forgiveness isn’t the goal for everyone. it shouldn’t be the goal for everyone, and we need to stop upholding it as the ideal way of handling trauma, abuse, or mistreatment. for many people, forgiveness is the go-to. they forgive and forgive and forgive and let people walk over them because they forgive too much. there is power, for those people, to hate and hold grudges. that hate doesn’t have to be temporary and isn’t something everyone should try to move past. there’s power in hate. there’s self-respect in holding a grudge. there’s validation in it. it’s a way of saying “what happened to me was wrong.” never tear that away from someone who has struggled to see that.