Today is National Forgiveness Day.

There are a lot of things I could write about forgiveness. I could talk about letting go of anger, finding peace, or refusing to allow yesterday’s wounds to control tomorrow.

But today, forgiveness is personal.

Today, I want to say something I never thought I would be able to say:

I forgive you, my ex-wife.

Those words are not easy for me.

Because there are things that happened between us that changed my life.

More importantly, there were things that affected our son.

And as a father, some of those wounds have been much harder for me to forgive than the things you did to me.

You Left More Than a Marriage Behind

When you decided to pursue acting and a different life, you didn’t just leave me.

From my perspective, you left our family behind.

You chose a path that took you away from the responsibilities of being a wife and, more painfully for me, from being an involved mother to our son.

I could eventually learn to deal with you leaving me.

I was an adult.

I could be angry. I could grieve the marriage. I could pick up the pieces and figure out how to survive.

But watching our son deal with your absence was different.

That hurt me in a place divorce never could.

There were times when I believed he needed his mother, and you weren’t there.

There were phone calls that didn’t happen.

There was time together that didn’t happen.

There were moments in his life when I wished you would reach out more, visit more, ask more questions, and simply be present.

I couldn’t understand how pursuing a dream could become more important than maintaining a relationship with your own son.

And I still cannot pretend that didn’t hurt him.

I Watched Our Son Be Hurt

This is probably the hardest part for me to forgive.

I could forgive what happened to our marriage long before I could forgive what I believed happened to our son.

Because when somebody hurts your child, something changes inside you.

You become protective.

You become angry.

You want to take their pain away, even when you can’t.

There were times when I watched our son live without the relationship with his mother that I believed he deserved.

And there was nothing I could do to replace that.

I could be his dad.

I could love him.

I could support him.

I could show up every day.

But I couldn’t be his mother too.

There were things only you could give him.

And there were times when I desperately wished you had chosen to give him those things.

Your time.

Your attention.

Your presence.

Your love.

A phone call just because you were thinking about him.

Time together that told him he mattered.

I can’t tell his entire story for him. Only he knew everything he carried inside.

But as his father, I saw enough to know that your absence affected him.

And that hurt me deeply.

There Were Times It Felt Like You Stopped Being His Mother

This is difficult to write because I don’t say it lightly.

There were periods when, from where I stood, it felt like you stopped being his mother.

Not biologically.

Nothing could ever change the fact that you were his mother.

But being a parent is more than biology.

It is showing up.

It is making the phone call.

It is asking how your child is doing.

It is making time when life is busy.

It is being there for birthdays, difficult days, ordinary days, and the moments nobody else sees.

And from my perspective, our son did not receive enough of that from you.

There were long stretches when contact was rare and time together was limited.

Meanwhile, I was there.

Not because I deserve an award for being his father.

Being there was my responsibility.

And more importantly, it was what I wanted.

He was my son.

I loved him.

He became such an enormous part of my life that imagining life without him was impossible.

Then the unimaginable happened.

And Then Our Son Died

Our son died.

There is no sentence I will ever write that adequately explains what those words did to me.

My life changed forever.

There is a version of me who existed before losing my son and another version who has been trying to figure out how to live ever since.

I lost my child.

I lost the person who had become such an important part of my everyday life.

And during the darkest period of my existence, I needed support.

I didn’t expect you to fix my grief.

Nobody could.

But you were his mother.

You were one of the few people on Earth who shared the experience of bringing this child into the world.

I thought that if there were ever a tragedy powerful enough to erase old differences and bring two people together in grief, losing our son would be it.

But I haven’t felt supported by you since his death.

And that has been another wound I’ve had to carry.

I Needed You to Show Up Then Too

I wasn’t asking you to become my wife again.

I wasn’t asking to repair our marriage.

I wasn’t asking us to pretend the past never happened.

I needed another parent who understood that our child was gone.

I needed compassion.

I needed someone who remembered the little things about him.

I needed someone who understood why certain dates destroyed me.

I needed someone who could say his name without being uncomfortable.

I needed someone who understood that grief doesn’t disappear after a funeral.

And I wanted to believe that whatever happened between us as husband and wife, we could at least share the grief of being parents who lost their son.

That didn’t happen in the way I hoped it would.

So once again, I learned how to carry something I never thought I would have to carry.

