Chapter 12
THERE’S NO FORGIVENESS WITHOUT RAGE
The Prison of Not Forgiving
People often ask how I can ever forgive the Nazis. I don’t have the godly power to anoint anyone with forgiveness, to spiritually cleanse others for their wrongs.
But I have the power to free myself.
So do you.
Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the person who’s hurt us. It’s something we do for ourselves, so we’re no longer victims or prisoners of the past, so we can stop carrying a burden that harbors nothing but pain.
Another misconception about forgiveness is that the way to make peace with someone who has harmed us is to say, “I’m done with her.”
It doesn’t work that way. It’s not about cutting someone out. It’s about letting go.
As long as you say you can’t forgive someone, you’re spending energy being against rather than being for yourself and the life you deserve. To forgive isn’t to give someone permission to keep hurting you. It’s not okay that you were harmed. But it’s already done. No one but you can heal the wound.
This kind of release doesn’t come easily. It’s not an overnight process. And lots of things get in the way. A desire for justice, or revenge, an apology, even just acknowledgment.
For years I maintained the fantasy of tracking down Josef Mengele in Paraguay, where he fled after the war. I’d pose as a sympathizer, a journalist, to gain access, and then I’d walk into his house and look him in the face and say, “I’m the girl who danced for you in Auschwitz. You murdered my mother.” I wanted to see the look on his face, the truth land in his eyes, no place to run. I wanted him to stand before his wrongs, defenseless. I wanted to feel strong and triumphant because he was weak. I wasn’t after revenge, not exactly. Somehow I sensed that making someone else hurt wasn’t going to take away my pain. But for a long time, this fantasy gave me such satisfaction. Except that it didn’t take away my rage and grief—it just deferred them.
It’s easier to release the past when others see your truth, tell the truth. When there’s a collective process—restorative justice, war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation committees—through which perpetrators are accountable for the harm they inflicted and the court of the world holds the truth to the light.
But your life doesn’t depend on what you get or don’t get from someone else. Your life is your own.
What I say next might surprise you.
There’s no forgiveness without rage.
For many years I had tremendous problems with anger. I wouldn’t acknowledge it. It terrified me. I thought that I’d get lost in it. That once it started, it was never going to end. That it would totally consume me. But as I’ve said before, the opposite of depression is expression. What comes out of our body doesn’t make us ill. What stays in there does. Forgiveness is release, and I couldn’t let go until I gave myself permission to feel and express my rage. I finally asked my therapist to sit on me, to hold me down so I had a force to push against, so I could release a primal scream.
Silent rage is self-destructive. If you’re not actively, consciously, intentionally releasing it, you’re holding on to it. And that’s not going to do you any good.
Neither is venting anger. That’s when you blow your top. It might feel cathartic in the moment, but others foot the bill. And it can become addictive. You’re not really releasing anything. You’re just perpetuating a cycle—a harmful one.
The best thing to do with anger is to learn to channel it, and then dissolve it.
It might sound simple enough. But if you’ve been taught to be a “good girl” or a “good boy,” taught that anger is unacceptable or frightening, if you’ve been hurt by someone else’s rage, it isn’t easy to let yourself feel—much less express—your anger.
When Lena’s husband suddenly told her with no explanation, no discussion, that he wanted a divorce, she was shocked by loss. A year later, she’s coping admirably, staying on top of work, supporting and loving her three kids, even beginning to date again, sporting a chic haircut and bold earrings. Yet she feels stuck on the inside, unable to move past the feeling that she’s been cheated by life.
“I lost something I didn’t want to lose,” she said. “I wasn’t given a choice.” She went through feelings of deep sadness, grief, and guilt. She summoned strength and energy she didn’t know she had to support her children, proceed with the pragmatic matters of the divorce. But through it all, she couldn’t feel any anger. She’d witnessed a favorite aunt go through a similarly rattling divorce many years earlier, had watched her aunt recede from the world, holding her breath for decades, waiting for her ex-husband to realize he’d made a mistake and beg to come back. She’d died of cancer, still waiting for her husband to return. Haunted by her aunt’s sorrow, Lena took herself for a walk in the woods one day, wanting to release the rage she knew must be lurking within, even if she couldn’t feel it. She followed a trail deep into the forest, and stood among the trees, all alone, prepared to let herself scream as loudly as she could. But the scream wouldn’t come. She was blocked. The more she tried to embrace her anger, the more numb she felt.
“How can I feel and express my anger?” she asked me. “I’m so scared of feeling it. I don’t want to feel it.”
“First, legitimize it,” I told her.
You have a right to feel rage. It’s a human emotion. You are human.
When we can’t release anger, we’re either denying that we were victimized, or denying that we’re human. (That’s how a perfectionist suffers. Silently!) Either way, we’re denying reality. Making ourselves numb, pretending to be fine.
This
