Tutu’s Transformative Guide to Forgiveness “The Book of Forgiving”

The Book of Forgiving offers a transformative journey through the art of forgiveness. Desmond Tutu and Mpho Andrea Tutu present a compelling roadmap for healing personal and societal wounds. Their wisdom, drawn from South Africa’s post-apartheid reconciliation process, provides practical steps to liberate yourself from the burden of resentment.

Dive into this life-changing guide and discover how forgiveness can revolutionize your relationships and inner peace.

Genres

Psychology, Memoir, Social Issues, Philosophy, Personal Growth, Conflict Resolution, Cultural Studies, Motivation, Inspiration, Mindfulness, Happiness, Religion, Spirituality, Christian Living, Emotional Mental Health, Emotional Self Help, Spiritual Self-Help

The Book of Forgiving presents a four-step path to forgiveness: Telling the Story, Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and Renewing or Releasing the Relationship. The Tutus share personal experiences and stories from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to illustrate these steps. They argue that forgiveness is not weakness but strength, essential for personal and societal healing. The book provides practical exercises and meditations to help readers navigate their own forgiveness journeys. It emphasizes that forgiveness benefits the forgiver as much as the forgiven, freeing individuals from the prison of resentment and allowing for personal growth and peace.

Review

The Book of Forgiving stands out for its practical approach to a complex emotional process. The Tutus’ personal experiences lend authenticity and depth to their teachings. The four-step path provides a clear structure for readers to follow, making the daunting task of forgiveness more manageable. The inclusion of exercises and meditations enhances the book’s practicality, allowing readers to apply the concepts to their own lives.

While the book’s message is universally applicable, some readers might find the religious undertones challenging if they come from different belief systems. However, the Tutus’ compassionate tone and emphasis on human dignity transcend religious boundaries.

The stories from South Africa’s reconciliation process add a powerful dimension, showcasing forgiveness on a societal scale. This broader perspective helps readers see how personal healing can contribute to wider social change.

Overall, The Book of Forgiving offers a compelling blend of personal insight, practical guidance, and inspirational wisdom. It’s a valuable resource for anyone struggling with forgiveness or seeking to understand its transformative power.

Introduction: Discover the healing power of forgiveness.

The Book of Forgiving (2014) is a practical guide to harnessing the power of forgiveness and healing in your own life. As humans, we will all experience hurt at some points in our lives. We’ll also harm other people, intentionally or not. Learning to both hold yourself and others accountable and forgive them for what they’ve done will transform your personal relationships and broader communities.

We all experience pain – that is, emotional pain, inflicted on us by others. It’s an inescapable part of being human. Maybe you were bullied at school. Or betrayed by someone you loved.

As much as you may try to guard against these kinds of experiences, you can’t escape getting hurt at some stage of your life. What you can control, however, is how you respond to what happens to you.

Do you go baying for blood, looking for the mythical “eye for an eye,” or do you choose to forgive? No matter how difficult it might seem – that choice is always within reach.

But what does it mean, really, to forgive? Forgiveness is usually seen as a kind of saintly act, or perhaps a soft one: it’s seen as letting people off the hook, or failing to hold them accountable for their deeds. But that’s inaccurate. In fact, the primary reason you should forgive the person who hurt you is actually very selfish: it will set you free.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu knew more about forgiveness than most people on this planet. Being a victim of the apartheid regime himself, he later created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a restorative justice project in South Africa that invited perpetrators of terrible apartheid crimes to tell the truth about what happened and ask for forgiveness. And for the victims to have a place to share the enormous pain, grief and destruction that they experienced. The TRC is credited with allowing South Africa to transition to being the democracy it is today, without more violence.

In this summary, you’ll discover the Fourfold Path to forgiveness. This path is a practical four-step guide, created by Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Andrea Tutu. It draws on their experiences and shows you how to harness the power of forgiveness in your own life. This summary contains four guided meditations. If you want to practice them at home, consider switching to the audio version.

The first step on the Fourfold Path to forgiveness is telling your story.

When Clara Walsh’s older sister died in a car accident when Clara herself was just 19, she was shattered. Losing her sister left an enormous hole in her life. But, after the funeral, no one talked about her sister ever again. It was as if she’d never existed. This was clearly a coping strategy for her family, but, for Clara, it didn’t work.

