It really doesn't matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yo... — Gordon Atkinson

It really doesn't matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on.

Author: Gordon Atkinson

Insight: The tricky thing about forgiveness is that we're usually waiting for the other person to earn it. We hold onto grudges as a kind of moral accountability, as if staying angry proves they were wrong. But this approach has a hidden cost: you're letting someone else's actions—maybe something they did years ago—keep renting space in your head. They're living rent-free in your resentment while you're the one who can't focus, can't sleep, can't move forward with anything new. Forgiveness isn't about letting someone off the hook or pretending what they did was okay. It's more practical than that. It's you deciding that you have better uses for your energy than rehearsing old wounds. When you forgive, you're essentially saying: I'm not going to let this define how I spend my time or who I become. You're reclaiming ownership of your own story instead of letting it be written by what someone else did to you. The shift is subtle but powerful. Instead of forgiving because they deserve it, you forgive because you deserve to be free. That distinction changes everything—it puts the power back in your hands, where it actually belongs.