dynamics that they're in. Um, but that taking all of this process on, finding the boundaries that allow you to go through the forgiveness process, and then going through that process of forgiveness, is more likely to actually create change for them.

I'd say forgiveness is— it's you, it's your heart, it's your life, it's your body. How do you take care of you? What do need? How do you proceed around forgiveness compassionately for you and having compassion for other? Because the more we snark on the other, we're somehow snarking on self.

Well, that actually makes me think, you know, um, when I started this, I said something about like, oh, in our culture, often forgiveness is really charged. But I realized that there is another side to that. Like I grew up in the Christian church, forgiveness is held to be quite sacred. And although it is often coerced out of children in this way, I actually, I wonder about that sacredness and what is it to still hold forgiveness as sacred.

So beautiful. Such a beautiful framework. Because I think even outside of a church perspective that, um, when we go through a forgiveness process where we have that mind opening leading to compassion for self and others, and that heart opening and the clarity of the boundary, I think that our identity, some parts of our identity and how we think the world works, actually melts away. That we are different on the other side of our forgiveness process. I know for myself personally, when I've— that situation I was talking about with the housemate where I had to really learn boundaries was one of the biggest learning, learnings of my adult life where I was literally different on the other side. And, and my heart was different. My knowing of our interconnectedness was different. My identity was literally different on the other side.

Yeah, it's really cool. It sounds like forgiveness is for ourselves. It cleans up a lot of kind of the gunk in the system. It can make you more efficient. It can get rid of a lot of the twirlies that are like self-punishment. And also that it's soul work.

Yeah. Deep, deep soul work and inner personal soul work, interconnected soul work and, and interconnected soul work. Yeah, beautifully said.

So I don't know if this is a crazy question, but how can we express that sacredness in a forgiveness process?

You know, the first thing that comes to my mind when you ask that question, such a good question, is, um, how do you hold self gently? Like, really not like, okay, I have to forgive. That would be the old model, more of the same, like coerced apology, coerced forgiveness. But how do you hold the— how do you hold yourself super gently and compassionately through, um, through a forgiveness process? Like, oh, I get to take as much time as I need here. I get to be with my heart. I get to hang out with all my different feelings. I get to have compassion for myself on the pace of my process. That's That would be my first step to the sacred. Yeah.

And the boundaries too are soul work.

Yes. Truly. We are a finite being here, right? And we have a body boundary and we are interconnected to everything. And so the boundaries help honor the interconnectedness to everything and the finite being, like boundaries are a way to honor the both-and-ness of that. Yeah, like, boundaries are, are the ultimate non-dual tool. That's such a funny statement. I have, but it hits something.

Yes, it does.

Yeah.

Okay, so this does bring up another question for me. What if you want forgiveness from somebody else and you're already holding it as sacred thing. Yeah, how do you approach that?

Yeah, I love that sacred word. So good. I would say approaching it as a sacred thing and continuing to do the process with yourself with that sacredness, with that compassion and self-care attitude. So you're going gently and doing all the— you want forgiveness from someone else, but doing the work here first, like the emotional work. You may have guilt, you may have shame, hanging out with that processing that, being with it and all the other emotions, um, and forgiving yourself first. Like, what do you need to forgive yourself for? What are you asking for forgiveness for? And how can you forgive yourself for it? What, um, emotional work do you have to do? What boundaries do you need? And then when that's all clear, often it's already done just by doing all of that emotional work and the self-forgiveness, the, um, the relationship feels clear to the— or the thing you wanted feels clear and clean already. But staying here first, and then after that, going to the other person and asking for forgiveness without an agenda. I would encourage, if you're asking for forgiveness for someone else, you're not going to them trying to force them or coerce them into forgiveness, but actually opening and asking from an open heart.

Yeah, it strikes me that you're, you're kind of saying if you actually do all the work on your own side to come back to the open heart, then it almost doesn't matter. Um, you've anyway done the work, you've anyway done the forgiveness, and whether or not they're drinking poison is their business.

Their business, exactly. You stay in your lane. And then they're living, and that's their life.

Yeah.

And my experiences when I've done my work and then I go and ask for forgiveness, 90% of the time, whether or not they give me forgiveness doesn't matter. And, and usually we come back into relationship and the, the, the, the pathway is cleared and connection is reestablished beautifully.

Yeah.

Regardless of what they choose to do.

Yeah, right, because I have to front-run this piece of compassion right now and say we never know what kind of charge, what kind of baggage somebody has attached to the idea of forgiveness, but we can do that work ourselves regardless of what they're carrying.

That's right.

Yeah, you know, throughout this conversation, it sounds like forgiveness is something that you're tracking on like an energetic level, as in, is my heart back to being open and clear? So I just wonder, I guess, is that a way to tell if the forgiveness has happened?

For me, I tend to be more somatic, so it is feeling the heart. And also, is the mind— do I still have a story about the other person? Oh, they're an asshole, um, or they did that wrong. Do I have a wrong right? So it's like, how open is the mind around it? How much has the mind let go of me, them, them bad, me good, me victim, them bully, or whatever the story of separation is. And somatically, does the heart feel open? And do— can I feel love for them? Do I have boundaries in the gut? Like, how, how much clench is there in the gut? So I am somatically, energetically tracking it for sure. And intellectually, like, what are my thoughts around it? If my thoughts are like, fuck them, I haven't quite finished the process yet.

Yeah, it's like that charge is still there.

Still there.

Yeah.

And okay, what— okay, fuck them. I need to do a little more anger work.

Yeah, yeah. Or maybe find a bigger boundary.

Find the bound— what's the real boundary that the fuck them— it's like, oh, I don't want to Often it's like, I just, I don't want to be around that. Oh, right. I'll forget, like, oh, I get that boundary. I just don't want to be around it. Just because I have gone through forgiveness doesn't mean I have to go spend my vacation time with these people, right? Or even, you know, go out for dinner. I say, no, I don't. I'm not really interested in hanging out, but I can have total forgiveness in my system.

Okay. Well, this is great. I loved this conversation. So I think that's our episode.

Awesome, Alexa. So fun to talk with you.

Thank you for being with me today, Taryn.

An honor and a pleasure always, Alexa.