Decades after the accident, Clara suffered from anxiety and depression. She was terrified that something would happen to someone else she loved. Her marriage broke down, and she started using alcohol and drugs to cope with the stress. Clara had never been allowed to express what had happened to her.

She’d been prevented from the vital first step on the Fourfold Path to forgiveness: telling her story.

When you put your experiences into words, you are sharing your own perspective on what happened. Telling your story allows you to process the events, and integrate them. It also allows you to reclaim your dignity. You might have had no control over what happened, but you can create your own narrative of it.

It’s been scientifically proven that children become more resilient when they know their family stories. In the 1990s, researcher Marshall Duke created a questionnaire called “Do You Know?” It was given to a group of children who were instructed to find the answers to 20 questions about their family history. Follow-up studies showed that the children who filled in the questionnaire were happier and more resilient, and coped better with traumatic events such as the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Just knowing about their family history – whether good or bad – enabled them to cope.

How can you begin to tell your own story as the first step on the pathway to forgiveness? First of all, give yourself some time. In the immediate aftermath of an upsetting or traumatic event, you probably won’t be able to make sense of what happened to you. Your experience may be fragmented or blurry as you’re recovering from the shock.

When you’re ready to talk about it, choose a trusted person to talk to. Perhaps that’s a family member, or a good friend, or trusted minister. Bear in mind that telling your story is an evolving practice. It will change over time, and maybe even in each telling. With time, you may remember new details. Or discover that some aspects of the story become less important.

It may feel important to you to tell your story to the perpetrator – the person who actually caused you harm. That can be a very powerful process, if the perpetrator is also willing to engage in that conversation. But remember that people are often defensive and scared, or otherwise unable to face up to what they’ve done. They may be more interested in defending themselves than really hearing what you have to say. If you do decide to talk to them, make sure to manage your expectations. You have no guarantee that they’ll respond well, but at least you can tell your story.

To get into the right mindset for this first step of the Fourfold Path to forgiveness, you can start with a guided meditation.

Get comfortable, and close your eyes. Imagine you are in a safe, relaxing place. It could be on a beach, basking in the sun. Or in your bedroom, cozy in bed as rain taps against your window. Let yourself fully inhabit your space. What sounds can you hear, as you sit there? What does it smell like?

Just then, you hear someone calling your name. Their voice is filled with love. You notice that their presence makes you feel even more relaxed and completely safe. Who are they? A good friend or family member? Or someone who inspires you from afar?

The person sits down in your space. You notice that in between you is an open box. You start telling them the story of what happened to you. Every detail. As you talk, you notice your words streaming into the open box. Your companion gives you their full and undivided attention. You feel complete trust. Once you’ve told them everything, you close the box.

Then you pick it up, and hold it in your hands. When you’re ready, you hand it over to your companion. You know that they will look after your story for you. You don’t have to carry it anymore.

The second step on the Fourfold Path to forgiveness is identifying where it hurts.

In the first step of the process, you started to articulate what happened to you. The next step of the process is to explicitly name how you have been hurt. This step moves past facts to the feelings behind them.

Are you ashamed? Or furious? Or wounded by a betrayal? When you don’t acknowledge these feelings, they fester. After all, you can’t let go of something you can’t identify. So, this step of the process is essential.

This is something that Mpho Tutu knows only too well through her work with survivors of sexual abuse. Often she meets young women who have been shamed or scared into keeping quiet about what happened to them. They’ve never had a chance to process their grief and rage. Only by being given the space to safely identify and experience those feelings can they begin the healing process.

By naming your hurts, you step into vulnerability. You may be used to dulling your feelings by drinking or other harmful activities. Maybe you’ve learned to disassociate from them altogether. Learning to connect to your emotions again may be uncomfortable. You might feel uneasy and raw. But those feelings actually show that you’re in the process of healing.

Remember, that there are no wrong feelings. Your process of healing won’t look like anybody else’s. Your only job is to identify the emotions that are real for you. Expect to feel grief in this process, and to pass through stages like denial and anger, before reaching acceptance.

