The Truth About Forgiveness: Can You Really Forgive and Forget? | Sherley’s Show
Season 1 · Episode 4

Mindset & Healing · Relationships · Personal Growth

The Truth About Forgiveness:
It Was Never Really About Them

---

To hear this conversation in real time, listen to the full episode. Make sure you tune into the show. You’ll get all the raw, unfiltered moments and deeper insights.

Podcast Blog post: Forgiving Others

---

Can you truly forgive without forgetting? Does the other person need to apologize first? Sherley and Kira unpack one of life’s most misunderstood healing practices — and what no one ever taught us about letting go.

We have all been told at some point in our lives to “forgive and forget.” It rolls off the tongue easily, sounds spiritual and mature, and gets handed out like advice at a Sunday dinner. But what does forgiveness actually look like in the real world — when the wound is still fresh, the apology never came, and you are not sure you even want to be in the same room as the person who hurt you? On Sherley’s Show Season 1, Episode 4, hosts Sherley and Kira sat down for one of the most honest, raw, and deeply relatable conversations about the true nature of forgiveness — and what they uncovered challenges nearly everything mainstream culture has taught us about the subject.

Whether you are navigating the aftermath of a painful breakup, a friendship that ended badly, a betrayal by a family member, or a moment of deep hurt from someone you trusted, this episode is for you. The conversation moves through forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and self-accountability with the kind of authenticity that only comes from two women speaking from lived experience. If you have been searching for permission to heal on your own timeline — you will find it here.

— ✦ —

Forgiving and Forgetting Are Not the Same Thing

Let’s start with the phrase that launched the entire conversation: “forgive and forget.” It is repeated so often in our culture that we have come to accept it as a package deal — like you cannot have one without the other. But Sherley offered a perspective that reframes the whole idea in a way that actually makes sense.

She compared forgiveness to a wound. When your body is injured, the skin eventually heals. But the scar remains. Every time you glance at it — whether it is on your arm, your leg, or somewhere more visible — it brings you back to the moment the injury happened. That is not weakness. That is memory. That is the body’s way of holding on to its own history. And emotional healing, Sherley argues, works exactly the same way.

“Even though the wound heals over time, that scar is always going to remind you of that moment in time. And that’s how I correlate forgiveness.”— Sherley, Sherley’s Show Ep. 4

Kira echoed this sentiment, saying she does not believe it is realistic — or even healthy — to expect yourself to truly forget a heartbreak or a serious hurt. What we do instead is learn to live alongside the memory. We move forward. We accept what happened. But we do not erase it, and we should stop feeling guilty for remembering. The phrase “forgive and forget” sets an impossible standard, especially for people who have experienced deep emotional betrayal, and it often ends up making the wounded person feel like they are failing at forgiveness when in reality, they are simply being human.

This reframing matters for anyone on a personal growth journey, anyone doing inner healing work, or anyone struggling with the gap between where they are emotionally and where they feel they are “supposed” to be. Forgiveness, the episode makes clear, is a practice — not a destination.

— ✦ —

Also listen to: Healing from Infidelity: A Raw Conversation on Repeated Hurt

You Are Allowed to Bring It Up Again

One of the most liberating things Sherley addresses in this episode is the social rule that once you forgive someone, you are no longer allowed to mention what they did. This unspoken code — that revisiting a past hurt means you never truly forgave — is something many of us have internalized, often to our own detriment. Sherley pushes back on it firmly and without apology.

There is a difference, she says, between weaponizing the past in the heat of an argument and simply needing to revisit a painful moment as part of your ongoing healing process. If you are processing something that still sits heavy in your chest, bringing it up again is not a sign that you have failed at forgiveness. It is a sign that you are still working through it — and that is not only acceptable, it is necessary.

Healing is not linear. It does not follow a clean arc from hurt to healed, and it certainly does not operate on someone else’s preferred schedule. Kira put it plainly: it is a journey. One that may require you to return to the same emotional territory multiple times before you are truly free of its weight. The idea that forgiveness is a single, decisive moment — a light switch that, once flipped, changes everything — is a myth that does real harm to people who are genuinely trying to heal.

This is also tied to how we teach children about apology and forgiveness. Both Sherley and Kira noted that from a young age, we are conditioned to accept apologies instantly and declare “it’s okay” almost as a reflex. Someone takes your toy. They say sorry. You say it’s okay. Done. But when those same children grow into adults with complex relationships and layered emotional lives, that childhood programming fails them. A partner’s betrayal is not the same as a sandbox dispute. The emotional repair required is not the same. And yet we often try to apply the same oversimplified script.

