An apology can be healing, but your healing can’t wait for an apology…

Are you stuck in conflict long after it’s over?

For many people, that happens because their internal peace is tethered to someone else.

They’re waiting.

For an apology.

For justice.

For someone to admit fault.

And until that happens, they won’t move forward.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting accountability.

It means you value fairness.

It means you care about justice.

It means you have a conscience.

But sometimes, our resistance runs deeper.

Sometimes it’s not just about this conflict.

It’s about the ghosts behind us.

Unresolved hurts.

Betrayals that never healed.

Loved ones who taught us—directly or indirectly—that peace only comes when they say.

So we keep waiting.

Not just for them, but for all the ones who came before who never said sorry.

We rehearse what they should have said.

We freeze our healing until they thaw.

And in the process, resentment grows.

Not just from the wound itself,

But it grows in the waiting.

Resentment robs you quietly.

It steals your ease.

It makes you suspicious, brittle, distracted.

It turns a moment of harm into a story you keep reliving.

That’s the trap of an external orientation.

You've outsourced your internal regulation.

Handed over the keys to your peace and said “I won't move until you move."

But what happens when they don’t?

Your healing cannot be dependent on someone else’s humility.

Self-agency is the power to say:

“Even if they never own what they did,

I refuse to let what they did own me.”

That’s not weakness, that’s maturity.

That’s what responsibility for self looks like.

So yes, seek accountability.

Seek reconciliation.

But don’t let your freedom hang on their decision.

Shift your basis for peace from an external orientation to an internal one.

Let their accountability be a bonus.

Not the basis.

Because when your orientation is internal,

You stop waiting for them to free you.

And you discover you were always free…

You just had to choose it.