The Book of Forgiving / Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu

RATINGS

Overall: 4 / 5 stars

Text Level: Medium

Entertainment: Medium

Self-Help: High

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Spirituality, Psychology, Therapy, Religion, Social Justice,

Page Count: 240

Is this book right for my inmate and me?

Guilt and shame stop many from healing. This book teaches readers how to let go of guilt and the shame that goes with it in order to start living a better future that isn’t locked down by past mistakes. The pages are filled with daily exercises and reflections on how to properly ask for forgiveness. The Tutus shares that the way to a life filled with happiness is by learning to forgive others and yourself. To build a life of healthy success it must start with letting go of the past and forgiving yourself to avoid shame.

Review By: Blackbird (Inmate)

Realizing that the road to repaying others starts by forgiving ourselves.

Can you forgive those that have wronged you? More importantly, can you forgive yourself for the crimes and pain you have committed against others? Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter Reverend Mpho Tutu lead readers through stories of immense pain and incredible forgiveness. In this book, we learn that for the soul to fully recover from painful actions it is necessary to live a life of forgiveness.

Sitting alone in a prison cell we are given time to reflect on the pain we have caused to our families, individuals, and ourselves. This leads to a huge level of guilt and remorse that creates amounts of shame that are often too much to bear. So many of us pray constantly to be forgiven by others while we forget that it is necessary to forgive ourselves.

The Tutus lead us through stories of robbery, murder, and genocide that took part in South Africa during apartheid, how the community made the realization that the only way for their society to grow to become more was through forgiveness. The violence and pain spoken of in this book are real and the courage displayed by those who were able to forgive is heart-healing. Loved ones across the nation were impacted by the violence, even our authors lost friends to murder. However, no matter how close the pain and sorrow struck, we are taught that forgiveness was the only option that they had in order to save their own souls.

The book provides the readers with daily activities and lessons on building an understanding of our actions. Through these self-reflective exercises, we learn how we affect the world and our place within it matters. One of the most important things we learn is that it is never too late to work for forgiveness. In jail, it becomes so easy to feel that it is too late to become more and in life and we are unworthy of anything positive. But, the messages here teach us we are redeemable and worthy of growth.

We all want to earn forgiveness for our past mistakes. What we learn here is that in order for us to be forgiven we must start by forgiving ourselves. All souls are redeemable and can be forgiven. We just need to take the proper healthy steps to reach that goal.