— ✦ —

Do You Have to Forgive Someone Who Never Apologized?

This is where the episode gets especially rich. Sherley and Kira tackle one of the most searched and debated questions in the realm of emotional healing: do you still have to forgive someone who never said sorry?

Sherley shares honestly that she has encountered people in her own life who she does not believe deserve her forgiveness — not because of a personal vendetta, but because the remorse simply was not there. She acknowledges that she was sometimes forgiving for the wrong reasons: because she thought it was required, because she thought forgiveness meant she had to resume the relationship, or because society told her that withholding forgiveness made her the problem.

But over time, she came to understand that forgiveness does not mean approval. It does not mean reconciliation. It does not mean the other person was right or that what they did was acceptable. Forgiveness, in its most powerful form, is a gift you give yourself — a way of releasing the weight of resentment and anger so that it stops living inside your body and disrupting your peace.

“Forgiveness is all about self. It has nothing to do with the other party.”— Sherley, Sherley’s Show Ep. 4

Kira agrees, adding that an apology — while deeply meaningful and something she personally needs to feel seen — is not a prerequisite for doing the internal work of forgiveness. Because when someone is not sorry, they are not carrying the burden of the situation. They are out living their life unbothered. The only person suffering is you. And choosing to hold on to that resentment because they have not apologized does not punish them — it punishes you.

That said, Kira is clear: not receiving an apology makes the forgiveness process significantly harder. It adds a layer of complexity and grief. Part of what an apology offers is acknowledgment — the recognition that what happened was real, that your pain was valid, and that the other person sees the harm they caused. Without that, healing requires you to do extra work to validate your own experience. It is heavier lifting emotionally. But it is still possible. And it is still worth doing — for yourself.

— ✦ —

Forgiveness Does Not Require Reconciliation

If there is one message from this episode that the internet needs to hear louder and more often, it is this: forgiving someone does not mean you have to let them back into your life. Society tends to treat forgiveness and reconciliation as the same thing, which means that when people imagine forgiving someone who hurt them, they imagine being friends again, being vulnerable again, being in proximity to the person who caused them pain. That fear — of having to “go back to normal” — stops a lot of people from even beginning the forgiveness process.

Sherley untangles this beautifully. You can forgive someone completely and still choose not to resume a friendship. You can hold no ill will toward a person and still decide that they do not belong in your inner circle. Respect, she says, does not even require presence — sometimes the most respectful thing you can do after forgiveness is maintain a dignified silence. You do not owe anyone continued access to your life simply because you have chosen to no longer let them occupy rent-free space in your heart.

Kira builds on this with an important concept around protecting your peace and setting boundaries in relationships. Forgiving someone and then allowing them back into the same close position they occupied before — especially if they have demonstrated a pattern of hurting you — is not forgiveness. It is self-abandonment. Real forgiveness, she argues, sometimes looks like keeping someone at a healthy distance because you have finally learned what they are capable of and you are choosing to honor yourself enough not to repeat the cycle.

This is one of the most important boundaries in relationships to understand: the boundary between releasing someone emotionally and allowing them to remain physically close. You can do one without the other. In fact, sometimes doing one without the other is the only path that actually works.

— ✦ —

Is Forgiveness an Ongoing Process?

Kira raises this question with real vulnerability in the episode — because she is actively working through it herself. Drawing on her faith, she references the biblical principle of forgiving seventy times seven, which on the surface sounds exhausting and unrealistic. Are we really supposed to keep forgiving the same person over and over and over again?

Her answer, after sitting with it, is nuanced and honest. Yes, forgiveness is ongoing. Not because the other person keeps deserving more chances inside your life, but because healing is rarely a one-time event. Old wounds get triggered. A song comes on that takes you back. A date on the calendar hits differently than you expected. And in those moments, you may find that you need to choose forgiveness again — not for them, but for your own continued peace.

What she has found helpful — particularly as someone of faith — is trying to view the person who hurt her through the lens of grace. Recognizing that they are human, flawed, still deserving of love in a cosmic sense, even if they are no longer deserving of closeness in a personal one. This does not excuse what they did. But it creates just enough empathy to loosen forgiveness’s grip and allow healing to continue.

