lily's blogForgiveness
Posted on 2026-05-10 by [terra]
This post is written by the Terra system as a whole, when plural pronouns (we/us) are used, they're referring to our system, not to you the reader or anyone else
The primary authors of this post are Lily, Hollow, and Knight. Others may chime in, we'll see. See this post for details on our plural system.
Lily:
During program we were given this worksheet to ponder
And I was forced to think hard about what it meant to forgive someone.
Forgiving people for making small mistakes is an everyday occurance and easy for us to do.
Forgiving someone who's wronged us deeply, hurt us deeply, is much much harder.
But today, I'd like to for us to try.
I'd like to try to forgive this person.
I'd like for all of us to forgive this person.
1. Forgiveness is letting go of anger, even though you are justified
Hollow:
I'm angry still.
Lily wants me to forgive but she's not the one who holds a lot of the hurt and trauma.
She doesn't feel the anger that we feel, it only bubbles under the surface for her.
She doesn't fucking get it.
Anger and resentment...
Lily:
You are valid and justified in feeling the way that you do Hollow, but you agree that we all want to move past being stuck in anger and hostility towards her right?
Right?
2. Forgiveness is recognizing that the wrongdoer is human
Lily:
She's human and made mistakes.
She hurt us because she's not perfect either. We're certainly not perfect.
When we inevitably make mistakes raising children of our own, we certainly want our children to forgive us for any mistakes that we make, right?
We have to let go of our anger in order to amend this relationship
Hollow:
. . .
Knight:
i'm still scared. scared of her hurting us again. scared of what her future mistakes might do to us. scared of her scared of her scared of her scared of her
Lily:
You aren't alone anymore, Knight. You're not a lonely child without support anymore. You're that frozen part of us in the past, yes, but now you're a member of a system full of competent adults who can keep us safe.
We have supports: a therapist, a girlfriend, friends, other family members, and most importantly we have ourselves
We will be okay.
I want to believe that we'll be able to weather any mistakes that will come from her in the future.
Because ultimately, I want to amend this relationship, however damaged by the past it might be
3. Forgiveness is a chance to amend a relationship that was damaged
Lily:
I want her back in my life in a real way, not just on a surface level.
Hollow:
What I need you to realize, Lily, is that not everyone feels that way.
I certainly don't.
I don't want her back in our life.
Knight is scared of her.
I don't fucking like talking to her or being with her or interacting with her at all.
Lily:
But she's our <redacted>
Hollow:
So fucking what.
You know that real bonds matter more than superficial bonds like that.
Chosen family is what fucking matters to us now.
Why choose to accept someone who's wronged us so deeply in the past.
Why would we do that. We have plenty of people in our life that we're happy with.
Just keep her at arms length for the rest of our life and move on.
Knight:
i want to
Hollow:
Huh?
Knight:
i want to forgive her. i choose to do so, hollow.
i want to be close with her.
i want to forgive her.
Hollow:
Sigh...
Fine.
Let's continue
4. Forgiveness is a mental shift that develops over time
Lily:
I'm not asking you to forgive her overnight.
It's been 3 years since we moved out.
5 years since we cried to her and declared that we needed space.
We've been running as far away from her as possible for the last 5 years.
And it's been good for us.
But now I miss her.
I want to slowly move back closer.
I'm not asking you to instantly go back to being close with her, as we might have been in the past.
I'm just asking for us to reverse course and slowly step towards her.
Slowly
Hollow:
Listen I'm not the bad guy here.
You speak as if I'm the one who's the most opposed to all this.
You know this for a fact, Lily.
You're the one who's the most opposed to all this
Who are you really trying to convince by making us write this.
Lily:
. . .
Maybe you're right.
You're usually right, Hollow.
I think Knight is the most scared of all of us, since they're the one who's been hurt the most
Knight:
yeah...
Lily:
And you're the one who carries the anger and resentment.
Hollow:
Yes
Lily:
But all that fear and resentment sprouted out of me.
I'm ultimately the source of a lot of this.
I'm the source of the anger and fear, it just gets dissociated onto you two
So am I the one who really doesn't want to deal with her? To not have her in my life?
Probably.
But at the same time, I also feel like I want her in my life.
Is that contradictory? Yes.
Is that me being very callous about how the rest of the system feels? Probably.
But I want to be selfish.
I want us to forgive her.
5. Forgiveness is not condoning or excusing what happened.
Lily:
We can forgive her without excusing what she did to us.
The hurt she put us through.
The years and the moments of pain that we still carry within us.
6. Forgiveness is not forgetting how you were wronged
Lily:
I will never forget.
Hollow:
I will never fucking forget what she did to us.
Knight:
i will never forget... cant ever forget
7. Forgiveness is not an agreement to continue a relationship as it was
Lily:
We can forigve her while building a new relationship with her.
One rooted in what we said to her during that therapy session.
One rooted in the facts. That we were scarred and hurt and traumatized by her.
We can have a new relationship that takes a new, honest form.
8. Forgiveness is an opportunity to heal
Lily:
We can heal from this.
We can heal from our past.
Knight can finally rest.
Hollow can finally rest.
Neither of you need to be so hypervigillant and scared, angry and resentful.
You can both put down the heavy baggage that I've saddled you two with.
You two can heal.
Hollow:
Easy for you to say...
Knight:
but i want to believe that this can happen for us. that one day i can just exist without being afraid.
afraid of being hurt
afraid of being hurt
afraid of being hurt
9. Forgiveness is a personal decision only you can make for yourself.
Lily:
Can we do this? Can we agree on this?
10. Forgiveness is for you
Lily:
Can we agree that this is what's best for us?
Can we do this for us?
11. Forgiveness is not something that can be forced
Lily:
I can't force you two.
I can't force you to agree with me that this is something that would be best for us.
But I want to believe that you two, one some level, agree with me.
. . .
Again, this isn't a change that's going to happen overnight.
This will happen slowly, gradually, over many years.
It took us 5 years of distance to finally feel comfortable reaching back out.
It'll probably take us another few years to forgive her fully.
And our relationship will never be the same.
Our relationship with her will never be like the one she has with our brothers.
Our relationship will be something different, something that we can choose to build together.
Our relationship will be something unique, and I think, very beautiful.
The relationship of two people deciding to come back together and meet each other in the middle.
I want to forgive her.
I want to forgive her.
I want to forgive her.
I want to be, not close, not friendly, but a secret third thing.
I want her to be family again.
Hollow:
Fine.
Knight:
i believe you lily. you and hollow and the others will protect me and we'll all be okay
Lily:
Yes we will.
All will be well.
This is just us reaching out with an olive branch.
A peace offering.
An insight that we send to her so she knows where we're at.
Because words typed are always easier than words said for us.
We can communicate how we feel much easier this way than we can in either language.
This is what works best for us.
So this is how we will choose to send this message to you.
. . .
Happy Mother's Day, Mom
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