44 Days of Forgiveness

Without forgiveness, a wall of ice encases our hearts. In the darkest hour, Forgiveness is the flame that ignites our grace. Forgiveness soothes those past hurts, reminding you that which should have broken you is precisely what revealed your spirit can never be broken.

But forgiving doesn’t make us a saint, and a lack of forgiveness doesn’t make us bad. Forgiveness doesn’t mean to reopen access, to revisit the past.

The Latin root for forgiveness comes from the word Perdonare, which means, “To give up completely.” Without giving up completely, without forgiveness, it is like we are carrying a rucksack with stones in it. Mile after mile, it only becomes harder to step forward.

Whether I’ve inflicted deep hurt, or experienced it myself, I pray for that person’s joy and send them love for 44 days and 44 nights. Just for a few minutes—I picture them at peace and enveloped in love.

I first read about this practice in Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love. I started doing it three years ago after a breakup and every time, I am in awe and wonder at the process.

At first, it’s infuriating. My anger and grief want to eclipse everything. My colorful imagination is staging fake arguments, appointing itself judge and jury in an attempt to restore whatever dignity my ego thinks it has lost.

But then I sit there, and I picture their face. I imagine their joy. And suddenly, they are neither the hero nor the villain. They’re just human—as gorgeous and messy as the rest of us.

Why make villains of each other when we are all little kids trying to survive without falling on the shards of our fractured self?

I’m not praying for their happiness because I’m enlightened and galloping down the yellow brick road on my high horse. But to remind myself, that being human is hard. And the greatest privilege in the known universe. Without forgiveness, humanity would have destroyed itself long ago. Without forgiveness, the weight of that rucksack would crush us entirely.

Forgiveness is our most potent human magic.

Here’s the real kicker: every time I’m practicing forgiveness, I recall a moment when I have done something similar to someone else. As the Italian mystic St Francis of Assisi says, “Can true humility and compassion exist in our words and eyes unless we know we too are capable of any act?”

We cannot fly until we become unburdened. The person I’m resenting doesn’t feel the weight my body carries, I do. And as someone committed to walking 100 kilometers this year, I have no interest in carrying the past any longer.

Ultimately, the final step usually lays in forgiving myself. Owning my side of the street. Before I was betrayed, where did I betray my own heart? Before I was abandoned, where did I abandon my own boundaries? Not hamster wheeling in guilt or shame, but learning how to move through the world with more integrity, a gentler heart, a stronger spine, and hopefully—learn more of what it means to be human.