MAVIS NICHOLSON: “Do you think it is possible, then, for someone to forgive themselves even when they’ve done something absolutely terrible?”
TONI MORRISON: “Yes.It’s called grace. At some point you do. If you don’t, you’re in a cul-de-sac. But you have to go through the fire first. You have to experience the full fall, and the complete self-loathing, in order to come around to something like the forgiving of oneself. It’s when you skip responsibility, when you use a subsititute emotion like guilt–which is of no use to anyone–but if you feel the real thing which is shame, hatred, humiliation, and self-loathing: that is the door. And if you get through that, then you can forgive yourself.”
A displaced Iraqi woman holds her cat, Lulu, while waiting for transport in the Iraqi Kurdish checkpoint village of Shaqouli after she fled her home with her children on November 10, 2016. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images)
