Forgiveness Is How I Took My Power Back

Not as a spiritual bypass, but as a reclamation of self, peace, and power, in your own time, in your own way.

Wendi Kehn/Hellbloom Haven (Also featured on Substack & Medium)

Dec 08, 2025

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of Tik-Toks and posts from people who are angry, rightfully angry, at the way forgiveness is talked about in some spiritual spaces. They say it feels dismissive. That it minimizes the pain they carry. That being told to “just forgive” feels like being asked to forget what they survived, or worse, like being told their suffering doesn’t matter.

And I get it. I really do.

There were points in my life where forgiveness felt impossible, like a betrayal of everything I had endured. I’ve known the kind of pain that makes your body tense at the thought of letting it go. I’ve known the anger that feels like the only thing keeping you upright. I’ve lived through trauma that should never have happened, and I’ve carried wounds so deep that the idea of forgiving anyone felt like erasing myself.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand, after a lot of years and a lot of healing: forgiveness, when it’s real, when it’s done for you and no one else, can be a way home to yourself and a way of reclaiming the power they stole from you. It’s a way to reclaim your power, your peace, and your future. Not because the people who hurt you deserve it, but because you do.

I would never try to rush anyone to that place. I know how sacred your pain is. But I want to share what forgiveness has come to mean for me, not as a spiritual ideal or a moral obligation, but as a lifeline. As the tool that helped me break free from the people who once tried to define me by what they did to me.

Where My Story Begins

I was born to a 17-year-old girl who had already lived through more pain than most people could imagine. My mother was stuck in an abusive relationship when she brought me into the world, barely more than a child herself, already carrying trauma that no one had helped her process or heal. Within a year after me came my brother, and after that she was trying to flee from the whole ordeal with two toddlers in tow.

We moved around a lot during my childhood, always searching for safety or some sense of stability. But things were rarely calm. The ground beneath us never felt solid. It often felt like we were in survival mode, just trying to get through one day at a time.

In the midst of that instability, I went through experiences that no child should have to. I carried emotional wounds from a very young age, deep ones that affected how I saw myself and the world around me. Alongside those, I struggled with health challenges, intense anxiety, and a nervous system that always seemed to be on high alert.

I also experienced the world in a way that felt different. I was spiritually sensitive, able to sense things that weren’t being said out loud. I could feel the pain people were hiding. I often knew when something wasn’t right, even when adults pretended everything was fine. That sensitivity made the world feel overwhelming at times, but it also gave me insight that I’ve come to value.

I was surrounded by people who were struggling: some with mental health issues they didn’t understand, others with addiction, and many with the quiet weight of unmet expectations handed down by their own families. Most were doing their best, but their best didn’t always protect me.

Love didn’t always feel safe. I was often misunderstood. Boundaries were blurry. And emotional presence was inconsistent. The adults around me weren’t bad people; they were overwhelmed, hurting people doing their best to provide for 4 kids and themselves. But when you’re a child, it doesn’t matter why someone can’t show up for you. What matters is that you learn, consciously or not, how to adapt to that absence and the projections of their own unresolved pain.

This is the world I came from.

In those early years, I wasn’t thinking about healing. I was thinking about surviving. Forgiveness wasn’t even on my radar. I was just trying to stay invisible enough to avoid more hurt. Helpful enough to be loved, and holding secrets and far more than someone my age should have.

But eventually, as the trauma kept stacking and I got older, something shifted. I started to realize I never wanted to be someone who allowed life to make me hateful and bitter, or let it define me. I didn’t want to be someone constantly chasing the validation of others. I didn’t want to become hardened, distrustful, and closed off. I didn’t want to pass on the pain either to those around me or to my children.

And that realization is where I believe my journey with forgiveness truly began, not as a gift to others, but as a radical act of choosing myself.

When Survival Turned Into Clarity

By the time I met my oldest daughter’s father, I had already been through more than most people knew. I was 17, and he was 23. At first, he seemed charming, attentive, and protective, everything I thought I needed after a childhood filled with instability. He told me he was saving me from my broken home life, and I believed him. I wanted to believe in safety and love.

But the moment I moved in with him, everything changed. I realized I had just jumped from one hot pan straight into another.

