(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Forgiveness: Part Five – The Front Door [1] ['Douglas Schonenberg', 'Kelli Anne Busey', 'Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine'] Date: 2026-07-28 On discovering that the only way forward is going through. Music has always had a way of teaching me things long before I understood them. Sometimes a song makes perfect sense the first time you hear it. Other times, you have to live another thirty years before you finally understand what the songwriter was trying to tell you. Back in 1989, Don Henley released a song called The Heart of the Matter. Like most people who hear it, I thought it was simply another song about a relationship ending. Someone leaves. Someone is heartbroken. Someone tries to understand why love wasn’t enough. A typical song about broken love. I liked the song. I sang along with it in the car. Then I went on with my life. Thirty five years later, I listened to that song again. Nothing about the song had changed. But I had. After losing my father. After surviving a traumatic brain injury. After losing my career. After friendships quietly faded away. After years of depression. After almost losing myself. I now heard something completely different. When I first heard the song, I thought it was about losing someone else. Now when I listen to the song, I hear someone: Trying to understand how to live after loss. Trying to understand anger. Trying to understand letting go. Trying to understand forgiveness. One particular line has always stood out to me. “I think it’s about forgiveness.” That one word, think, may be the most honest word in the entire song. Because forgiveness is not something that we ever completely understand. It isn’t something that we finish. Rather, it is something that we keep practicing. Each day, I realize that I am still learning about forgiveness too: Every time an old memory returns. Every time I look into the mirror. Every time I pick up my backpack. Every time I remember my prison. Every time I feel tempted to stand at the window again. Every time I think about putting one of my old masks back on. Forgiveness is not just a single decision. It is a way of living. When I first began trying to understand what forgiveness was, I thought it just meant saying, “It’s okay.” It’s okay that these horrible things happened to you. But I was wrong because that is not what forgiveness is really saying because some things will never be okay. My father’s absence was not okay. My car accident was not okay. My depression was not okay. The relationships that ended were not okay. Forgiveness never asked me to pretend that those things were okay. It simply asked me to stop trying to make yesterday become something different than what it already is. As I sat beneath the tree with Mylo, I realized how much I had changed. Surrender taught me to stop fighting life. Acceptance taught me to stop fighting myself. Forgiveness taught me to stop fighting my past. And when I finally understood those life lessons I was also able to realize why I had to learn them in the order that I did. You cannot forgive what you refuse to accept. You cannot accept what you refuse to surrender. Each lesson prepares you for the one that follows. That is why Being S.A.F.E. is not simply four words put together with a clever acronym. It is a journey that prepares us for whatever comes next. For a long time, neither of us spoke. Finally, Mylo stood up and looked at me. “So…” he asked. “What happens next?” I smiled in puzzlement and said. “I don’t know.” “I thought forgiveness was the end.” He laughed softly. “It isn’t.” “What is it then?” I asked. Mylo looked at me and smiled and said, “Forgiveness is the end of one journey and the beginning of another.” Before I could ask him what he meant, he slowly raised one hand. Not dramatically. Almost casually. As though brushing dust from the air. Once he did, something unexpected happened. The branches above us shook. The leaves drifted gently toward the ground. The old bench faded. The prison dissolved into the afternoon light. The mirror reflected one last flash of sunlight before disappearing. The chessboard slowly vanished. The window dissolved. The masks slipped back into my backpack. Everything around me slowly disappeared. As I looked around as something new came into focus, I realized that I was no longer sitting beneath a tree. Instead, I was standing inside my own home. In shock at this transformation, I looked around in complete silence. The living room. The hallway. The walls. It all felt familiar and yet different, as though I had lived here my entire life without ever truly seeing it. It felt as if I had been here all along. And then, I understood what Mylo was showing me. The tree hand never really been just a tree. It had always been my home. Mylo smiled. “Now do you understand?” I slowly nodded. “The chessboard was a room.” “The mirror was a room.” “The prison was a room.” “The window was a room.” “The masks was a room.” All of it, was my house. I created those things in my mind to help me understand the lesson that each room was trying to teach me about myself. And then I looked down at my feet and saw my backpack. It was the only item that did not disappear. I looked at Mylo for an explanation as to why my backpack remained. Mylo smiled and said, “Of course it stayed.” “The backpack is not just your past. It is your life.” “Everything you have survived.” “Everything that you now carry with you.” “And the tree?” I asked. Mylo answered, “The tree was a place where you were felt safe enough to begin healing.” I nodded. The tree was my home, where I truly belonged. I looked around the house. Every room held one lesson. One part of my story. One piece of the person that I had become. The room with the chessboard taught me what I could control. The room with the mirror taught me to accept the man looking back at me. The room with the prison taught me that resentment only imprisoned me. The room with the window taught me to stop waiting for yesterday. The room with the masks taught me that surviving was something that I never needed to apologize for. None of those rooms had ever been separate. They were all part of the same home. The same journey. The same life. The same lesson. Then Mylo pointed across the living room. “There’s one thing you have not noticed yet.” I looked around. “What?” He smiled and then pointed toward something that I had somehow never noticed before. “The front door.” I stood there staring at it. Wondering how I could have missed seeing something that had been there all along. “Why have I never seen that front door before?” I asked. Mylo answered. “Because you were never ready to leave your home before. You see it now because you are.” I slowly walked toward it. As I stood in front of the door I paused. Not because I wanted to stay. But because I realized something. That everything inside this house had prepared me for the journey that I was about to take once I opened the door and walked outside. I looked around my house one final time, remembering every lesson that I had learned. I smiled and said to my house, “Thank you for being a safe place for me where I could heal and get ready to resume my journey.” Then I looked at Mylo. “Am I really ready to go?” He smiled. “Yes.” “Then why have I never seen this door before and why has nobody ever come inside?” He gently rested his hand on the doorknob. “The front door has always been here.” “But it only opens from the inside. You have to be willing to open it and walk through to see what comes next.” I wrapped my hand around the handle. Took a slow breath. And turned it. The door opened. Warm sunlight poured into the house. I closed my eyes and felt its warmth on my face. For the first time in years… I was not trying to get my old life back. I was not trying to become the person I was before my accident. I was simply ready to walk toward whatever life placed on the other side of that front door. Mylo smiled. “Welcome to Evolution.” I smiled back. Together, we stepped outside. Thank you for sitting under the tree with me and listening to my musings. If you enjoyed this musing, please consider joining my Substack, Musings Under the Tree. I write about empathy, personal growth, being S.A.F.E., politics from time to time, and whatever else wanders through my mind while sitting beneath the branches. https://musingsunderthetree.substack.com/p/welcome-to-my-tree?r=1s6ofh [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/28/800076135/community/forgiveness-part-five-the-front-door/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/