Forgiveness and Abuse - The Truth Nobody Tells You
- JILL | INNER HEALING COACH
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- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Nobody told me that forgiveness was for me.
For more than twenty years I sat in churches, counseling rooms, and conversations with people I trusted. And what I heard over and over again was forgive. Move on. Let it go. Underneath all of it was the unspoken message that my healing was somehow contingent on my willingness to do something that felt impossible given what had been done to me.
Nobody told me that the people asking me to forgive were sometimes the same people protecting the ones who hurt me. That forgiveness was being used as a tool to keep me quiet and keep everyone else comfortable. That what was being called spiritual maturity was sometimes just silence dressed up in scripture.
And nobody told me the most important thing of all.
That forgiveness had nothing to do with them.
I want to talk to you today about what forgiveness actually is. Not the version that gets handed to women who have been abused as if it is a prescription that will fix what was broken. The real version. The one I had to find my way to through some of the most painful years of my life.
I am still forgiving people today.
I want you to know that before we go any further.
My own adult children. My ex-husband and his family. The pastors who guilted me. The Catholics who told me I was going to hell for leaving a marriage that was destroying me. The friends who disappeared when I needed them most. The mentors who chose sides. The people who violated me and faced no consequences and went on with their lives as if I did not exist.
I am not telling you that from a place of bitterness. I am telling you because I want you to understand that forgiveness is not something that happens once and then you are finished. It is something you choose. Again, and again. On the hard days and the ordinary days and the days when a memory surfaces out of nowhere and the pain feels exactly as fresh as it did when it first happened.
And the pain does not go away just because you forgave.
I need to say that again because I do not think it gets said enough.
The pain does not disappear because you forgave. Forgiveness is not anesthesia. It does not erase what happened or dissolve the grief or mean that you no longer feel the weight of what was taken from you.
What it does is stop that pain from being in charge.
There is a difference between carrying grief and being ruled by it. Between remembering what happened and being held hostage by it. Between acknowledging the injustice of what was done to you and letting that injustice determine the rest of your life.
Forgiveness is the line between those two things.
What God Actually Says About It
God does not say forgive when you are ready. He does not say forgive if they deserve it or forgive once the apology comes or forgive after you have had enough time to process it.
He says forgive as you have been forgiven.
And none of us deserved that either. Ephesians 4:32 "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."
I know how hard that is to receive when what was done to you was done in the dark by someone who was supposed to be safe. When the abuse happened inside a marriage or a family or a church. When the people who should have protected you were the ones who caused the wound. When you carried it alone for years because no one believed you or supported you or helped you go after the person who violated you.
I know. Because I lived it.
And I am not standing here telling you to forgive from a place of ease. I am telling you from the place of someone who had to choose it for her mother every single day for nine months before her mother died. Someone who had to choose it inside a marriage that was taking everything from her while being told that leaving would cost her God's forgiveness. Someone who is still choosing it today for people who will probably never understand what they cost her. Colossians 3:13 "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."
I choose it because God asks me to.
And because I finally understood that as long as I refused, I was the one still living at the scene of what happened. They had moved on. They were living their lives. And I was still in that room, still in that marriage, still at that table, still carrying something that was never mine to carry alone for the rest of my life.
They had already taken enough from me.
My childhood. My sense of safety. Years I cannot get back. Parts of myself I have had to rebuild piece by piece.
They do not get my future too.
What Forgiveness Actually Is
Forgiveness is not something you do for the person who hurt you.
It is something you do for yourself. Matthew 6:14 "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."
It is the moment you decide that what they did to you will not be the thing that defines what comes next. It is not trust restored. It is not a relationship reconciled. It is not pretending that what happened was acceptable or that the wound was not as deep as it was.
It is simply the decision to stop letting their sin live in your body, your nervous system, your sleep, your health, and your future.
And that decision, made as an act of obedience and as an act of reclaiming your own life, is what begins to change things inside you.
Not overnight. Not without grief. Not without having to choose it again on days you least expect to need to. But genuinely and deeply in a way that nothing else can produce.
Watch This Week's Video
I want you to watch this before you read any further. Everything I have written here grew out of this conversation but hearing it and reading it are two different experiences. Please take the time to let them both sink in.
This Is What the Work Is For
That is what the Inner Healing Journey Method exists for. Not to make forgiveness unnecessary. To give you the strength, the safety, and the support to keep choosing it on the days when it is the hardest thing you have ever been asked to do.
Because that work is not optional. Not if you truly want to be free. Not if you want to reclaim your identity, your health, and your peace as a woman who has carried more than she was ever meant to carry alone.
There is no freedom without forgiveness.
I did not always believe that. But I have lived enough of both sides of it now to know that it is true.
And I want that freedom for you.
If you are ready to stop carrying this alone, the Inner Healing Journey Method is where that work begins. Not a formula. Not a performance. Real work at the level where the wound actually lives, with someone who has walked this road herself and knows the way through.
Everything is waiting for you at innerhealingcoaching.com
And if you are a man reading this, a husband, a father, a pastor, a leader, Raising Her Worth was built for you. Because the women in your life need you to understand what they have been carrying. When that understanding changes, everything beneath it changes too.
If this reached you today, please share it with another woman who needs to hear it. She does not need more pressure to forgive. She needs the truth about what forgiveness actually is and what it will do for her life.
Please share it with another woman who needs to hear this too. She does not need more pressure to forgive. She needs the truth about what forgiveness actually is and what it will do for her.
God bless your healing.
With love and respect,
Jill Inner Healing Coach Founder,
Inner Healing Journey Method™ and Raising Her Worth
Helping women reclaim their worth, restore their voice, and walk in healing.
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