Truth: When someone asks for forgiveness, they want their own peace back. And that’s not even something you can give them.

One of the biggest truths I learned is that forgiveness heals me. I can’t do someone else’s healing for them.

The only time my mother ever asked me to forgive her was late at night, in the privacy of her own living room, at the bottom of a bottle of Sandeman’s Port.

“Will you forgive me? For everything?”

“Sure. Yeah. Of course,” I’d say. But next year would only find her crying at the bottom of another bottle. I wanted her to be happy. But I couldn’t go there for her.

Setting people free to walk through their own darkness is the truest test of your own freedom.