Forgiveness is hard for everyone at some point in life.

But for survivors, it can be excruciating. Especially at the beginning. Especially in the middle of healing. And especially when the deep, deep memories surface down the road, the ones that expose the truth of what really happened.

It’s just hard.

For a long time, I blamed them. The occult. The system. The people who train, abuse, and destroy innocence for their own gain. And I wasn’t wrong. They carry full responsibility for what they did. I didn’t ask to grow up in that world. I didn’t ask to be trafficked or used for their darkness. Every choice they made was evil and intentional. I didn’t wake up one day and choose that life because I had a choice.

But as I’ve worked on my healing over the years, I’ve realized that I have way too much that I want forgiveness for to be unwilling to forgive someone else. I think it’s really hard to get to that point sometimes. I had to move through the pride of being able to take so much abuse and still be willing to fight to live. I had to give up the excuse that she couldn’t help it because she was abused too and there was nobody to help her. I had to admit that under the numbness was hate and rage and all the things that made me wish everyone that hurt me was dead. I had to give up every lie I told myself to excuse it so that I could be okay. I even had to give up holding onto the verse that says love covers a multitude of sin because I was using it out of context to somehow make being abused and unlovable a tiny bit less disgraceful. I was using it to make it okay that I would never get an apology or see them have the consequences I felt they deserved in this life. I was using it to make it a little easier to breathe.

I’m not going to lie and say I like it. I wish it wasn’t true sometimes, but forgiveness is conditional, it comes with the qualifier that in order for us to be forgiven by our Heavenly Father, we must first forgive others. Early in our healing it’s hard to see that this is profoundly layered with mercy and the goodness of the Father who knows what unforgiveness does to us.

For a long time, I didn’t feel any responsibility for what they did and I didn’t think I felt shame either. Because I didn’t do it. They chose to do those things to me. Full responsibility sits on their shoulders for every double bind, every bad choice, every single thing I ever did because I didn’t ask to be grow up in the occult. I didn’t ask to be trafficked. I didn’t ask to be exposed to the depths of hell that I have been exposed to.

And that attitude carried me a long way. Until it didn’t.

Reality has a way of smacking you in the face when you start to get your memories back. Meeting cult loyal parts where they are so that they can learn that there is a way out comes at a cost. There is no room for sugar coating everything as being only what someone else did to me.

The truth is that I did feel shame. I felt so much shame that I wanted to disappear. I needed to be invisible even to the shadows because the shame cut to the core, but the parts were holding it away from me.

Forgiveness isn’t about pretending it didn’t happen. It’s about standing before Yahweh without the lies, the blame, or the masks. It’s saying, “Here I am, all of me, and I need Your mercy too.”

I’m the day-to-day presenter part, the one that has to do life and keep things together on the outside. I’m also usually the last one to know how desperately sinful and wicked I can be in so many dreadful ways.

Thankfully, I learn more and more every day that there is no condemnation or judgement, just truth that must be unpacked and forgiven.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

The fruit of forgiveness is expansive. It brings freedom and it brings safety. I think it is one of the ways that we buy gold from Yahweh. It’s also something they can never control or take away from me.

“I counsel you to buy from Me gold that has been heated red hot and refined by fire so that you may become truly rich; and white clothes [representing righteousness] to clothe yourself so that the shame of your nakedness will not be seen; and healing salve to put on your eyes so that you may see.” Revelation 3:18

That refining fire burns away denial, pride, and fear until only truth remains and truth leads to freedom.

As hard as it is, there is an acceleration that occurs in healing when we finally face the fact that we did participate in rituals and we did send that witchcraft that we blamed on everyone else, and we did do the jobs assigned to us and we did them with excellence because our life depended on it.

It wasn’t my just my body standing around a fire listening to everyone else chant, it wasn’t just the part that was in the front while I was inside or out in the astral realm somewhere. It was me. They are all me. It was the me that could not survive what was happening without splitting off, but it was still all me. And when that starts sinking in on a bone deep level, forgiveness becomes a whole other form of life that I ache for in the deepest parts of my soul.

I need to forgive them.

I need to forgive myself.

And I desperately need to be forgiven.

Core beliefs will make it very difficult to forgive. Here’s an excellent resource to see if you have any of these negative core beliefs and the truth to replace with them with: Core beliefs

Healing Intolerable Conflicts when the emotional pain is too much to even think about forgiveness.

It’s a journey and I honestly find it to feel like a miracle that I can write a post like this and mean it after the things I learned today. I don’t know if it ever gets easy, but it becomes filled with hope as you keep doing it. Getting to the place where you can feel all the feelings while knowing deep down that at the end of the day, you’re going to choose forgiveness because it’s such a gift to yourself and to your relationship with Yeshua is a worthy goal indeed.

“Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Matthew 18:21-22.

Seven is the number of completion and Yeshua felt the need to double it. Forgive as often and as many times as it takes until you are standing in complete freedom from offense.

This is what I’m working on in my healing journey today. As I was driving home and thinking about what I might write about tonight, I kept thinking of the song that says, “It’s easy to sing when there’s nothing to bring me down, but what will I say when I’m held to the flame like I am right now?”

I will always say He is faithful and I love Him so much. Even when it hurts, I can’t believe I get to live this life!