Make sure you get support from someone who can listen openly and acknowledge your feelings without trying to fix the situation. Someone who understands that the only thing you need is someone to give you their complete attention.

To prepare you for this step of the process, you can do another meditation:

Go back to the safe space you inhabited with your trusted companion. Get comfortable, and then put one hand on your heart and the other on your stomach. Take several deep breaths in and out.

Now, allow yourself to fully feel the hurt. Notice which emotions come up for you. Breath them in, and allow yourself to fully experience how that emotion feels in your body. Share the feelings with your companion, and let them know how it is to carry around this hurt.

Listen to your companion echo back what you’ve said and acknowledge your feelings.

Then, close your eyes and allow yourself to rest and relax in your safe space. When you’re ready, you can get up and leave the room.

The third step is consciously choosing to forgive.

The third step on the Fourfold Path is a big one: granting forgiveness to the one who did you harm. Without this step in the process, you will be stuck in steps one and two. Being able to forgive can seem like a saintly quality that only special people possess. But that’s not true. In fact, it’s a practice.

We all practice forgiveness every day. Think about when your toddler hits you over the head with a wooden block. Your first instinct might be to wallop them right back. But, instead, you tell them that they hit you, and it was sore. And that you understand they didn’t mean to harm you, but they need to be more careful next time. You’ve just moved through a cycle of forgiveness.

The key to being able to forgive lies in remembering your motivation, which is to free yourself from a lifetime of victimhood. In the process of forgiving, you give yourself agency. And the space to tell a new story.

Kia Scherr’s daughter and husband were killed in a terrorist attack in Mumbai. She watched the coverage helplessly, across the world in the United States. When the TV showed a picture of the terrorist, she was startled to blurt out: “We need to forgive him.” The rest of the family thought she’d gone crazy. But Kia knew that that was the only way she could go on living. Otherwise, she would be consumed with just as much hatred as the terrorists.

She imagined the grief of their mothers, who had also lost children. She connected with their humanity, even in the midst of her own suffering. In that way, she says, she was able to keep her heart soft. And she could accept what had happened to her family.

Seeing the humanity in the person you’re forgiving is key to being able to forgive. When you start to see them as complicated humans instead of monsters, you will be able to empathize with them.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean condoning their actions. It doesn’t mean you won’t hold them accountable. It simply means that you’ve decided to free yourself from staying bound to them, from staying a victim in the story. Forgiveness is a choice. And it’s one you will need to make again and again. The more you practice, the stronger your forgiveness muscles will become.

To help you with this step of the process, here is another meditation exercise.

Close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Allow yourself to think of an emotion that makes you feel good, like joy or peace, or a mixture of the two. Imagine that the emotion is filling you, and radiating outwards. This peaceful sensation is part of you. You can draw on it anytime you need it.

Now imagine the person you want to forgive. But instead of seeing them as an adult, picture them as a tiny baby you’re holding. They’re completely innocent. They haven’t harmed anyone yet. They’re just a baby, as you once were.

Can you direct some of your good feelings to them, and bless them?

The last step on the path to forgiveness is releasing or renewing the relationship.

The Fourfold Path is incomplete without the very last step: releasing or renewing the relationship with the perpetrator. In this part of the process, you decide whether you want to keep the person in your life, or send them on their way.

If you don’t know the person who harmed you, you may be thinking: “What relationship?” But the very act of being harmed has created a relationship between you. Every time you think about the perpetrator, they’re consuming your emotional energy and taking up space in your mind. The step of renewing or releasing the relationship is designed to free you.

Dan and Lynn Wagner’s teenage daughters were killed by a drunk driver who plowed into their car on the way back from a church event. They decided that to really find resolution, they needed to contact the woman who had killed their daughters. They needed to tell her what the loss had meant for them and how much they’d suffered. Dan and Lynn began sending letters to her in prison, and she responded. Eventually, they went to see her. Lynn had expected to feel angry, but when she saw the woman – Lisa – she just started hugging her, and crying.