What looked like protection turned into surveillance and control. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. I was punished for being noticed. He followed me, checked my phone, questioned every move I made. He bought me a dog, then used that dog as leverage, threatening harm if I didn’t comply.

He played mind games constantly. He would sneak around outside, tap on windows, or create noises just to make me think strangers were watching the house, then burst in pretending he had “saved” me. I was terrified, and he used that fear to keep me dependent.

There was sexual abuse as well, moments I didn’t have the language for at the time. Moments where consent didn’t matter to him. Pain and tearing me down was the objective. Moments that still sit in my body even now, though I’ve learned how to reclaim myself piece by piece.

And his life outside our home was dangerous, too. There were times I woke up to guns in my face because he had gotten himself involved in things that put us all at risk, situations created entirely by choices he made, but I had to endure the consequences of.

He cheated on me repeatedly and cruelly, even forcing me to witness it and accept that he could do what he wanted and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. The first time I objected, he beat me. Violence became the price for speaking up, for trying to leave, and for having any opinions about anything, so I stopped.

When I went into labor with our daughter, he refused to take me to the hospital, he was hosting a party instead. I had to find my own ride. I gave birth without him, and when he finally showed up the next day, I learned he had cheated again, this time with someone I had gone to school with.
And looking back now, I understand what I couldn’t see then: these girls were victims too. We were all underage. We were all being manipulated. He wasn’t just unfaithful, he was a predator.

Two weeks after my daughter was born, I discovered he had harmed someone very young in my family. That was the moment the fog lifted. I knew I had to get out.

But leaving didn’t stop the danger.

When I told him it was over, he came to get his things, and while I waited, he locked me out of the house with my newborn still inside. Panic took over. I broke down the door. He attacked me. We struggled. He tried to strangle me. Luckily someone else was in the house and called the cops so he stopped.

And in that moment, something inside me shifted. Looking at my newborn daughter I knew that I couldn’t let this be her story and life

I didn’t panic. I didn’t shut down. I went completely calm. My emotional control, something I had been forced to develop my entire life, became my greatest strength. It kept me thinking clearly enough to survive.

After I left, the harassment continued. The stalking. The threats. The attempts to intimidate me. The promises to kidnap our daughter. He tried everything to keep control.

I hated him. Truly and deeply. And I had every right to.
But over time, I realized something that changed everything:

My hatred wasn’t hurting him.
It was hurting me.
And my healing bothered him more than anything ever could.

My growth.
My joy.
My peace.
My ability to build a life without him, those were the things he couldn’t stand.

And that’s when I learned that forgiveness is not surrender.
Forgiveness is freedom.
It’s cutting the cord that tied me to him.
It’s choosing myself.

Not for him.
Never for him.
For me. For my daughter. For the life I refused to let him destroy.

The Weight of Forgiveness, and the Power in It

I get why the concept of forgiveness can feel so hard, almost unbearable.

You think:
What do you mean, forgive?
They get to walk away with peace while I’m left holding everything they did?
They get closure, while I carry the scars?

CSA. Sexual assault. Abuse. Betrayal. Manipulation.
The cruel words that were thrown at you when you were already broken.
The lies. The humiliation. The moments you froze, dissociated, or cried and no one came to help.

These things don’t just hurt. They shatter you.
They make you feel small.
They make you question your worth.
They make you believe, even for a moment, that maybe you deserved it or it was punishment for some past actions. Karma so to speak. (Anyone who tells you this is full of crap and ego)

And that’s the point of abuse, isn’t it?
To make you feel powerless.
To strip you of your identity.
To convince you that someone else has the right to control your body, your voice, your life, and that you’ll never get it back.

It wrecks you to realize that someone could have such power over your life, and use it to harm you without hesitation or remorse.

But here’s the truth that changed everything for me:

Abusers aren’t powerful.
They’re reckless. They’re impulsive.
They are people who cannot regulate their own emotions or behaviors, so they try to dominate others to feel in control.
But they have no real self-control.
No real discipline. No wisdom.

But you?
You have emotional control.
You have restraint.
You have the capacity to heal, to think, to choose differently.
And that makes you more powerful than they will ever be.

