The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World

by Desmond Tutu

There is also no end to the human capacity for healing. In each of us, there is an innate ability to create joy out of suffering, to find hope in the most hopeless of situations, and to heal any relationship in need of healing.

I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.

In our own ways, we are all broken. Out of that brokenness, we hurt others. Forgiveness is the journey we take toward healing the broken parts. It is how we become whole again.

We face this choice of whether or not to forgive as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a deeply connected world.

Together, we will explore each aspect of the Fourfold Path of forgiving: Telling the Story, Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.

If you are in need of forgiveness, it is our hope that this book will show you a clear path to freeing yourself from the shackles of your past, and help you to move forward in your life.

With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.

In South Africa, Ubuntu is our way of making sense of the world. The word literally means “humanity.” It is the philosophy and belief that a person is only a person through other people. In

When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberators. We don’t forgive to help the other person. We don’t forgive for others. We forgive for ourselves. Forgiveness, in other words, is the best form of self-interest. This is true both spiritually and scientifically.

Unconditional forgiveness is a different model of forgiveness than the gift with strings.

When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When

Forgiveness takes practice, honesty, open-mindedness, and a willingness

But I will forgive you Because I do count I do matter I am bigger than the image you have of me

am stronger I am more beautiful And I am infinitely more precious than you thought me

My forgiveness will be a gift that gives itself to me

Meditation Opening to the Light

Make a list of the people you need to forgive in your life. 7. Make another list of all those you would like to have forgive you.

give up an expectation that the person who hurt you will understand the pain they have caused.

Fourfold Path. The first step on the path is Telling the Story; then comes Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and finally, Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.

Forgiveness is simply about understanding that every one of us is both inherently good and inherently flawed.

We all want to be free of the pain of living with a broken and unforgiving heart.

Broken n unforgiving heart

The first step will be telling your truth. We begin by Telling the Story.

In the Forgiveness Cycle, we face our pain and suffering and move toward acceptance and healing by walking the Fourfold Path.

These are the steps of the Fourfold Path: Telling the Story, Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and Renewing or Releasing the Relationship.

Families must find shared stories of their experiences, or everyone is left to their private pain and each member of the family feels alone and isolated.

We all experience pain. This is the inescapable part of being human. Hurt, insult, harm, and loss are inevitable aspects of our lives. Psychology calls it “trauma,” and it often leaves deep scars on our souls.

However, it is not the trauma itself that defines us. It is the meaning we make of our experiences that defines both who we are and who we ultimately become.

The journey to acceptance begins in pain and ends in hope.

Telling our stories helps us integrate our implicit memories and begin to heal from our traumas.

When you tell your story, you no longer have to carry your burden alone.

The path of forgiveness leads back to where we were trapped, so we can rescue the parts of ourselves we have given up.

No person is an island, and if we see the ways we are connected, we can understand another’s actions with much more compassion.

Choosing to Forgive After we tell our stories and name our hurts, the next step is to grant forgiveness.

We choose forgiveness because it is how we find freedom and keep from remaining trapped in an endless loop of telling our stories and naming our hurts. It is how we move from victim to hero.

A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others. Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future.

This acceptance brought me to an inner peace that cannot be shattered. Within this peace is the essence of a humanity we all share. It is a choice I make every day.

Forgiveness has allowed me to keep my heart open and soft. I chose to forgive because I knew that if I did not, the unforgiving would have kept me closed and hardened inside.

There is still a world of possibility, even when the worst thing happens that could possibly happen.

And yes, Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa, so in a very real way we are all Africans, which—given the racist propaganda that has been put forward for so long in many parts of our world—is a bit ironic, don’t you think?11

In seeing the many ways we are similar and how our lives are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion. In finding empathy and compassion, we are able to move in the direction of forgiving.

Look deeply into your heart and make sure that when you say “I forgive you,” you have truly confronted your own past. If you do, your future will truly be free.

I wish I could give you a one-size-fits-all answer. For some it feels as if a huge weight has been lifted. For others it is an overwhelming feeling of peace.

As we have said, there is freedom in forgiveness, and when you feel this new freedom, you know you have truly forgiven.

The magic happened to me. I felt lighter. The world seemed a more hopeful place.

learned not to take things so personally,

Forgiveness didn’t save him or let him off the hook. It saved me.

Every one of them said how important it is to be able to tell a new story and how this ability is a sign of healing and wholeness.

We make meaning out of it and make it matter. We use our experiences as many of the people in this book have used theirs: to make ourselves into richer, deeper, more empathic people. We may, like the people you meet in this book, work to prevent such harm from happening to others. Only you can decide how to tell a new story. You are the author of your life, and only you can write your book of forgiving.

There is incredible power in ritual, and you see this as people come with flowers and candles when there is mass death and tragic loss. This is what we do, and it is so healing. We need rituals for all traumas and loss, whether it is betrayal or infidelity or violence or murder. Ritual helps us heal, and ritual helped me heal and become ready to consider the person who murdered Angela, his story, his pain.

I forgive not for the perpetrator, but for my daughters to heal, for me to heal, and for all of us to go on and live our lives without fear and hatred being the defining details.