Families & Forgiveness

Why It's Hard & How You Can Help

Note: This is the final article in a 5-part series on forgiveness. If you’re new to this series, please visit No Trifling Matter to read the prior articles.

Forgiveness is hard, and that’s especially the case when it involves family relationships. Whether it’s legal or chosen family, the intimacy and longevity of family relationships create more opportunity to offend and to harm one another.

Family life has a lot of moving parts and they don’t always work well together. Some of the challenges of family life come from the shared losses and stressors that families experience: illness and death, childbirth and parenting, marriages and divorces, financial struggles, aging, and other developmental transitions. Some families also have business relationships among members. Even when there are not formal businesses, people work together to coordinate weddings, funerals, and family reunions. Even in healthy families with strong bonds, people have differences in how we grieve, cope with stress, and communicate. We don’t always agree on the details of shared activities. We disappoint one another. Even without meaning to, we often hurt one another with our words or actions.

On top of that, one of the great ironies of human relationships is that we are often at our worst when we are among people we care about. Think about the worst thing you’ve said to a family member in the past week and imagine saying that to your boss, colleague, or church member. It’s not a pretty picture. In other parts of our lives, we work at putting our best foot forward, maintaining a facade where people only see the parts of our personality that we choose to show them. It’s a self-protection strategy. We know that our work relationships are conditional, so we don’t show our full selves at work.

Family relationships, though, are supposed to be unconditional and based upon love. Our family members don’t just see us when we are well-dressed and on our A-game. They see us when we’ve just rolled out of bed, when we’re sick, when we’re broke, and when we’re helpless. Around family, we let our guard down. We are not as careful about what we say and do because we expect them to love us no matter what we say and do. This makes us more vulnerable to being hurt, as well as more likely to cause hurt. People are more likely to lie to family, harshly criticize family, even steal from and abuse family.

When I asked Dr. Shatavia Thomas, a licensed marriage and family therapist and a clinical fellow of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, about the role of forgiveness in family relationships, she pointed out that “families operate as emotional systems. We learn, adopt, and reject aspects of our identity and values largely according to how we were raised and what we experienced. While deciding if, when, and how to engage with relatives after hurt is a personal decision, it is greatly impacted by kinship bonds and sentiments.” In other words, because our family relationships are core to our sense of identity, when someone in the family hurts us, we feel betrayed at a deeply personal level.

Harm within the family is never just between the people directly involved. It impacts the entire family as other people feel the tension from the conflict and the loss of relationship. Family members make judgments about what happened, take sides, and pressure us to forgive (or sometimes, not to forgive). We may have to rethink our relationship to the entire family, not just the relative that we’re in conflict with. Do we attend the family gathering if they’re going to be there or will it cause too much tension? What are we going to say when our grandmother asks us if we’ve talked to one another? Dr. Thomas points out that while forgiveness is a personal choice and process, family dynamics and religious guilt can contribute to feelings of obligation and shame. “When family members are involved, it can feel like pouring salt in the wound being subjected to others’ opinions, involvement, and expectations. Because relatives may communicate more frequently and/or have family gatherings, the close contact also makes it challenging to take the physical and emotional space needed to heal.”

Some of the wrongdoings that happen within families are severe enough to irreparably harm not only the person, but also to rupture the fabric of the family itself. This can include abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual), violence, addictions, infidelity, theft, financial disputes, and rejection of LGBTQIA family members and their partners. These harms, Dr. Thomas says, are often considered unforgivable or most challenging to overcome.

What can family members do, then, to encourage forgiveness and healing when there is conflict among relatives?

1. Accept that forgiveness belongs to the person(s) harmed. It is a highly personal process that takes time. It cannot be rushed or forced. Acknowledge the person’s right to take the time that they need. Recognize that depending upon the nature of the transgression, negative feelings may linger even after the person has reached decisional and emotional forgiveness.

2. Support the victim’s need for healing. This means giving them the time that they need away from the wrongdoer, respecting their wishes not to talk about the incident until they are ready. It is okay to gently inquire about how they are doing and whether they want to talk about it. But respect their wishes.

3. Encourage the wrongdoer to be accountable for their actions. This means acknowledging what they did and the harm that they caused to the victim and the rest of the family. Wherever possible, the person should take action to repair the harm by making amends. This might mean fixing or replacing something that was damaged, covering the costs of medical bills and other expenses incurred from the offense, and verbally apologizing (when and if the victim is ready for that). It also means doing the internal work necessary to ensure that it won’t happen again.

4. Encourage the victim, wrongdoer, and family to participate in individual and family therapy to support the healing process. Dr. Thomas specifically recommends Bowen and contextual approaches to family therapy for relational conflict. “Bowen family therapy involves the therapist taking on a non-anxious presence while coaching clients through the process of reducing tension and demonstrating emotional maturity. Families are educated on the impact of family roles, boundaries, and relationships. Contextual family therapy is an approach focused on ethics, fairness, loyalty, and legacy. It addresses factors such as revenge, as well as the interplay of indebtedness and entitlement. In sum, therapists can support families by both addressing the inherent, often multifaceted aspects of the process and understanding the impact of our own relational and societal biases. We can also remind families about the importance of accountability and self-forgiveness.” Family therapists can work with extended family units, but they can also work with individuals who have family issues. You can search for a therapist here.

Next week, I’ll conclude this series with a guided forgiveness meditation practice. In the meantime, check out the other guided meditations on the podcast.