252 - How Forgiving Too Fast Kept Me Stuck for 20 Years
Life Happens with Barb & Michelle
Michelle Maros & Barb Schmidt
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if the thing you've been told will set you free is actually keeping you stuck? What if forgiveness isn't even the goal?
In this episode of Life Happens with Barb & Michelle, our hosts challenge everything we've been taught about forgiveness. Not the textbook version we learned as kids, but the real, messy, evolving kind that shows up after serious trauma, toxic relationships, and years of bypassed emotions. This is a raw conversation about what happens when you stop forcing yourself to forgive and start focusing on what you actually feel.
💬 Barb opens up about replacing forgiveness with acceptance after her divorce, her history of sexual abuse, and why at 69 years old she's done pressuring herself to forgive people who caused real harm.
💬 Michelle gets vulnerable about being a self-described "sucker" who forgave a major trauma too quickly because the person said the right words, and how she's learning to sit with her own feelings before letting anyone else influence her process.
✨ In This Episode, We Discuss:
- Why Barb swapped the word "forgiveness" for "acceptance" and how that shift changed everything
- The danger of forgiving too quickly and bypassing the emotions that actually need to be felt
- Michelle's experience of forgiving a severe trauma as a kid because the person said all the right things, only to realize decades later she'd never actually processed it
- How other people's apologies and influence can cloud what you truly feel and need
- Why taking accountability doesn't mean someone gets a pass or gets let back in
- The connection between premature forgiveness and the inability to set boundaries later in life
- Nedra Glover Tawwab's quote on forgiveness and releasing the power harm has over you
"I don't wanna wait that long. And also, is that really even the goal?"
If you've ever felt the pressure to forgive before you were ready, or wondered if forgiveness is even what you need right now, this episode is going to feel like permission to breathe. Barb and Michelle aren't here to tell you what to do. They're here to sit with you in the mess and remind you that healing doesn't have a deadline. Come listen.
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Episode Breakdown ⬇️
0:00 – Intro / Teaser clip
0:58 – Welcome & introducing the forgiveness topic
7:18 – Barb shares where she is today with forgiveness (2026)
8:04 – Barb opens up about childhood sexual abuse
10:15 – Is forgiveness even the goal anymore?
18:57 – Why we put the onus on the person who was harmed
23:24 – Should you remove the other person from the equation?
24:44 – The danger of being easily swayed by an apology
25:18 – How being a "sucker" affects your healing process
41:01 – Walking through what actually works: staying in your own essence
46:21 – Closing thoughts: accountability ≠ forgiveness
49:55 – Outro & Nedra Tawwab quote on releasing forgiveness
💬 We’d love to hear from you! What insight or moment resonated most with you in this episode? Share in the comments—we truly read every one.
📅 Subscribe & Join Us Next Tuesday for another heartfelt episode of Life Happens with Barb and Michelle! 💕
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The very traumatic situation that you've been through, you can actually feel the emotions, |
| 0:04.8 | okay, what's happening now? And it really is important not to leap to forgiveness, to wrap it back up |
| 0:10.3 | to where we are in this conversation. Don't leap to forgiveness because once you do that, |
| 0:14.5 | you've labeled yourself forgiven. So then when some emotion does come up, the first thing you're |
| 0:18.9 | saying, oh, I forgave that already. That's not an emotion that matters. |
| 0:21.6 | And we're bypassing again. |
| 0:24.0 | Forgiveness may be one of the most misunderstood parts of healing because many of us were taught |
| 0:29.7 | that forgiveness means pretending it didn't hurt, letting someone back in or acting like |
| 0:35.7 | whatever happened was somehow okay. |
| 0:38.4 | But healthy forgiveness isn't about excusing the harm, and it isn't about reconciling |
| 0:43.7 | before you're ready. |
| 0:45.1 | It's about freeing yourself from carrying resentment that keeps us from reopening back up |
| 0:50.1 | to the world. |
| 0:51.4 | Today, we are talking about what forgiveness actually is, what it isn't, and |
| 0:56.5 | everything in between. Welcome back to Life Happens with Barb and Michelle. We are so happy you're |
| 1:01.9 | here with us today. Hello, Mom. Hi, Michelle. You excited to talk about forgiveness today? |
| 1:07.1 | I am. We've done a couple episodes on forgiveness, and I love to keep revisiting it, |
| 1:11.6 | because I think it's a... It's always evolving. It's always evolving, and it's fluid, and it's, |
| 1:16.8 | I think as humans, with this tough topic of forgiveness, we are always inching our way to what it |
| 1:23.9 | actually means for us. Yeah. And how does it work in our lives? Because I don't think there's a cookie cutter way to do this. Well, there's no cookie cutter way to do anything in life. But yeah, and this for me is I'm going to share some of my newer, I don't know, not, newer discoveries, actually. I was trying to think of the right word. Newer discoveries on what it means for me. And what I think feels more real and more sustainable and more doable. |
| 1:48.2 | What's interesting about having a podcast that has episodes that have lived for, this is our third year. |
| 1:55.3 | Yeah. |
... |
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