Reconciliation is not Revision

On telling the truth about harm while making room for love

Whenever I return home, I have a coffee date with my dad. I treasure those times of connection. I make sure we never miss.

It began about a decade ago, when he asked me to join him for a coffee. This was unusual, and I wondered why, but agreed. As I sat across from him, steam rising wistfully between us, sorrow weighed his countenance.

“I wasn’t always the best father to you,” he said. He named, directly and without excuse, specific childhood harms.

I looked into his eyes and told him I forgave him, because it was already true in my heart. And yet, that moment changed something. An honesty entered our relationship that has only brought us closer.

He reflected regretfully on kicking me out when I was in high school. I told him, honestly, that it has and continues to impact me greatly, and yet it is no longer something I feel is between us. It’s my own work, now.

Some people think that naming past harm means creating distance. That refusing to sugarcoat or deny family history while pursuing and maintaining closeness demonstrates insincerity.

But we don’t heal by denying the past. Relationship is not rebuilt through revision. Authenticity is essential to healthy relationships.

Intimacy is not built on niceness or fresh coats of paint over rotted wood. The closeness that I cherish is cultivated in identifying hurt, being honest about it, and dealing with it directly.

Sometimes others can meet us there. Often they will not. There is no handbook for success. But glossing over pain and denying abusive history never leads to true restoration, if any is to be found.

It may be me that has caused harm. It may be someone I love. The same principle stands.

I want to be clear: this isn’t a call to reconciling all relationships. This is not a post to shame or discourage estrangement where estrangement is necessary protection. Some relationships are too damaged to go on, where safety remains elusive and remorse is absent.

And some have potential to rebuild.

There’s a tenuous complexity to relationships, whether familial or social. We all hurt one another, and the closer we become, the more potential for this truth to be realized. I don’t love any perfect people, nor am I one.

But not all hurt is equivalent. Poor choices or hasty words during times of grief or pain or anger have impact, but there’s no equivalent to the destruction of sexual abuse or domestic violence. It takes discernment to determine which relationships are capable and worthy of efforts at repair. And even then, there isn’t a neat binary: estrangement or engagement as usual.

Sometimes we love with clear boundaries in place. Sometimes we engage with a mixture of guardedness and curiosity: what will come of this interaction? Has my loved one grown or changed? Does once upon a time mean forever?

Popular trauma discourse often encourages the binary: Good person or bad person. Safe or unsafe. Love or condemn. Estrange or reconcile. This can put us in a bind: Does contact with that person mean the harm was never real? Does forgiveness mean it wasn’t that bad? Or does continued or renewed relationship signal weakness, dependency, inconsistency, lack of self-respect, or desperation? Worse – does it suggest that you’re a liar?

That’s a lot of extra pressure to carry into already complicated relationship dynamics.

Reconciliation is not revision. Nor does it demand it.

Reconciliation or tentative engagement does not mean the trauma never happened. It doesn’t mean you’re “over it” and no longer affected. It doesn’t mean you misunderstood, or they were justified, or that what happened wasn’t abuse. It doesn’t even have to mean you’re ready now – or ever – to forgive everything.

It simply means that, despite everything, you are choosing a path forward in relationship, because something between you or about them is valuable enough to try. That the balance or risk and relationship favors the perils of leaning in.

Sometimes, the balance does not. The dynamics shaping these decisions are highly personal.

When we’ve experienced trauma, we’ve lost agency and control. Healing involves reclaiming that internal power. This includes the power to discern and decide what feels healthy and right for you, right now.

Sometimes that means leaving and cutting contact. Sometimes it means more distance. Sometimes clearer boundaries create the space where contact can continue without harm. Sometimes it means deciding there’s reason to try again and assess for change. And sometimes love persists in the painful void of absentia. But the survivor gets to decide.

Photo by Mohamed Ziyaadh on Unsplash

As I write this, I’m struggling with the question of what to share. Is this essay a betrayal? How much is my story, and what protection do we owe to those who hurt us? How small do we shrink ourselves to exist within fragile bonds? Does forgiveness and reconciliation mean never speaking of the pain again? Or can we be as honest with others as we are between one another and with ourselves?

These are not easy questions.

I don’t want to stab anyone in the back. But I’m also not willing to surrender my hardest-won truths, or pretend the events that most shaped me never happened at all.

I don’t know if I’m getting this balance right.

But I do believe that accurately naming truths does not mean turning the one who hurt you into a monster. And neither are survivors obligated to search for complexity in someone who subjected them to profound cruelty or exploitation. Sometimes the harm itself is enough to know.

Someone can be abusive, and soften, and change. Some abusers harden, unflinching.

Someone may have hurt you, and also have qualities you love. That doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It doesn’t make you weak.

Someone can endlessly promise change, but never try, empty words marking an age-old cycle. Others quietly reflect, trying, stumbling, and trying again as they slowly become a new version of the person you once knew.

This complexity should never erase accountability or demand that you pretend. And accountability does not mean complexity cannot be acknowledged.

Reconciliation may follow healing, but is not a litmus test of who has healed, or who is stronger. Forgiveness is not morally superior. Estrangement is not failure. There is no singular virtuous ending with profound pain, betrayal, trauma, and abuse in the rearview mirror.

There is only choice. Freedom. Sometimes, possibility.

The questions to ask are not “am I a good person if…” but rather, “what is true today?” and “What is safe today?” “Do they take responsibility and own the past?” “What, if anything, has actually changed?” and “What boundaries are appropriate, needed, and healthy at this time?”

Healthy reconciliation has room for both past and present truths. The past truths may be painful. Present truths might hold possibility.

Ultimately, reconciliation is interesting to me because I am so imperfect myself – and so committed to growth. Because I hope that others might hold me with compassion when they weigh the balance of my words and actions, might find me worthy of trying again where I have caused hurt. I offer this to others, too.

But not to everyone. Sometimes the trauma is too devastating, and there is no balance but the harm itself to weigh. This choice is our right as survivors. We are not required to excavate redeeming qualities from someone who has devastated us simply to prove that we have healed.

Love that requires revisionism to exist is not love. Can reconciliation that rests on the sanitized premise of a white-washed history truly be counted as reconciliation at all? Perhaps the deepest love and the realest relationships are not those of perfect ease, but those of messiness and a steadfast commitment to truth.

I remember, and I still forgive.

I forgive, and I will still speak my lived truth.

I acknowledge the harm, and allow myself to hold onto the good.

I’m Deborah Vinall, PsyD, LMFT, a trauma therapist and author exploring trauma, relationships, belonging, and the complicated work of being human.

My books—including Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide and Trauma Recovery Workbook for Teens—have helped readers around the world understand and heal from relational and other forms of trauma and find their way back to themselves.

Here on Mental Health Musings, I explore those themes more personally, blending clinical insight with reflection, and occasionally sharing guided meditations and resources for healing.

If this kind of work speaks to you, I invite you to subscribe to receive future reflections and guided resources.