How to Actually Forgive Someone (with Katharine Giovanni)
Release Date: 09/20/2025
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info_outlineA gentle note before you dive in: this conversation touches on sexual assault. It's okay to pause, skip ahead, or come back to this one another time.
Katharine Giovanni attempted suicide in the eighth grade. She grew up in what she calls a "pickled family" (both parents were alcoholics), got bullied for not fitting into anybody's box, and spent years wearing her survivor story like an outfit: I lived through this, look at me. Then her mother fell down a flight of stairs, dried out in the hospital, and the two of them spent a few years closer than sisters, before her mother died of breast cancer. That was Katharine's flashpoint. She got sober (35 years and counting), and eventually built an entire method for how to forgive someone, even the person you're positive doesn't deserve it.
I've watched enough people get told to "just forgive" and sent off with zero instructions to know how empty that advice is. Katharine is a three-time bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including her latest, The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power, and she's the first to say the unforgivable doesn't have to be forgiven right away, or maybe ever. Her method starts with the easy people and works up to the hard ones, ranking everyone on a scale of one to ten and never skipping straight to your tens.
We get into her exact forgiveness mantra, why forgiveness is 100 percent compatible with never speaking to someone again, and why (yes, you read that right) you can absolutely forgive someone who's already dead. This is forgiveness with the boundaries left on, and that's exactly the kind I can get behind.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUCd3I_EAY4
In this episode
- Why "just forgive them" advice fails, and the step-by-step method Katharine built instead
- The difference between forgiving someone and reconciling with them (you can do one without ever doing the other)
- Katharine's forgiveness mantra, and how to use it alone at home in under five minutes
- Why you can forgive someone you'll never speak to again, including people who have already died
- Why "forgive and forget" is a myth, and what actually changes in your body when you truly let go
- How forgiveness and boundaries work together instead of against each other
Timestamps
- (00:01) Welcome and intro: meet forgiveness coach and author Katharine Giovanni
- (01:33) Why everyone tells you to forgive and nobody teaches you how
- (02:00) Katharine's "pickled family," being bullied, and a suicide attempt in eighth grade
- (05:06) Her mother's fall, rehab, and death from breast cancer: the flashpoint that got her sober
- (06:16) Reconciliation isn't the goal: "just because I forgive you doesn't mean I want a relationship with you"
- (09:43) Stop letting them live rent free in your head
- (15:03) The forgiveness mantra, step by step
- (15:30) The rule: start with the easy people, work up to the "tens," never more than ten at a time
- (20:12) How to forgive the truly unforgivable
- (21:04) Forgiveness, justice, and boundaries: why they're not the same thing
- (24:03) Forgiving the pieces of a memory: the desk, the playground, even the year itself
- (25:32) What happened in Katharine's body when she forgave too many people at once
- (33:42) Where to find Katharine and her book
About Katharine Giovanni
Katharine Giovanni is a three-time award-winning bestselling author and speaker who has written more than a dozen books, including her latest, The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power. A survivor of stage three breast cancer and a turbulent childhood, she spent years teaching people how to run concierge businesses before retiring from that work in 2020 to focus on the forgiveness method she developed in 2021.
Learn more at Katharine's website, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Favorite quotes
"Forgiveness is selfish. You do it for you. You don't do it for them." —Katharine Giovanni
"Just because I forgive you doesn't mean I want a relationship with you." —Katharine Giovanni
"Stop letting them live rent free in your head. You need to forgive them and move on." —Katharine Giovanni
Resources mentioned
- The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power by Katharine Giovanni: her latest book, and the source of the step-by-step forgiveness method discussed throughout the episode
- KatharineGiovanni.com: Katharine's website
- Katharine Giovanni on LinkedIn
Related episodes
- The Jungle of Forgiveness and Boundaries - Can They Co-Exist?: Dana's own earlier deep dive into the exact question this episode answers.
- Getting Pulled Into the Past: Our Shame Response and the Impact of Unprocessed Trauma: more on why old wounds keep firing until you actually process them, the same territory Katharine's method covers.
- How to Reclaim Your Power from Shame: a newer conversation on taking your power back from old pain, a natural next listen after this one.
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