Instead of being the opportunity they thought it would be to release the relationship, it actually became a renewal. Today, Lynn and Dan Wagner give public talks together with Lisa on healing and forgiveness. In the end, what makes the story so remarkable is not what happened, but how all three of them have responded to the terrible accident. Dan and Lynn Wagner, by demonstrating remarkable grace in forgiving Lisa. Lisa, by facing what she did unflinchingly and committing to making amends. That process took a very long time. But it resulted in a relationship that none of them could have previously imagined.

When you decide to renew a relationship you’re not trying to restore how it was before. Instead, you’re creating something new. It means that you have to think about what you need from that person in order to heal. Do you need them to be able to listen to you and acknowledge your pain, like Lynn and Dan Wagner needed Lisa to do? Do you need them to explain why they did it? Or do you need them to pay restitution or make some other form of amends? Asking for what you need is a powerful act. If the person can meet your needs, it could be the basis for a renewed relationship, made more resilient for what you’ve gone through together.

If the person isn’t able to listen, or take accountability, or if you don’t feel safe with them, then you may choose to release the relationship. That means that you choose to forgive them, and send them on their way to live their life with your blessings. You don’t have to tell them that explicitly. You can also do it in your mind.

As with all the steps on the Fourfold Path, this decision may take time. You don’t have to rush it. Only you will know when you’re at the stage when you’re ready to renew or release the relationship with the person or people who harmed you.

In order to really integrate the ideas in this last step, take a few minutes to do one, final meditation.

Get comfortable, and take a few deep breaths in and out.

Imagine you’re back in your safe space with your trusted, loving companion. Think about the person you’ve forgiven, and allow yourself to experience all the feelings that come up about the relationship. Are you anxious, sad, or hopeful?

Describe all your feelings and thoughts about the relationship to your companion. She will not offer an opinion or judgment. She’ll simply reflect back how you’re feeling. Allow yourself to fully experience your own inner wisdom, and see what choices feel authentic for you. When you feel at peace with what you’ve decided, you can leave the room.

Small acts of forgiveness make a big impact.

Even the smallest act of forgiveness can have an enormous impact in the world. The quality of human life on earth is made up of millions of small interactions between people. Whether those interactions lead to rupturing of relationships or harmony and renewal affects the very fabric of our societies.

Practicing forgiveness isn’t about being passive, or giving people who hurt you a free pass. On the contrary, it’s about learning to express your hurt, ask for what you need, and hold other people to account.

And if you know you’ve hurt someone, even in a small way, it’s about learning to become accountable for what you’ve done. To be able to hear their story without defensiveness, ask for forgiveness, and make amends.

There’s no act that can’t be forgiven, and no person unworthy of forgiveness. Often, the very first person you need to forgive is yourself.

Final Summary

Forgiveness is a choice that all of us make every day. And forgiveness is a selfish act: in choosing to forgive someone who harmed us, we’re actually freeing ourselves. In order to truly forgive it’s important to first tell your story, and identify the source of hurt and pain. Then you will be able to ask for what you need, and make a decision about whether to release or renew the relationship.

And here’s some more actionable advice: Keep a grief journal

Often our heads are very busy places, and it can be hard to think clearly, especially about fraught or emotional topics. As you’re on your own path to forgiveness, try keeping a grief journal where you’re free to write about all the feelings you’re experiencing in the journey. The journal will act as a guide as well as a record for you to look back on when you’re at a different place on the path to forgiveness.

About the author

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. In 1986 he was elected archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa. In 1994, after the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela, Tutu was appointed as chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate apartheid-era crimes. His policy of forgiveness and reconciliation has become an international example of conflict resolution and a trusted method of postconflict reconstruction. He is currently the chair of The Elders, where he gives vocal defense of human rights and campaigns for the oppressed.

The Reverend Mpho A. Tutu is currently the executive director of The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Introduction: Into Wholeness
Part One: UNDERSTANDING FORGIVENESS
1 Why Forgive?
2 What Forgiveness Is Not
3 Understanding the Fourfold Path
Part Two: THE FOURFOLD PATH
4 Telling the Story
5 Naming the Hurt
6 Granting Forgiveness
7 Renewing or Releasing the Relationship
Part Three: ALL CAN BE FORGIVEN
8 Needing Forgiveness
9 Forgiving Yourself
10 A World of Forgiveness
Resources
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
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Also by Desmond Tutu
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher