Until nearly the age of thirty, my sister had a total number of seven childhood memories . Though we grew up in the same house with the same parents and step-parents, her experience was a world apart from mine as she endured abuse at the hands of a relative for most of her young life and into her early teens. Seven memories to make up a childhood. The rest were impressionistic, dreamlike fragments and always horrifying. In adulthood, she began to recall, not only more of the days of her life, but vivid details that had been locked away in her psyche and in her body all those silent years. As more memories came, the more the fabric of her life unraveled and managing the newly erupted trauma became her new identify and full time job.

Today, she is a survivor, a fighter and mother of three. Most astonishing, she creates resources on forgiveness. Forgiveness? She once told me she had to forgive her monster or she would perish. I couldn’t fathom that. I wanted to kill her tormentor. And so did my father. Was forgiving a matter of life or death, at least in a spiritual sense? How about the literal sense? The idea of forgiving (or else) began to interest me, and I found myself thinking about it deeply. I recalled the court hearing of The Green River Serial Killer. He was by all accounts a monster. He’d murdered countless women without a hint of remorse. He’d been interrogated over and over and never broke; not once did he reveal the slightest glimpse of humanness.

On the day of his sentencing, one by one, the family and friends of his victims came forward and spoke their peace. And one by one, through tears and rage, they condemned him to hell. Again, he sat stone faced and remorseless, preserving his power over them until the very end. Finally, a kind looking older gentlemen came to the mic; the father of one of the victims. In a soft voice he told the killer that he did not hate him, that it was difficult to do, but that he forgave him. The Green River Serial Killer broke down and wept. I was struck by how effortlessly forgiveness passed through his defenses. Did this act bring the dead to life? No. But I could see that it was a terrifying necessity for the old man if he was to live what was left of his own.

To forgive is to release. To not forgive is to withhold. To withhold is to carry; to keep to oneself. To suppress, repress, and contain. I think of it as a variant of hoarding. We not only hoard material possessions—cats, old newspapers, trash . . . we hoard pain; memories, anger, failures, old arguments, criticisms, lies. Trauma. This must weigh something. And the stuff of that weight, of that psychological and emotional burden, is the metaphoric mountain we must acknowledge, embrace, and speak to if ever it is to move.

Forgiveness isn’t easy. It can be terrifying. To withhold it can be a powerful form of leverage over someone who’s wronged you, especially if that someone isn’t capable of forgiving themselves. But it changes everything. Hoarding emotions isn’t that different from hoarding tangible objects. Eventually all you’ve collected over the years surrounds you and consumes the space inside until it ravages your soul and severs your relationships. Withholding forgiveness renders you isolated and incapable of intimacy and alone in a crumbling structure with the constant threat of total collapse. Imagine that the structure isn’t your house. Imagine the structure is you. Your soul. Your life. Your spirit.

What are you willing to do about it? In the words of my sister, Wendy, “We cannot overcome what we deny.”