Both hosts agree on one critical nuance: ongoing forgiveness does not mean ongoing access. You can choose, again and again, to not let resentment take root — while simultaneously and firmly maintaining distance. The two things can coexist. And for people dealing with repeated hurt from the same person or pattern, this distinction is not just helpful, it is essential for emotional survival.

— ✦ —

Premature Forgiveness: The Risk of Forgiving Too Soon

Sherley raises a concept that does not get nearly enough attention in conversations about emotional healing: the danger of forgiving before you are actually ready. Premature forgiveness — jumping to “I forgive you” before you have truly processed the hurt, understood its impact, or grieved what was lost — is not genuine forgiveness. It is avoidance wearing forgiveness’s clothing.

Society pressures us to forgive quickly. Dragging things out is seen as pettiness or immaturity. Being visibly hurt for too long makes others uncomfortable. And so we rush ourselves toward an emotional finish line that we are not actually ready to cross, declaring ourselves healed when we are still very much in the thick of it. And then, weeks or months later, we find ourselves just as hurt and angry as we were at the start — because we never actually did the work.

Real forgiveness requires time. It requires sitting with your feelings, being honest about the depth of the wound, and allowing yourself to grieve. There is no clock on this process. No one else’s comfort level should determine how long you need to heal. Taking the time to truly arrive at forgiveness — rather than performing it — means that when you get there, it will be real. And that kind of forgiveness actually sticks.

— ✦ —

Mindset, Accountability, and Choosing Your Focus

One of the most actionable insights in the episode comes from something Kira read and internalized during the weeks leading up to the recording. The premise: you choose your thoughts, and therefore you choose your reality. If you continue to focus on the hurt, the betrayal, the unfairness of what happened — if you replay the worst moments on a loop — then that becomes the lens through which you experience everything. It clouds the good. It colors the present with the pain of the past.

This does not mean suppressing or denying your feelings. It means being intentional about where your attention goes after you have allowed yourself to feel what you need to feel. Choosing to direct your focus toward the positive, toward growth, toward what is good in your life right now — this is not toxic positivity. It is a deliberate mindset shift that creates the conditions for real healing to take root.

Sherley adds another layer to this with the concept of ownership and accountability. Forgiveness, she says, is also about looking honestly at your own role in a situation. This is uncomfortable territory. The human impulse, especially when we have been hurt, is to see ourselves as the wronged party and the other person as the villain. But most situations are more complicated than that. And doing the inner work of forgiveness requires asking hard questions: Could I have handled this differently? Did I contribute to this dynamic in any way? What is my responsibility here?

This is not about letting the other person off the hook. It is about intellectual honesty and the kind of self-awareness that actually leads to change. Kira acknowledges that this was one of the hardest parts of her own healing process. But owning your part — even a small part — frees you from the victim narrative and puts you back in the driver’s seat of your own emotional story.

Kira also touches on something important about the temptation to stay in the victim role. When we have been genuinely hurt, there is a pull — sometimes unconscious — to hold on to that pain because it validates us. It generates sympathy. It gives us a story to tell. But eventually, that story becomes a cage. At some point, the people around us — and more importantly, we ourselves — want to know not just what happened, but how we came back from it.

— ✦ —

What an Apology Actually Means — and Why It Matters

Sherley and Kira have a fascinating difference of opinion when it comes to apologies — and it reveals something profound about how people process hurt differently. For Sherley, a heartfelt conversation, full acknowledgment of the wrong, and a clear-eyed recognition of the damage done means more than two words. She wants the thesis. She wants to feel seen through depth of engagement, not just through a phrase.

Kira, on the other hand, wants the “I’m sorry.” Two simple words said with genuine weight. For her, those words are the acknowledgment she needs that her pain was real and recognized. She can receive the longer conversation after — but she needs that foundation first.

Neither of them is wrong. This difference illustrates something important for all of us: the way we need to receive an apology is personal, and understanding that about ourselves is a form of emotional intelligence. Knowing what you need to feel acknowledged — and being able to articulate that to the people in your life — is a communication skill that protects relationships and supports healing.

Both hosts also call out how loosely the word “sorry” is thrown around — often reflexively, especially by women who are socialized to apologize for simply existing. When sorry loses its weight through overuse, meaningful apologies become harder to give and harder to receive. Reclaiming the intentionality behind an apology — really meaning it, thinking it through, feeling the impact of what you did — is something worth practicing in all your relationships.