That’s why forgiveness, as I’ve come to understand it, is the ultimate revenge.
Not because it lets them off the hook.
But because it proves they never owned you to begin with.

They don’t get to define your future.
They don’t get to control your emotions, your nervous system, your relationships, or your ability to love.

Forgiveness is the moment you look at everything they tried to destroy in you, and say:
You don’t get to keep it.
You don’t get to win.
You don’t get to shape me anymore.

It’s not weakness.
It’s warriorship.
It’s power reclaimed.

For most of my life, I felt powerless to the cards I had been dealt.
I didn’t choose the pain, or the circumstances.
I didn’t choose the trauma.
I didn’t choose the way people treated me, like I didn’t matter, like I didn’t get a say.

But somewhere, at some point in time, I made a decision:
I was done feeling powerless.
I was done letting other people control my story.
I was done handing over my emotions, my choices, my peace.

And no, I didn’t get here easily.
I’m not perfect.
It took heartbreak after heartbreak, mistake after mistake, lesson after heartbreaking lesson to get here.
It took losing parts of myself and fighting to get them back.

But I’ll be damned if I keep letting anyone else hold the pen to my life.
No one gets to control me the way I was once controlled.
Not ever again.

That’s what forgiveness made possible for me, not because I let them off the hook,
but because I finally unhooked myself from all of it.

You Have What They Never Will

If someone hurt you, deeply, deliberately, or repeatedly, you might still be carrying the weight of it.

You might still be thinking about them, long after they’re gone, shaping your life around the damage they caused.
You might still flinch at kindness, sabotage good love, or feel a constant undercurrent of fear, shame, or rage, and wonder if you’ll ever be free.

And maybe, in quiet moments, you’ve thought:
How did they get to walk away untouched, while I carry this?
How is it fair that they did the damage, but I’m the one who has to rebuild?

Here’s the truth:
People who seek power through harm are already empty.
They’re broken in places they refuse to heal.
They don’t hurt others because they’re strong, they hurt others because they’re weak.
They can’t self-regulate, so they try to control.
They can’t connect, so they dominate.
They can’t love, so they manipulate.

I believe people can change, and I pray they do, but the truth is, most won’t.
And at some point, we have to accept that, and choose ourselves anyway

But you?
You’re not like them.

You have the capacity to hold complexity.
To feel grief and still choose joy.
To acknowledge your pain and still reach for love.

You have the potential to build relationships that are real and safe and whole.
To be deeply known and still be deeply loved.
To experience peace that isn’t built on suppression, but on self-trust.
To laugh without scanning the room for danger.
To rest, without guilt or fear.

You have the potential to become someone your younger self needed, someone who chooses peace without fear, love without conditions, and boundaries without guilt

And why should someone like that, someone who discarded your humanity, still get your energy?
Why should they get to control your emotions, your body, your future, even in their absence?
Why should they be the one who determines how you see the world, how you love, how you live?

That’s exactly what people like that want.
To leave a mark so deep that you never fully come back to yourself.

But here’s what they’ll never have:
The courage it takes to heal.
The strength it takes to forgive.
The joy of living in a body you’ve fought to reclaim.
The softness that comes from real safety.
The love that’s earned, not taken.
The peace that’s built, not forced.
They’ll never have the knowing that you are stronger than you ever thought, that you carry a fire, a strength, and an intelligence that can’t be taken from you.

They’ll never have what you are now building.

And that’s why forgiveness is so powerful.
Because it says:
You don’t get to keep me.
You don’t get to win.
You don’t get to live in my head, my body, or my future anymore.

I’m taking it all back.

Sometimes, the Person We Need to Forgive Most… Is Ourselves

What surprised me most on this healing journey wasn’t how hard it was to forgive those who hurt me. It was how hard it was to forgive myself.
For many years, it was actually easier for me to forgive them.
I could see their pain. I could understand their flaws.
I grew up surrounded by people who hurt others because they didn’t know how to face their own wounds, and somewhere along the way, I started to believe that their behavior was my fault.
I had internalized the belief that I was worthless, not good enough, broken from the start, so of course they treated me that way.
It made sense to me that I was the problem.
So I forgave them, not always out of compassion, but because I genuinely believed they were right about me.

