By: Chioma Madonna Ndukwu
The Way We Live: What Unforgiveness Can Do to Your Mind, Body and Relationships
“I have forgiven her,” she said.
“Then why do you still talk about her every time we sit together?”
She laughed, but the laughter did not last. “Because what she did was not small.”
That is where many stories of unforgiveness begin. Someone betrays us, humiliates us, abandons us, lies to us or breaks our trust, and years later, the wound still has a name.
Sometimes, the person who caused the pain has moved on. You have not.
They may have married, started another business, made new friends or simply forgotten the details of what happened. Yet you remember the date, the words, the place and who stood on which side.
The strange thing about resentment is that it can keep a person who is no longer in your life as one of the most regular occupants of your mind.
You may never speak to them again, but you keep having conversations with them in your head.
“I should have told her this.”
“I should have walked away that day.”
“He had no right to do that to me.”
And just like that, yesterday gets another appointment on today’s calendar.
Forgiveness does not mean what happened was acceptable. It does not mean the betrayal was deserved, and it certainly does not mean you must invite the offender back into your life.
You can forgive someone and still keep your distance. You can forgive and refuse to trust them with certain parts of your life again. You can forgive and maintain boundaries.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are not twins. Reconciliation requires two people, while forgiveness can begin with one.
Sometimes, the healthiest thing you can do is release the anger without reopening the door.
There is also a health side to this conversation. Research has linked forgiveness with better psychological well-being and found associations with stress, blood pressure and heart rate.
Studies do not prove that unforgiveness directly causes diseases, but they suggest that repeatedly reliving painful experiences and carrying anger can keep the body under stress.
That does not mean every person who struggles to forgive will develop hypertension, heart disease or another illness. Diseases have many causes. But emotional pain should not be treated as though it has no effect on the person carrying it.
Imagine carrying a suitcase everywhere because someone packed it for you ten years ago. You did not choose what was inside, yet you keep lifting it every morning. That is what unresolved resentment can become.
You carry the betrayal into a new relationship. You carry an old rejection into a new friendship.
You carry the anger into conversations with people who had nothing to do with the original offence. Pain can travel if we allow it.
A woman betrayed by one man may begin punishing the next man for another man’s behaviour. A man embarrassed by one friend may stop trusting every friend.
A child hurt by a parent may grow into an adult who struggles to receive affection. This is why forgiveness can be an act of self-liberation.
The Bible puts it plainly in Colossians 3:13: “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
Ephesians 4:32 adds: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”
For a person of faith, those words carry spiritual weight. But even outside a religious conversation, they raise a human question: how long should another person’s wrongdoing continue deciding the condition of your heart?
From Lagos to London, Johannesburg to New York, people carry remarkably similar wounds.
The details change, a broken marriage, family betrayal, workplace humiliation, a friendship that collapsed or a lover who disappeared without explanation, but the struggle remains familiar.
Desmond Tutu captured another side of human connection when he said, “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” (The Washington Post)
But forgiveness also requires honesty. Some people say, “I have forgiven,” when what they really mean is, “I have stopped talking about it. Those are not always the same thing.
If seeing the person’s name still ruins your entire day, if their happiness makes you angry, or if you keep checking their life just to see whether they are doing better than you, the wound may still need attention.
There is no shame in admitting that. Some wounds need time. Some need distance. Some need a difficult conversation. Some need professional help. And some need nothing more than the courage to stop reopening them every morning.
Then there is the difficult matter of forgiving yourself. Some people are angry with themselves for staying too long, trusting too much, ignoring warning signs or failing to speak up.
“I should have known.”
“I should have left.”
“How could I have been so foolish?”
But you cannot use today’s wisdom to endlessly punish yesterday’s version of yourself. You knew what you knew at the time.
Forgiveness may also mean accepting that you will never receive the apology you wanted. The person may deny what happened. They may never understand the damage they caused.
Your healing cannot be permanently placed in another person’s hands.
Forgiveness does not cancel consequences. If someone continues abusing you, forgiveness does not require you to remain available to them.
You can forgive from a distance.You can wish someone well without giving them another opportunity to hurt you.
And sometimes the clearest sign that you have healed is not that you can speak kindly about the person. It is that their name no longer has the power to ruin your entire day.
Personal Thoughts:
Some people are waiting for an apology before they allow themselves to heal. But what if the apology never comes?
Your life cannot remain suspended at the scene of an old offence. The past cannot be changed, but its position in your life can change.
Forgiveness may not change the person who hurt you. It may change what their actions are still allowed to do to you.
One Thing Worth Remembering:
You can remember what happened without continuing to live inside it.
Let’s Talk:
Who do you need to forgive — not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you deserve to stop carrying them into every new chapter of your life?
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