Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today I want to ask you another question, which is, do you struggle with forgiveness?

And I feel like that's a loaded and complicated question because a lot of people may say,

no, I forgive everyone. And then you dig a little deeper under the surface and you think,

I don't know that that's forgiveness as much as that's letting

people get away with really bad behavior. And then on the other hand, there are people who

struggle with it that like when you do me wrong, we're done and I will never forgive you. And

sometimes that may be an appropriate response and oftentimes

it's not so in the spirit of that I want to talk about how to opt into forgiveness and I want to be

really clear about what we mean when we say forgiveness, what it means and what it doesn't mean,

and why we should do it, and also admit very transparently that it can be difficult to forgive

and tell you a little bit of my own journey into forgiveness and where I am now on it,

because I'm still learning.

So to begin, let's talk about what forgiveness is and what forgiveness isn't.

I think that's really important.

When I'm talking about forgiveness, I want to be clear that I am not talking about

condoning bad behavior, allowing people to mistreat you,

allowing people to disrespect you.

Again, the whole goal of this podcast is to get us to opt out of struggle, to really leave

behind the lies and the myths that tell us that our inheritance, what we're here to do on this planet is to struggle from one moment to the next.

And if we are going to truly reject that lie and the lifestyle that accompanies it, well then we have to be honest about the fact that if we allow people in our lives

who mistreat us repeatedly and that we allow them to do it and call that forgiveness,

we are never going to be able to opt out.

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