I didn’t even realize how much blame I was carrying until I began to sit with it.

I blamed the child in me who endured things no child should have to.
I told her she should’ve said something sooner.
I blamed her for not knowing how to speak up or get away.
I blamed her for believing people who lied, for trusting adults who were unsafe.

I blamed the teenager who ignored the red flags.
Who mistook jealousy for love.
Who stayed when things became dangerous, and who kept going back because she didn’t know what else to do.

I blamed the young girl who trusted a man who was charming on the surface and monstrous underneath.
I told her: You should’ve known. He was a predator. You should’ve known. Especially since I had already been targeted by one earlier in life.

Every time someone used me, manipulated me, broke something soft in me,
I said it again: I should’ve known.

But how?
How could I have known?

How do you “know better” when your brain has been stuck in survival mode for most of your life?
When nothing feels safe, not people, not places, not even your own instincts?
When your nervous system is constantly scanning for threat, too overwhelmed to even register what’s true?

When all you’ve ever known is fear and chaos, you don’t learn how to trust yourself,
You learn how to stay quiet.
How to adapt.
How to survive.

And that survival?
That wasn’t weakness.
That was wisdom.
That was your body doing what it had to do to get you through.

The truth is, none of those younger versions of me failed.
They did what they could with what they had.
They made decisions inside of systems and environments that offered no safety, no guidance, and no protection.

They deserved understanding, not blame.
They deserved love, not shame.
They deserved to be held, not judged.

So forgiveness, for me, didn’t just mean releasing others.
It meant finally releasing myself.

It meant looking at those past versions of me, not with criticism, but with awe.
Because they survived what should have broken them.
They adapted. They endured. They made it, so I could be here, healing now and helping others.

And maybe that’s where your forgiveness begins too.
Not with the person who hurt you,
But with the person you’ve hurt most quietly: you.

You deserve forgiveness.
Not because you did something wrong,
But because you’ve carried guilt for things that were never yours to hold.

You don’t have to keep punishing yourself to prove how much it hurt.
You don’t have to keep reliving it to prove it happened.
You’re allowed to heal.
You’re allowed to let go, walk forward, and build a brand new life.
You’re allowed to love yourself back into wholeness.

However You Heal, I Honor It, And I’m Here if You Need Someone

Before I close, I want to say this with my whole heart:

I will never judge you for how you heal or even if you choose to.
Not for how long it takes.
Not for what you feel or don’t feel.
Not for whether you ever choose to forgive.

We all come to healing in our own time, in our own way, and for our own reasons.
There is no right way. There is only your way.

All I’ve shared here is just one path.
One perspective. One lived experience.
If it resonates with you, I’m honored.
If it doesn’t, that’s okay too.
You are allowed to be exactly where you are.

But if something stirred in you while reading this,
If you’re holding something heavy, or feeling alone with it,
I want you to know: you don’t have to sit with it by yourself.

For the month of December, I’m offering free 60-minute 1:1 sessions.
This isn’t therapy, I’m not a trained mental health professional.
I’m just someone who’s been through a lot and knows how powerful it can be to be seen, heard, and held.

I won’t give advice unless you ask for it.
There’s no fixing. No pressure. No expectations.

Just space.

Come exactly as you are.
Messy, joyful, angry, quiet, tired, hopeful, heartbroken,

You’re welcome in all your forms.

You don’t need to have the words.
You don’t need to be “ready.”
You just need to be human.
And I’ll meet you there.

If you’d like to connect, you can book a free session here:
👉 https://hellbloomhaven.com/hellbloomhaven-com-come-as-you-are-11-sessions/

You are not alone.
You never have to carry it all by yourself.

Thank You for Reading

Thank you for taking the time to walk through this with me.

If you’d like to connect, explore more of my work, or check out other offerings, you can visit the website

There, you’ll find additional resources, community spaces, and details on how to work with me in various capacities. Whether you’re looking for reflection, reconnection, or simply a reminder that you’re not alone, there’s a space for you.

I’m deeply grateful you’re here.
You are worthy of healing, peace, and love exactly as you are.

With care,
Wendi Kehn