I need to tell you something about my own father before we go any further.
He was an alcoholic. Violent. Unpredictable. The kind of man who didn’t walk through doors – he kicked them down. For the first ten years of my life, I learned what fear felt like in my own home.
So when I tell you that forgiveness is possible, I’m not speaking from some comfortable place of theory. I’m speaking from the trenches.
And here’s what took me years to understand: forgiving my father wasn’t about him. It was about me. About reclaiming the parts of my life that his actions had held hostage for decades.
If you’re carrying anger toward your father right now, I want you to know something. That anger makes sense. It’s valid. And you’re not broken for feeling it.
But you also don’t have to carry it forever.
What We’re Actually Talking About
Let’s get something straight from the beginning. When I talk about forgiveness, I’m not talking about:
- Pretending what happened was okay
- Excusing his behavior
- Letting him back into your life
- Forgetting the pain
According to Charlie Health, when healing the father wound, forgiveness means letting go of anything that is no longer serving you. It’s an opportunity to release anger, resentment, and any other toxic feelings that are preventing you from moving forward in life.
Dr. Fred Luskin, a leading forgiveness researcher at Stanford, puts it simply: “Forgiveness is not about excusing the hurtful act, but about releasing yourself from the pain it causes.”
There’s a quote (often attributed to Buddha, though who really knows) that captures this perfectly: holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
That’s what unforgiveness does. It keeps poisoning you while the other person goes on living their life.
The Weight You’ve Been Carrying
Maybe your father was absent. Maybe he was there physically but emotionally unreachable. Maybe he was critical, harsh, or abusive. Maybe he just… left.
Whatever happened, if you’re reading this, you’re probably carrying something heavy.
Research on the “father wound” describes it this way: Father wound is what we call the emotional damage that occurs when a father is physically or emotionally absent from their child’s life. If you feel unloved, unknown, or unwanted by your father from an early age, this can influence how you see yourself and what you expect other people to see in you.
The effects don’t stay in childhood. They follow us:
Mental health problems: Research repeatedly shows that the father wound and other forms of attachment trauma in childhood are associated with mental health problems (such as anxiety and depression) in adulthood. Emotional outbursts: Those with a father wound often struggle to manage their emotions in later life and may use anger and aggression as coping mechanisms to shield the pain underneath.
Sound familiar?
Why Forgiveness Actually Matters (The Science)
I know, I know. “Forgiveness is good for you” sounds like something you’d see on a motivational poster. But there’s actual research behind this.
Harvard Health reports that a new Harvard-led study builds on earlier research that teases out the effects of this most human of actions, suggesting forgiveness boosts our mental well-being by reducing anxiety and depression. The results add to other recent evidence that it can also ease stress, improve sleep, and lower blood pressure and heart rate.
Studies published in scientific journals confirm that forgiveness decreases anger, anxiety, and depression and increases self-esteem and hopefulness for the future.
And here’s one that really got my attention. Research from Greater Good Berkeley found that when people recalled a grudge, their physical arousal soared. Their blood pressure and heart rate increased, and they sweated more.
Your body is literally keeping score. Every time you replay what he did, every time you feel that familiar surge of anger, your body responds as if the threat is happening right now.
That’s exhausting. And over time, it’s damaging.
One study found something remarkable: “We found that people are somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 25 to 50% more likely to still be living three years later, if they’re more forgiving than not.”
Forgiveness isn’t just about feeling better. It might literally help you live longer.
Understanding Before Forgiving
Here’s something I had to learn the hard way. You can’t fully forgive what you don’t fully understand.
I’m not saying you need to justify your father’s actions. I’m saying that understanding why he was the way he was can actually make forgiveness possible.
My father had a brutal childhood himself. An alcoholic mother. A father too old and tired to parent him. He grew up on the streets, in toxic environments that shaped who he became.
Does that excuse what he did? Absolutely not.
But it helped me see something important: his behavior had nothing to do with me. He wasn’t cruel because I deserved it. He was cruel because he was broken. His demons had grown so large they controlled his entire life.
As one therapist explains, the first thing that ought to be done is to individuate from your mother so you can find your own character. And I would add: separating your father’s failures from your own worth is equally essential.
His inability to be a father says everything about him. It says nothing about your value as a person.
The Practical Path Forward
Alright. Let’s get practical. How do you actually do this?
Harvard researchers developed the REACH method, which I’ve found genuinely helpful:
R – Recall the wrongdoing objectively. Not to wallow in it, but to acknowledge what actually happened. No minimizing. No exaggerating. Just the truth.
E – Empathize. Try to understand (not excuse) why he might have acted as he did. What was his own story? What wounds was he carrying?
A – Altruistic gift. Recall a time when you treated someone harshly and were forgiven. How did it make you feel? Recognizing this helps you realize that forgiveness is an altruistic gift that you can give to others.
C – Commit. Make your forgiveness concrete. Write it down. Say it out loud. Tell someone you trust.
H – Hold. Hold on to your forgiveness. This step is tough because memories of the event will often recur. “Forgiveness is not erasure. Rather, it’s about changing your reaction to those memories.”
What If It Feels Impossible?
Let me be honest. Some days, forgiveness will feel completely out of reach.
Psychology Today notes that scientific studies of forgiveness have shown that people can forgive parents, even for grave injustices, and experience considerable psychological healing.
But it takes time. In one study with survivors of serious abuse, the forgiveness was not quick and took over a year for each participant, with sessions lasting about an hour per week.
A year. Sometimes longer.
If you’ve been trying and struggling, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re dealing with something genuinely difficult.
One recommendation that helped me: start by forgiving someone else first, a person who did not inflict as much hurt as the mother or father. Get to know the pathway of forgiving more deeply here before beginning again with the parent.
Build your forgiveness muscles on smaller offenses before tackling the big ones. You wouldn’t start training with a marathon.
Forgiveness Doesn’t Mean Reconciliation
This is crucial, and I want to be very clear about it.
It’s important to recognize that forgiveness doesn’t always include reconciling with the wrongdoer. “One can forgive and want what’s ultimately good for the other person without the relationship being restored.”
As one expert put it: “Forgiveness is not about excusing your dad’s actions or forgetting the past. It’s a gift to yourself, freeing you from the burden of bitterness.”
You can forgive your father and never speak to him again.
You can forgive your father who has already passed away.
You can forgive your father without ever telling him you’ve forgiven him.
The forgiveness happens inside you. It’s about releasing the grip that the past has on your present.
Breaking the Cycle
Here’s something that keeps me going when the old anger resurfaces.
Research shows that one way many men are reportedly healing from their father wounds is by choosing not to be like their dads when they become parents themselves.
Every time you choose to process your pain rather than pass it on, you’re breaking a generational pattern. Every time you show up emotionally for the people you love, you’re rewriting a story that may have been repeated for generations.
My father’s father was absent too. And probably his father before him. Somewhere along the line, broken men kept creating more broken men.
That chain can stop with you.
A Final Word
Listen. I’m not going to pretend this is easy. It’s not.
But I will tell you this: the version of you on the other side of forgiveness is freer. Lighter. More capable of love and connection than the version still holding onto all that anger.
Without proper healing and forgiveness, we cannot truly love or begin to grow until we let go of what has hurt us.
Your father may never apologize. He may never change. He may never even understand the impact of what he did.
That’s his loss.
But your healing? That’s your choice.
And it’s available to you right now. Not because he deserves it, but because you do.
What’s your experience with forgiving a parent? Still struggling with it, or have you found a way through? Drop a comment below – this is a conversation worth having.