Letters people chose to share.

You do not know my name today. You called me by your brother's. I answered to it. I forgive the years you were too tired to look at me. Now you cannot look. The tenderness I waited for arrived late and confused. I will take it anyway.

You did the best you could with what you knew. I'm proud of who you became, even the parts of you that took twenty years longer than they should have. Worthington calls the last step Hold — hold onto the decision. I'm holding. You can rest.

I do not look like my mother yet. I look like myself, which is a relief. I forgive the years I spent dieting. I forgive the magazines. Mostly I forgive my own willingness to be measured by them.

I did not sleep with you. I knew students who did. I forgive my own years of defending you because the dharma was real. The dharma was real. You were also harmful. Both could be true. Metta — may you find what brought you to harm and may you stop. I am not in the Sangha anymore. The dharma I kept.

You called my Yoruba name unprofessional. You called my hair unkempt. Ubuntu tells me a person is a person through other persons — including the persons who do not see me. I do not need your seeing. I write to release the wait for it.

If any being I have harmed reads this — Micchami Dukkadam. May my wrongs be inconsequential. If any being who has harmed me reads this — the same.

Three years ago I would have written this letter to wound you. Today I am writing it because the wound in me has finally turned a corner. Kshama — patient endurance. Not weakness. The strength to not strike back.

I never said it. I'm saying it now: I forgive you. I love you. Rest.

I am not your father. I never tried to be. I forgive myself for the months I thought I had to be. You needed an adult, not a replacement. I have tried to be the adult. Ubuntu — a person is a person through other persons. I am better for raising you. I hope you are too.

I forgive every parenting blog I read in the first year. They were not about you. You are eleven and you are exactly who you are, which is no small accomplishment in a world that wanted you to be something easier. Metta — may you be safe. I will spend the rest of my life making the world a degree safer where I can reach.

You owned people. I am descended from you and from them — I cannot separate the ledgers. Tikkun olam: the world is broken in this exact place. I repair what I can reach. The reparations are pending. The work is generational.

You were not naive. You were what was given. I do not blame you for what you did not know to ask. Kshama — the patient acceptance of who I was. I forgive without disowning. The twelve-year-old's faith is still part of mine.

Maa, I am sorry. I can still order food. I can no longer have the conversation. I forgive my child self for assimilating too fast. I forgive my adult self for being too tired to take the night class. I will take it. Not this week. Soon.

Forty-one thousand dollars. The will was contested. The lawyer was a cousin. I forgive the money. I do not forgive the cousin. These are separate ledgers. Mechilah on the money. The cousin and I no longer attend the same funerals.

Arabic, I lost you somewhere between grade four and university. I am writing this in English to apologize, because the apology in Arabic would be the apology I cannot make. Inshallah I will come back to you. If not in this generation, then through my children.

Hawaiian aunties have Ho'oponopono — I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. Yours was a different syntax. You showed up at every recital. You drove eleven hours for the graduation. The words were not in your mouth. They were in your tires. I receive them now. Late, but received.

You told my widowed mother to remove the bindi. She was forty-three. Kshama — patient endurance. I forgive my fury at you on her behalf. I do not forgive the custom. Padmanabh Jaini writes that Jain ethics extends ahimsa beyond physical harm to harm by tradition. The harm by tradition was real. The bindi went back on by November. She lived another twenty years.

You are not a metaphor. You are a nerve and a back and a shoulder. I forgive my body for hosting you. I refuse to forgive you. You are not entitled to forgiveness. You are entitled to medication, physical therapy, and the truth.

You were nineteen. I was twenty-two. I was too old to be that careless with you. I forgive my younger self with the caveat that some things deserve a longer apology than a forgiveness letter to an empty room. If I ever find you, I will write the longer one.

You had eight years before the symptoms showed. I do not blame those years for the diagnosis. I forgive my impulse to look back at them as if I should have known. Worthington's E — empathize with the body that had no way to know. It did what bodies do. It tried. I am thanking it.