You can be mad. Being angry upset is vital to being a human. You can scream. You can yell. You can say various profanities. You can even cry because you’re so upset that it has to come out somehow. That’s OK. Even if you are like me and don’t get mad often because you feel like it makes you a bad person, it’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to be upset.

What isn’t OK is letting than anger and that frustration destroy your relationships with others. Don’t hold grudges against someone you are mad at. Holding grudges isn’t going to make anything better and isn’t going to help you at all. Building a wall around yourself to keep that person out isn’t the way to healing. It’s not OK to think with your anger and let it control your actions and inhibit your ability to forgive.

You can be angry. You can be upset. But you have to forgive. Holding onto your anger so tightly that you let it control you hurts you in the long run. But it also hurts those around you, not only you or the person you are upset with. Keeping people out of your life because you were upset with them isn’t going to make things better. You can’t just sit and act as if they don’t exist in some sort of feeble attempt to avoid the issue. That’s not the way to fix anything.

It’s not going to be easy to forgive. Maybe it will be difficult because the person hurt you and betrayed you, but if they are sorry, not forgiving them hurts them so much more than they originally hurt you.

But I think the main reason people struggle to forgive is because they know, whether they are conscious of it or not, that they are to blame as well. There isn't always just one person at fault, and many times, when people don't forgive others, it is becasue they will have to admit they they made a mistake, too. Sometimes it is because they have too much pride to address this fact. Other times, they are unable to admit this to themselves because they are ashamed and do not want to admit it to anyone else. And sometimes, they are just completely oblivious to the fact that they are at fault as well. So they choose not to forgive.

We all make mistakes. We all ask for forgiveness. How would you feel if someone didn’t forgive you for one of your mistakes? It would hurt, right?

In our own anger and pain, we tend to want to hurt others because they hurt us. But that doesn’t help anyone. At the end of the day, you will still be wallowing away in your pain and anger. So what’s the point of holding grudges and not forgiving and moving on?

That’s right. There isn’t one.

There is no point to holding onto your anger. There is no point to withholding forgiveness. It’s not going to help anyone, and it’s especially not going to help you.

So my advice to you is to forgive. You can be mad, but you need to forgive. Not for the other person, but for yourself. It’s the only way to move on and let go of your anger.

Your anger isn’t doing you any good, and it hasn’t for a long time. But forgiving and letting go of your anger will lead you to be happy once more. And everyone knows that happiness is a better option than anger.

So I am telling you that it is best to forgive. It might be harder at first than holding onto the anger in your heart, but once you forgive, you will feel a weight lifted off your shoulders and your heart.

You can be mad. You can scream. You can cry due to your anger. You have every right to do those things. But at the end of the day, you need to forgive.