My former T and I had a running disagreement about forgiveness. Not so much that she felt that I had to forgive but that her definition of forgiveness made no sense to me. She believes that you forgive as a gift to yourself, as a way to heal yourself. I told her that she was certainly entitled to that belief but that this understanding of forgiveness (ie as redemptive to the harmed party and totally unrelated to repair by the offender) was extremely Christian and not in keeping with my value system. I explained it to her at length and she just couldn’t see it. She didn’t push religion in any other way but it drove me nuts that she wasn’t able to get the, IDK, imperialism, here. It seems like an incredibly important distinction when you’re talking about significant harm or cruelty so it came up semi-frequently. It was a sore point for me because it seemed that she wasn’t trying to understand or honour my moral framework and ethnic background, and maybe fundamentally that she didn’t say, “okay, so let’s figure out a way forward that is more appropriate for you.”

(I don’t believe in staying mad forever either, I just understand “forgiveness” in a different way.)