Extending an olive branch can be healthy, but experts say it isn’t something people should feel pressured to do.
One of Amanda Gregory’s warmest childhood memories is a game that she played with her two brothers. They called it “cockroach hunt.”
It involved racing into the kitchen at night, flicking on the lights and trying to smash cockroaches with their bare feet before the bugs could scatter.
Neither her mother nor her father bothered to clean, she recalled, leaving the house filthy — floors thick with grime and carpets reeking of cat urine. And they rarely spoke to their children.
One day, she injured her knee, and her parents seemed more annoyed than concerned, she said. Eventually she learned to live with the pain. Decades later, Ms. Gregory found out that bone chips were left floating in her joint, a problem that required surgery.
When she was growing up, none of this seemed unusual. It wasn’t until much later in life, after becoming a trauma therapist in Chicago, that Ms. Gregory realized to what extent her parents’ physical and emotional neglect had affected her. In the course of her own therapy, she began to wonder: “Do I need to forgive to make more progress in my recovery?”
She is one of several therapists, writers and scholars questioning the conventional wisdom that it’s always better to forgive. In the process, they are redefining forgiveness, while also erasing the pressure to do it.