For a Long Time, I Was Angry

I was angry that you left.

I was angry about what happened to our marriage.

But most of all, I was angry about our son.

I was angry about the time you could have spent with him.

I was angry about the phone calls that could have been made.

I was angry about the memories you could have created together.

Because after your child dies, you learn something brutally painful:

There are no more chances.

You can’t make another phone call.

You can’t schedule another visit.

You can’t say, “I’ll spend more time with him next year.”

You can’t go back.

Time suddenly becomes the most valuable thing in the world because you realize how little of it we are actually promised.

And maybe that is one reason forgiveness has been so difficult for me.

Because I know there were opportunities that can never come back.

But Today, I Forgive You

And somehow, after everything, I can finally write these words:

I forgive you.

I forgive you for leaving.

I forgive you for choosing another direction for your life.

I forgive you for the pain I experienced when our marriage ended.

I forgive you for the times I believed our son needed you and you weren’t there.

I forgive you for the phone calls that weren’t made.

I forgive you for the time that wasn’t spent.

I forgive you for the moments when I watched our son struggle with things I couldn’t fix for him.

And I forgive you for not supporting me in the way I desperately wished you would after our son died.

But please understand something:

Forgiveness does not mean I am saying those things were okay.

They weren’t okay with me.

Forgiveness doesn’t rewrite history.

It doesn’t erase consequences.

It doesn’t magically restore trust.

And it doesn’t mean reconciliation.

Forgiveness simply means I am choosing not to spend the rest of my life carrying hatred.

I Refuse to Let Anger Have the Rest of My Life

I’ve already lost too much.

I lost my marriage.

I lost dreams I once had for my family.

And then I experienced the greatest loss of my life when our son died.

I refuse to lose whatever remains of my life to bitterness too.

Our son deserves better than that.

I want his life to inspire the way I live mine.

I want to become the man he believed I could be.

And I don’t think that man spends the rest of his life consumed by hatred.

That doesn’t mean pretending.

It means healing.

I Forgive Myself Too

I also need to forgive myself.

For the anger.

For the bitterness.

For the things I said when I was hurting.

For wondering whether I could have done something differently.

For every time I questioned whether I was enough.

For every moment when I wished I could somehow protect our son from everything that hurt him.

I couldn’t fix everything.

I couldn’t control another person’s choices.

All I could control was what kind of father I chose to be.

And I know one thing with absolute certainty:

I loved our son with everything I had.

I still do.

Death didn’t end that love.

I Hope You Find Peace Too

Despite everything I’ve written, I don’t wish suffering on you.

You’re still his mother.

You have your own memories of him.

You have your own story.

You have your own regrets, pain, and grief that I cannot fully know.

I don’t know everything that happened inside your heart then, and I don’t know everything happening inside it now.

So I’m not writing this to punish you.

I’m writing it because I need to release something.

I hope you’ve found peace.

I hope you’ve grown.

I hope you remember our son.

I hope you speak his name.

And I hope, in whatever way you carry him, you never forget that an incredible young man once called us Mom and Dad.

Today I Put Down the Anger

Forgiveness isn’t pretending the wound never existed.

It’s deciding the wound doesn’t get to control you anymore.

So today, on National Forgiveness Day, I’m putting something down.

Not the memories.

Not the lessons.

And certainly not my son.

I’m putting down the anger.

To my ex-wife:

You hurt me.

There were choices you made that I believe hurt our son.

There were times when I desperately wished you had been more present in his life.

And after his death, there were times when I wished you had been there for me as we faced something no parents should ever have to experience.

I cannot change any of that.

Neither can you.

But I can decide what I carry into tomorrow.

So today I choose forgiveness.

I forgive you.

Not because the past suddenly became okay.

Not because I’ve forgotten.

Not because every wound has disappeared.

I forgive you because our son taught me how precious life is.

I forgive you because I don’t want bitterness to have another day that could instead be filled with purpose.

I forgive you because I want peace.

And most importantly, I forgive you because I want to continue living a life that honors our son.

I’ll carry him with me for the rest of my life.

But the anger?

I’m finally ready to put that down.

Maybe that is what forgiveness really is.

Not forgetting the past.

Not excusing it.

Just deciding that the pain doesn’t get to write the rest of your story.

Who do you need to forgive—not because what happened was okay, but because you’re finally ready to stop carrying the weight of it?