Last week, I visited the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts de Québec with a friend. Her art is powerful, raw, and luminous all at once. One part of the show was a video that touched me so profoundly. Niki spoke about forgiving her father for molesting her as a child. What struck me most was not only her words, but the way she said them. It was clear that her forgiveness came from the heart, not from reasoning, not from forced spirituality, but from lived truth. Her story stirred a memory in me.

Afterward, my friend turned to me and said, I don’t understand how she could forgive him. Her words pulled me back to my past, to another moment when forgiveness seemed impossible.

I was waiting for the bus one day, tucked into the entrance of a building to escape the Canadian cold. I began talking with a couple, and what they shared has stayed with me for life. They told me they had forgiven the murderer of their child. At the time, I was as stunned as my friend was at Niki’s story. How could anyone possibly do that? But then they explained. They forgave not for the murderer’s sake, but for their own. To release themselves from carrying corrosive anger that would otherwise eat them alive.

That was my first profound lesson in forgiveness. It’s not about declaring what someone did is acceptable. It’s not about forgetting. Forgiveness is a way of saying: I will not let this wound dictate the rest of my life. I will not feed my spirit with resentment.

True forgiveness transforms memory. It allows you to remember differently. If you’ve lived through an abusive relationship or trusted a business partner who betrayed you, the point is not to wipe the slate clean as if nothing happened. The fact is to remember differently. To learn the lesson so you don’t repeat it, without letting the wound keep defining you. You can carry the memory and the wisdom, without holding the bitterness.

In the case of Niki, her forgiveness was a form of liberation, not a lesson she was supposed to learn. I see Niki Saint Phalles’ art as both a wound and a release. Her ‘Tirs’ violent performances, where plastered targets exploded in a rain of colour, made the wound visible, and the release undeniable. Her journey is much more than just a question of forgiveness. She expressed her healing through art, through anger, through creation, and finally through letting go. This forgiveness came later in her life, when she found an inner balance.

The murder of a child or child abuse is brutal to face, let alone forgive. Yet resentment, too, takes its toll. I think this couple’s faith gave them a way to forgive. Niki found another way, through art, through creation, through truth-telling. What unites both paths is the understanding that resentment takes a toll. Our health, our nervous system, our joy all pay the price when we hold on too tightly to rancour. Forgiveness, on the other hand, makes you feel alive.

Hindu philosophy and yoga speak to this: to hold on to anger is to bind yourself. To forgive is to free yourself. Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra (II.33, pratipakṣa bhāvanam) teaches that when a destructive thought arises, we can invite its opposite. Holding on to anger is duḥkha, suffering. Forgiveness is sukha, ease. In yoga, we also say the body remembers. Each exhale is a chance to let something go. Practicing asana with conscious breathing, supported by pranayama, can open that release even further.

For me, Yoga Nidra has been powerful. It guides us into the subconscious, where old wounds lie hidden. In that stillness, forgiveness doesn’t have to be forced. It rises on its own, like the body’s natural softening, like a hand finally unclenching.

Of course, forgiveness doesn’t come easily. Sometimes it takes years, lifetimes. And not everyone will be ready to embrace it. But when you are, some practices can help. Some find solace in their faith, some in the Serenity Prayer from AA, for example. Others might turn to the universe itself.

Even if those words feel impossible in the face of certain crimes, the essence is this: forgiveness is less about them and more about you. And when it is real, like Niki’s, it comes from the heart, fragile perhaps, but still a doorway to peace.

Standing before Niki’s work, I felt forgiveness not as an abstract idea but as a current moving in me, a reminder that, like yoga, it is a practice of opening into freedom. Something that ties back to your own lived experience