Release Resentment: Steps to Finding Joy Again

Friend,

I see you there, carrying that weight. The bitterness has become so familiar that you’ve almost forgotten what it felt like before—when your heart was lighter, when disappointment hadn’t yet calcified into resentment.

I know what put it there. Every slight that went unacknowledged. Every hope that curdled into cynicism. The people who should have loved you better but didn’t. The doors that closed. The prayers that seemed to evaporate into silence. You’ve kept a careful accounting, haven’t you? Each wound catalogued, each injustice preserved like specimens in jars, proof that you had every right to feel this way.

But here’s what I need you to understand: I didn’t come so you could be right about your pain. I came so you could be free from it.

That bitterness you’re nursing? It thinks it’s protecting you. It whispers that if you let go, you’re saying what happened was okay, that you’re weak, that you’re letting them win. But it’s lying to you. Bitterness isn’t a shield—it’s a poison you drink hoping someone else will suffer. And the only one it’s destroying is you.

I know about betrayal. I know about being misunderstood, abandoned, mocked. I know what it’s like when the people closest to you fall asleep when you need them most. But I also know this: the moment you let bitterness take root, you give away your power. You let the worst moments of your past dictate every moment of your future.

You were made for so much more than this.

I’m asking you to do something that feels impossible: let it go. Not because they deserve your forgiveness—maybe they don’t. Not because what happened was acceptable—it wasn’t. But because you deserve to be free. You deserve to wake up without that familiar ache. You deserve to experience joy without it being filtered through resentment.

This doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It doesn’t mean reconciling with people who are unsafe. It means refusing to let your wounds become your identity.

I’m here, and I’m offering you something different: a way to transform suffering into compassion, hurt into wisdom, anger into purpose. But you have to open your hands first. You have to be willing to release what you’ve been clutching so tightly.

The life you’re longing for—the peace, the lightness, the ability to trust again—it’s on the other side of this letting go.

I’ll walk with you there. I’ve always been walking with you.