My Outlook on Forgiveness

Forgiveness doesn’t always mean what we’ve been taught it should mean.

In this episode, I share why I don’t forgive my sisters—not from a place of bitterness or resentment, but from a place of healing and self-respect. For me, forgiveness is not about excusing harm, restoring access, or rewriting the truth. It’s about releasing myself from the weight of what happened and choosing peace without denial.

This conversation explores toxic family dynamics, the pressure to forgive prematurely, and the freedom that comes from redefining forgiveness on your own terms. If you’ve ever struggled with the idea that forgiveness must look a certain way, this episode offers a new perspective—one rooted in clarity, boundaries, and choosing yourself.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome to another episode of the Healing Poetic Podcast. I am your host, Kia McLean, and I wanted to recap the last four episodes, which was about my relationship and then non-relationship with two of my sisters and my outlook and my healing journey as it pertains to forgiveness. So today's podcast is entitled, My Outlook on Forgiveness. And so I wanted to also make it clear, I've said this in several of the other podcasts related to this topic, but I want to make this very clear. This is not about malice or attack. It's about truth, healing, and helping others who may be at their own crossroads. Today, I want to share why I don't forgive my sisters and what forgiveness truly means to me. And before I delve into that, I do want to address this one thing. Interestingly enough, I was having a conversation with some ladies that I'm planning an event with. And one of the ladies asked me about my forgiveness of my sister. I had always talked about forgiveness. I always would say, you know, tell other people, you should forgive them, not for you, but for them. Not for them, but for you, right? This is a common thing that we would say, specifically from the church, from my experience. And I pondered, I kept pondering on it, even though I would say it, even as others would say it to me, there was always something in the back of my mind that was like, that doesn't really resonate with me. In the same way that my book, Untangling Grief, how I talk about a lot of the methods and ways that people talked about healing grief did not make sense to me. It did not connect with me. And so that's when I went into my inner self of trying to understand and come to an understanding on my own, not what other people said, not what other people thought, not what other people interpreted. I wanted to sit with myself and discover what that felt like. And I think I'm gonna be talking about my experience, I'm gonna be talking about my outlook, but this is to point you in the direction of knowing that you can figure out what works best for you. You don't have to go by what other people are telling you about how to process your pain, I feel like I'm at a space of life where I'm going to be truly authentic about my feelings, about what I feel is best for me. And so that's where I am. I don't feel like I need to forgive anybody that I don't genuinely forgive. And I'm gonna go into depth about that because I talked to the young ladies on a call as we were planning this event together. And then I talked to my husband about it, because he even, in fact, asked me the same question about forgiving them. So one of the common beliefs, I think this is across the board for many people, is that forgiveness means letting people off the hook. My personal interpretation of forgiveness is healing to make my own decision. Then healing the parts of me that made certain decisions or a non-decision or even the ignorance and allowing certain behaviors, certain personalities to be a part of my life, certain things that people would say and do not being acknowledged to try to keep things peaceful or to keep the get along to get along mess. So I I had to reconsider what forgiveness was to me because it didn't feel authentic to say that I forgave people that I didn't forgive. Now, what coincides with this is that my unforgiveness doesn't hold weight of anger or feelings that are negative and that keep coming up for me, that's not what my unforgiveness is. My unforgiveness is saying it's your responsibility to forgive yourself for your actions. I don't forgive your betrayal. I don't forgive your willful desire to harm me, to cause me pain. I don't forgive that. But I do forgive myself for allowing the betrayal, for allowing the hurt, for for betraying myself and not trusting my instinct so that is the energy that I chose to put into forgiveness I chose to put my energy into myself of forgiveness other people forgiving other people is their responsibility to forgive themselves for their actions for their behavior it's not up to me to do that I don't even really believe that I have the power to forgive somebody I can only forgive myself. And so for me, again, this is my outlook. This is my experience with this emotion. And I understand and am aware that releasing my sisters was a huge part of my healing. It was a massive part of my healing because I wasn't being completely honest with myself about those connections and about those relationships. But I could feel comfort and confidence in the way that I've built sisterly connections elsewhere with the women who show genuine love loyalty and support and so I recognize that some of those connections already existed that I still had an opportunity to build those types of connections and that even though I detached myself from the people that have done things to me my sisters included