A solo guided activity
This is not about excusing what happened. It is about freeing yourself from carrying it.
Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood things we are asked to do. This experience will not tell you to forgive. It will help you understand what you are actually carrying, what it is costing you, and what release — on your own terms — might actually look like.
Nothing is stored. This is entirely private.
⏱ 20–40 minutes · Allow more if you need it
Step 1 of 5
Start honestly. There is no right answer — only the true one.
Step 2 of 5
Select everything that applies. There may be more than one thing.
Step 3 of 5
Select everything that is true right now — even the things that are hard to admit.
Step 4 of 5
Forgiveness means different things to different people. This is yours to define.
What does forgiveness look like for you?
In your own words: why do you want this?
Write honestly. This is only for you.
There are no right answers here. Write what is actually true.
A moment to pause
Your answer suggests this forgiveness may be more for someone else than for you. That is worth sitting with. Forgiveness done for other people rarely gives us the peace we are looking for — because it was never about us.
Try again: If no one else would ever know whether you forgave this person — if it made absolutely no difference to them — would you still want to? What would it give you?
Step 5 of 5
Sankora/san•KOR•ah/
There is a word in Who Told You That? that English did not have, so the author made one. Sankora means right in the heart, wrong in the reading — both, wholly, at once.
It is not forgiveness. Forgiveness asks you to pardon a wrong. Sankora asks something gentler and stranger: it lets you keep the love and put down the blame — without pretending the harm did not happen. It is making peace with an unfortunate situation that came from love.
Most of the weight we carry from other people goes one of two ways. Either we hurt someone we loved, or someone who loved us hurt us. Sankora speaks to both. It only asks that you look at each one honestly.
First, turn it toward yourself
Think of how you showed up in this. Not the moments you were careless or cruel — those ask for a different reckoning. The moments you meant well, and the reach still landed wrong.
Now, the harder direction — them
Read this slowly first
This direction is not for every rupture, and it is the place this work can curdle into self-betrayal if you are not careful. Some people act from cruelty, and you are under no obligation to invent a loving motive where none existed. When someone has shown you who they are, you are allowed to believe them. Considering that someone was sankora toward you is not the same as excusing what they did, deciding the harm was acceptable, or reopening a door you have rightly closed. Your discernment is yours to keep.
The person who hurt you. Holding everything they did fully in view — which is truer?
Your forgiveness path
Professional support
What you are working through is significant, and this activity is only one small part of what you may need. A therapist or counsellor — especially one who works with grief, trauma or relational harm — can offer something these pages cannot. That is not weakness. It is wisdom. Find a therapist (UK) → · Find a therapist (US) →
The Evidence File
The Evidence File is a personal record of real experiences, moments, and outcomes that directly disprove the negative beliefs you hold about yourself. Not affirmations — evidence. Things that actually happened. Your inner critic ignores them. You are putting them on record.
Did anything in this session give you evidence that contradicts your inner critic's case against you? Name it here — even one sentence counts.
If this opened something
The patterns underneath unforgiveness — the inherited scripts, the stories we carry about what was done to us and what it means — are at the heart of Who Told You That?. The book has tools for exactly this kind of work.
Explore the book →Invite someone to play