‘That’s the distinction between forgiveness and forgetting. It’s not about acting like it didn’t happen.’
A conversation with Bethel Abera, founder and director of Hidden Scars
Bethel Abera is the founder and director of Hidden Scars, a UK nonprofit that works to share the power of forgiveness. When I met Bethel earlier this year on a video call organized by my friend Micael Johnstone, I was working on a story about how—or whether—fossil fuel companies could play a constructive role in tackling the climate crisis.1
I wanted to understand whether Bethel thought that solving this global problem would ultimately require some element of forgiveness for the corporations, trade associations, and executives who misled the public and continue to obstruct climate action. While the parallels between individual trauma and the civilizational trauma wrought by climate change are imperfect, in asserting their desire—perhaps even their entitlement—to contribute to climate solutions, some element of forgiveness is essentially what the fossil fuel industry is seeking.
Fortunately, my chat with Bethel evolved beyond climate change and into a much broader, and much more uplifting, conversation about forgiveness. The excerpts below have been condensed significantly and edited for clarity.
(Side note: I’m a guest on this week’s episode of “Better Beings,” a hopefulness-inducing new podcast hosted by Micael and Joel Bravette. Head here to listen, or search for “Better Beings” wherever you get your podcasts.)
ADAM: Can you describe a bit of how you think about the process of forgiveness?
BETHEL: Forgiveness is very much misunderstood because people think it means that you are letting that person get away with what they’ve done. But that is not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is you personally letting go of the bitterness and the resentment that you have towards someone else because of what they’ve done.
It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel responsibility, or they don’t have responsibility, to make whatever they did wrong, right. That still exists. They may still have guilt, and they might still need justice—all of those things don’t go away. The point is that you are no longer motivated by the resentment and bitterness you have towards someone else. That is what forgiveness is.
So when someone who’s been abused looks at their abuser, they don’t have feelings of anger or hate towards them anymore. They’re just like, Yeah, you’re that person, but I don’t have those feelings towards you. And actually, forgiveness is more selfish than people realize because you’re really doing it for yourself. You’re not doing it for the other person.
Is the other person almost a nonentity—it doesn’t matter how it impacts them [because] it’s focused on your own recovery?
Exactly. And the reason why I think this is the best way to look at forgiveness is because their apology is not required in this situation. Their apology is welcomed, and it might help you, but it’s not required for you to let go of those feelings of bitterness and resentment that you have towards them. That’s your own personal journey that you go through. It’s you working on yourself.
Once you forgive someone, it’s actually so much easier to forgive other people in your life. Once you forgive that big thing, you can forgive other things so much more easily, and you’re just living a freer life.
It’s almost a way of retaking control of the situation because, like you said, you’re not waiting on them to apologize.
You’re standing firm in the fact that they don’t have any power over you anymore. They have no power over your emotions or when you heal or how you heal. You get to choose that. They can participate if they want and apologize, but that is not necessary for you to move forward.
It seems like what you’re saying is that forgiveness is not absolution. It’s not forgetting. It’s not saying, Everything you did was okay. It’s not ignoring or pretending that it never happened.
No, it’s not forgetting. I’m very aware that if you don’t learn lessons from past situations, it’s just going to happen again in a different way. For example, one of the other situations that I had to relearn forgiveness in was friendships. There are certain things that I look for now in friendships that I didn’t before because I’ve learned my lesson about what could and couldn’t hurt me. I’ve learned my lesson [and] haven’t forgotten what has happened in my past. I’m very aware. And I take those lessons with me.
My parents run a coffee shop in the UK, and they had to put a lock on the toilet. They wouldn’t know to do that before. But now they know. They’ve learned lessons in different situations. They have CCTV cameras now because they’ve had robberies before. So they’re aware of what they should and shouldn’t do and what to be cautious about. They haven’t forgotten. They haven’t said, Oh, that won’t happen again. They’re aware that there are things that they should put in place.
Similarly, I believe that with forgiveness you have to say to yourself, Okay, I’m going to let go of this bitterness and resentment, but for me, I know that when I have children there are things that I’m going to do to make sure that they’re not hurt by anyone. There are things I’m going to do to protect them because I’ve learned my lesson. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t trust the people around me. It just means that I don’t know what people are capable of.
That’s the distinction between forgiveness and forgetting. No, it’s not about acting like it didn’t happen. You have to go through your own healing process. You have to actively work through it. You can’t dismiss it because it will always be there in your mind. You have to actually work through it. And it’s hard. It’s so difficult. But it’s something that you have to do. You have to go through a specific healing process to be able to fully forgive someone and learn lessons and move on.
Have you thought at all about the relationship between individual human beings and the organizations they operate in? I think in very few cases are these things [the climate crisis] the result of just individual “bad people.” These are systemic and structural issues. But it doesn’t mean that people don’t have some responsibility. Climate disinformation and denialism doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. It’s created by people with their own agendas. How do you think about that relationship when it comes to forgiveness between individual people and organizations?
People know what they’re doing. Maybe they think they can change things. They believe they can change something in their organization—maybe that’s why they’re still there. And sadly some are just distracted by the money. Money is such a massive, massive—I mean, really, the core reason as to why these companies don’t want to stop. I think that’s the core issue here. How do you get the love of money out of the system? Is that even possible? It’s the deceitfulness of wealth.
The thing with forgiveness is, you can’t forgive unless the thing’s happened. You cannot forgive beforehand. You can’t forgive without knowing what you’re forgiving. That process [of reckoning with climate change] hasn’t even started yet. So we have no idea what the impact is. And this is assuming that people will forgive. Most people won’t.
What you said there—you can’t forgive while [something] is still ongoing—I feel like that is particularly relevant to the climate crisis. It doesn’t matter what they [fossil fuel companies] are “for” because they’re still lobbying against solutions. They’re still trying to capture international climate conferences. The behavior is still ongoing. And I think that point that you make about [how] until that stops you can’t start the process of healing and forgiveness.
Because once you start you just go back to where you were before. We start over and over again.
Learn more about Hidden Scars at hiddenscars.org. Head here to watch “Nkisaru and Siteyia: Forgiving Female Genital Cutting,” a video Bethel and Hidden Scars produced on Global Forgiveness Day last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/09/climate-leadership-council-big-oil-thinktank