that doesn't mean I stopped loving It doesn't mean I stop caring. The number one thing that it means is it means that I'm protecting my peace. So my detachment from them has not stopped my love for them. My detachment from them has not stopped my desire for them to have the things that they desire in their heart. My detachment from them has not changed me having support for them. So at the end of the day, my desire to detach from anything that's unhealthy, despite whatever title or role you may play in my life, does not mean I don't care. It doesn't mean that I don't love you. The same way that because I don't forgive you doesn't mean I don't care and I don't love you. It just means that I don't forgive your behavior. You did something intentional. you did something willfully you did something with the desire to harm me that is not behavior that I forgive and so that is what actually has worked best for me because when I stepped into the truth of that rather than denying that they didn't do that for that reason and I need to forgive them for me to free myself like that was lying to myself for me It really was lying to myself. And so it's not a one size fit all as it relates to forgiveness. You know, you must do it your way as long as it doesn't cause harm to anybody. If your way of forgiveness doesn't cause harm to anyone, fine. But if your way of forgiveness does cause harm because you're lying that you forgive someone, but you're still harboring the hurt and the pain and the anger, that's going to come out in a different way. Me being honest about not forgiving them gives me the opportunity to, again, be honest about it, not lie about it, not push it down, not force myself to believe something that I don't honestly believe. And, you know, my path with therapy and doing mindset work, Dr. Joe Dispenza, someone I listen to quite often, And implementing boundaries, all of that has been about choosing what's healthiest and most genuine for me. And through my journey of therapy, through my journey of healing work, through my journey of setting boundaries, I have got to basically create my own summary of a health plan. You know, when you go to a a doctor, the doctor says, hey, I'm going to give you this plan. I want you to work this plan and do these things. And you should be back at 100% in X amount of time. I create some of that on my own based on what feels and what resonates with me the most. I don't go by what resonates with most people because I don't have to live the lives of those other people. I have to live my own life. So I operate from a space of hey this is your life this is the way that you want to do certain things and so you get to do that you don't have to do this because other people are doing it because other people feel like this is the best way to heal because they say forgive other people I genuinely do what is best for me and I don't care about other people's opinions I don't care about other people's thoughts on it because again, I come home to me. I have to deal with me. I have to go and move around this world as me. I'm moving through this journey as me. I'm not moving as that person over there and that person over there. I don't have the issues that other people have and other people don't have the issues that I have. Other people don't have my experiences and I don't have theirs. So I operate from a genuine space I don't pretend. I don't fake. I don't try to follow the masses. And when I have followed the masses, the moment that I decide to go internally, I either connect with it and continue or I disconnect and I find my own way. And that is what I encourage you to do. Find your own way. Forgiveness for me is releasing myself from anger. Not excusing others from accountability so the accountability on your end is me not forgiving you that's the accountability for you and then you still have work to do by forgiving yourself but the there has to be some type of retribution that I get and my retribution for me is I have peace I still have peace in not forgiving you because I'm being authentic about it. The peace is wrecked when I lie about it. My peace gets affected when I'm not being authentic and I'm going with what somebody said, what somebody said that God said, what somebody said that grandma said, what somebody said the Bible said. I go by what resonates with me and God is within me. So I get to experience God before anybody gets to say anything to me God has already said it to me. So from my level of experience and relationship with God, I have a very, very personal, real, and amazing connection to God. And through that experience personally, because of God's internal presence in my life, God has given that to me. So for me, that is how that works. Other people move about that in a different way. No, not to them. No criticism to them. I am about people doing it in the way that feels most authentic to them. If it feels authentic, go for it. If that's what you truly feel, go for it. It didn't feel authentic to me saying, I forgive them. Forgiveness is about me freeing myself and not them. No, that's not what it felt like for me. I ain't even going to lie. I ain't going to hold you. It didn't feel like that. to me that felt like some bullshit that people were saying. And then I just adopted that because I wasn't going inward. I wasn't connecting with myself. I wasn't connecting with the inner God of myself. So that is not something that was clear to me initially. And again, I'm sharing this story from a space of healing. I'm not, again, sharing this to judge anyone. I'm not sharing this to attack anyone I'm not sharing this to make other people believe or