Forgiveness is discussed, in the spaces that support women's healing, with almost unanimous agreement that it is necessary. That it is for you, not for them. That holding onto unforgiveness is holding poison you expect to harm someone else.

She has heard all of this. She has done the work. She has extended forgiveness, slowly and imperfectly, to the people in her life who caused her harm.

Her mother, for what was not given in childhood. Him, for the years and the specific wounds they contained. The friends who were not there at moments that required them. The versions of herself that made choices she would not make now.

She has done the forgiving.

What she has not received, and rarely been asked about, is: who has forgiven her?

The Asymmetry of Grace

There is a notable asymmetry in how grace moves in many women's lives.

She extends it outward, with deliberateness and effort. She works to understand the context of the people who hurt her. She considers their own wounds, their own conditioning, the ways in which they were themselves shaped by forces outside their control. She builds the case for their humanity and uses it to arrive at forgiveness.

She does not, as consistently, build that case for herself.

Her own mistakes are held to a different standard. Her own failures of patience, of judgment, of love, are examined with a precision and a harshness that she would never apply to someone else in the same circumstances.

दूसरों को माफ़ करना सीखा। खुद को माफ़ करना भूल गई। She learned to forgive others. She forgot to forgive herself.

What She Has Not Been Forgiven For

There is a list. She has not always articulated it, but it exists in the body, in the particular heaviness that arrives when certain memories surface.

The times she was not the mother she wanted to be. The moments she was too depleted to be present for the people who needed her. The choices she made when she was younger and did not yet know what she would later know. The relationships she stayed in too long. The ones she left too quickly. The things she said in anger that she cannot unsay. The needs she expressed that were received as demands. The anger she expressed that was received as aggression.

She carries these. Not always consciously. But they surface in the 2am inventory. They contribute to the quiet, persistent background sense that she is not quite enough.

What Forgiveness for Herself Would Actually Mean

Forgiving herself does not mean deciding that what she did was fine. It does not require minimising the impact of her actions on the people involved.

It means applying to herself the same framework she applies to others. Context. Circumstances. The state she was in. The information she had at the time. The wounds she was operating from that she had not yet been able to address.

She was doing the best she could with what she had. This is the phrase she uses when she forgives others. It applies to her as well. In every specific instance she carries. She was doing the best she could with what she had in that moment. The best was sometimes not good enough. And she can hold both the accountability and the compassion simultaneously.

जो माफ़ी तुमने दूसरों को दी, वो अपने लिए भी बनती है तुम्हें। The forgiveness you gave to others, you deserve it for yourself too.

Who Should Have Forgiven Her

Beyond self-forgiveness, there is another question worth asking.

Were there people in her life who should have extended grace to her and did not?

The mother who required perfection and punished its absence. The partner who catalogued her failures with precision while minimising his own. The family system that held her to a standard they did not apply to themselves. The culture that told her she was responsible for things that were not entirely within her control.

These are people and systems that owed her grace and did not deliver it. And their failure to forgive her became, over time, absorbed into her own self-assessment. She began carrying their harshness as if it were the truth.

It was not the truth. It was the projection of people who had their own limitations. People who could not extend the grace they did not know how to extend.

She deserved better from them. She did not receive it. And now the work is to give herself what they did not.

The Permission She Deserves

You tried. You were imperfect. You made mistakes from wounds that were not entirely of your making. You got things wrong that you would get right now. You were sometimes too much and sometimes not enough and you were doing all of it inside a life that was asking more of you than was entirely fair.

You are allowed to be forgiven for all of it.

Not because it was all perfect. Because you are human. Because being human includes failing sometimes. Because accountability and compassion can coexist in the same person at the same time.

Someone should have told you this a long time ago.

Consider it said. 🤍

You deserve the grace you have given to others.

If you are carrying unforgiveness for yourself that is heavier than what you carry for the people who hurt you, coaching can help you extend inward the compassion you have consistently given outward.

Visit ritu-roy.com to learn more about working with me. 🤍