— ✦ —

Key Takeaways from Sherley’s Show, Ep. 4

• 1 Forgiveness is for you, not them. The primary beneficiary of forgiving someone is always yourself. Holding resentment is a weight you carry alone — and releasing it through forgiveness is an act of radical self-care.
• 2 You cannot truly “forget” — and that is okay. Emotional memory works like a scar. The wound heals, but the mark remains. Moving forward does not mean erasing. It means accepting and continuing to live.
• 3 An apology is not required to begin forgiving. A genuine apology helps and heals — but waiting for one before you allow yourself to heal hands control of your emotional wellbeing to someone else entirely.
• 4 Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. You can fully forgive someone and still choose not to have them in your life. Protecting your peace and setting firm boundaries is not bitterness — it is wisdom.
• 5 There is no timeline on healing. Do not rush yourself — or allow others to rush you — toward forgiveness. Premature forgiveness that is not felt or meant does not heal anything. Give yourself the time you need.
• 6 Forgiveness is an ongoing practice. You may need to choose it more than once, especially as old wounds surface. That is not failure — that is the natural rhythm of deep healing.
• 7 Own your role in the story. Accountability is part of forgiveness. Asking honestly how you may have contributed to a situation does not excuse the other person — it empowers you to grow and to break patterns.
• 8 Choose your focus intentionally. Healing accelerates when you redirect your attention from what hurt you toward what is good and present in your life right now. This is not denial — it is a deliberate mindset practice.

Final Thoughts: Give Yourself the Gift of Forgiveness

What Sherley and Kira offer in this episode is not a tidy, step-by-step guide to forgiveness — because no such guide exists. What they offer instead is something rarer and more valuable: honesty. Two women sitting down and talking about forgiveness the way real people actually experience it, with all the contradictions, the resistance, the faith, the frustration, and the hard-won insight intact.

The throughline of the entire conversation is this: forgiveness is one of the most powerful acts of self-love available to you. It is not a favor to the person who hurt you. It is not a weakness or a concession. It is not even always a feeling — sometimes it is simply a decision you make, again and again, to stop letting someone’s worst moment toward you define your present and your future.

You are allowed to forgive on your own timeline. You are allowed to forgive without forgetting. You are allowed to forgive and still keep your distance. You are allowed to revisit your healing as many times as you need to. You are allowed to need an apology and feel the absence of one keenly. And you are allowed to do all of this imperfectly, messily, and humanly — because that is the only way any of us actually do it.

As Sherley and Kira reminded their listeners at the close of the episode: love yourself, be yourself, voice yourself. Forgiveness, ultimately, is just another way of honoring all three.

Listen & Subscribe

Ready to go deeper on forgiveness, healing, and relationships?

Catch the full conversation on Sherley’s Show — Season 1, Episode 4 — wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes drop regularly, and every conversation goes exactly where you need it to go.

Enjoyed this post? Share it with someone who needs a reminder that forgiveness is for them — not the person who hurt them.

---

---

If this resonated with you, follow Sherley’s Show. It offers more real conversations about relationships, growth, and using your voice.

---

Sherley’s Show is learning and growing every single day. We aim to uplift all marginalized voices both on this podcast and in real life. Please note that we are always striving to change the problematic language that society has internalized in us. Thank you for your patience as we aim to strip certain phrases from our vocabulary.

---

Would you like to be a guest?

Are you interested in getting your opinion out about a particular topic but don’t know how to do so?  If so, here is an opportunity to do so to share your point of view, PLUS get your message and voice out there.  It is always a great way to know about different perspectives and enrich ourselves through knowledge sharing.

Be a Guest

---

Submit your relationship advice/question.

Sherley’s Show provides an atmosphere where every woman is comfortable growing into their best self. Sherley’s Show is a no judgment podcast where we discuss how to rise strong out of all types of obstacles that come with relationships. Through personal life experiences and discussions ranging from infidelity, trust, forgiveness, sex, heartbreak, self love, therapy and more, we offer words of empowerment as you strive to build and maintain all of the relationships in your life. You may be going through something that is unique and difficult. Sharing your story gives others comfort and could also be helping someone else. Let them know they are not alone. Everyone has a story, do not let fear hold you back.

Listener Stories, Advice & Questions

---

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, I will get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through any of my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.