not believe whatever it is they currently believe. I feel like you should connect with whatever and whomever is what you feel connected to, period. I have no qualms or judgment about that whatsoever. I'm trying to encourage you as the listener, excuse me, that if you're struggling with forgiveness, like you're saying I forgive them and it's about me forgiving them, not about them. It's about me forgiving and it has nothing to do with them. If you feel off about that, like I did, if you feel like, hmm, that kind of sounds like some BS to me or that doesn't really resonate with me, that's fine. Sit within yourself. You don't have to come to the same conclusion that I've come up with. But what you can do is you can sit within yourself and figure out what what forgiveness looks like for you. And it may very well look very differently. Give yourself that permission to define it in the best way for you. What feels authentic to you? What feels like protection for you? And know that you can detach and still thrive. You can release and still love yourself fully. So I can detach from them, right? And them is my sisters and anybody else that I've detached from I can detach and I can still thrive I can still thrive in my own life but still thrive in my affection or love or care for them and I can release people things places and I can still love myself fully you know my life is better because I chose healing and release and yours can be too Yours can be too. You have to choose you. We have gotten so comfortable with just following the masses, following the norm. And that is the thing. We have been taught to follow. When have you been taught to lead? When have you been taught to go within, know who you are? This is one of the reasons why people are really struggling with identity. They're struggling with self-love. They're struggling with comparing themselves to other people and being jealous. One of the things that I would do is I would feel like my life was not where it should be based on where other people's lives were. I don't feel like it was jealousy. I feel like it was me comparing myself to other people's lives and feeling like, well, they're at this age and they're doing this, why haven't I done that? Why aren't I doing that? The other day I told my husband, how dare I? How dare I tear myself down and not see myself with all these wins, with all these achievements, with all this success? How dare I not feel confident about the success I've had rather than chasing the next success? Rather than hunting the next goal down. I've published 10 books in nine years. 10 books in nine years. I started a nonprofit organization back in my home city. I started a business nine years ago. I've earned four college degrees. I've been a great mom and was a teen mom and is a great mom. My son's 30 years old now. I finished raising my nephew. He's in his senior year in college now. I'm in a beautiful, successful, amazing marriage right now. I live a very comfortable, peaceful life. I've succeeded at a lot of things. A lot. I've done so many things to be proud of. So there's a lot of things that I have had to heal from and I've had to release from my life because I started to understand that I was worthy of it. And the moment that I recognized that and I stopped cheating myself by being connected to people who didn't love themselves so they couldn't love me, as soon as I stopped, I became so much better. to myself for myself. So thank you for listening to this series on sisterhood and healing. If this resonated with you in any way, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. And don't you forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next conversation. Healing is personal, but it's not something you have to do alone. I created the Healing poetic podcast after writing my three-part poetic series that I published. My Words Healed My Soul was the first one. The Depths of My Soul Healed Through Love and Empowerment was the second book. And The Constant Road to Healing was the third book. All part of that series on just healing, sharing personal stories of overcoming struggles. And this podcast was created to help others. I always wanted others to be able to connect with my stories and the ways that I overcame these things. And if any way, any part of my story helps you, I've done my job. I don't do this to become a millionaire or make a whole lot of money. If it comes, I'm open to it. I feel like I deserve it. I feel I feel like I'm worthy of it. I feel like abundance is mine. So I'm not going to tell you that I don't think that I should reap the benefits of sharing my gift, using my gift, living truly in my gift. Yes. And if you want to support me in other ways by purchasing any of the books, you can go out to my website, which is kiascoaching.com. It's K-E-Y-A-S coaching.com. So look, thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for showing up in support of me. And if you'll do me the favor of subscribing, sharing, sending me a note, or you can even show up and support as a monthly subscriber where an amount can be donated as low as$1 a month. So as always, thank you for your attention. Thank you for your love thank you for your support and mostly thank you for your openness to what I share it may be something that you differ on in terms of thoughts or beliefs but I believe that we can all coexist even when our beliefs are differently even when our perception is different because we've all experienced life differently so until next time I am Kia McLean the poet, your host, the healing hardcore poet. And again, I wish you nothing but the absolute best. Until next time, peace.