When the Past No Longer Has the Final Word
From Dissertation to Essay
Reconciliation is a word that easily creates unease.
Some hear forgiveness.
Others hear forgetting.
Still others fear that the word may be used to minimise what happened.
Perhaps this is why many avoid it.
Yet the question keeps returning.
How can a person continue living with a past that cannot be undone?
The Irrevocable
Some things in life can be repaired.
A house can be rebuilt.
A wound can heal.
A misunderstanding can be clarified.
But there are also experiences that can never be reversed.
What happened, happened.
No conversation.
No judgement.
No treatment.
No apology.
Can return life to what it was before.
This may be the most painful insight.
Not everything can be restored.
Living Without Denial
When something cannot be undone, the temptation to turn away may become strong.
Some try to forget.
Others attempt to live as though nothing happened.
Still others return repeatedly to the same experience, as though life stopped at one particular event.
None of these paths necessarily brings peace.
Perhaps reconciliation begins somewhere else.
Not in forgetting.
But in the willingness to face the truth without allowing that truth to destroy everything else.
More Than the Event
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, one experience became increasingly clear.
A violation may become so dominant that the person begins to understand their whole self through it.
The story becomes the identity.
The pain becomes the name.
The past becomes the only narrative.
This is understandable.
But it is not the whole truth.
No violation contains an entire human being.
A life is always greater than its worst experience.
The Slow Expansion
Reconciliation rarely occurs as a single turning point.
It often grows almost imperceptibly.
One day, the person realises that they were thinking about something other than the pain.
That laughter came without effort.
That a new relationship had acquired meaning.
That an ordinary day could once again be experienced as a gift.
This does not mean that the past has disappeared.
It has only lost some of its exclusive claim.
No Duty to Forgive
Over the years, I have often encountered the idea that a person should forgive in order to become free.
I have never regarded this as a demand that professional social work has the right to make.
Forgiveness may be one path.
But it can never be a duty.
No one has the right to demand another person’s forgiveness.
And no helper should make it a goal.
What matters is not whether the person forgives.
What matters is whether life can open again.
Carrying Without Being Bound
We all carry our history.
No one begins entirely anew.
But there is a difference between carrying one’s history and being bound by it.
The first makes us human.
The second makes history our master.
Reconciliation may therefore be described as the gradual movement from being trapped by the past to being able to carry it.
Not without pain.
But with greater freedom.
The Professional’s Role
The helper’s task is not to lead a person towards a particular conclusion.
Not to say when grief should be over.
Not to decide when anger should loosen its hold.
Not to define what reconciliation must mean.
The professional’s responsibility is far more modest.
To protect the space in which the person may find their own way.
Some find peace.
Others find strength.
Still others find a language they never had before.
None of these paths can be standardised.
The Life That Continues
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, I became increasingly aware that healing rarely means returning to the person one once was.
It means becoming a person who can continue living with what happened.
Not because the pain disappears.
But because life once again becomes greater than the pain.
This is a decisive difference.
The aim is not to erase the story.
The aim is that the story should no longer erase the person.
A New Narrative
We often speak about life as though there were only one story.
But human life consists of many chapters.
Some are bright.
Others are dark.
Some we choose ourselves.
Others are written over us.
Yet there is something deeply human in the fact that new chapters may still begin.
Not because the old ones are erased.
But because life continues to write.
When the Past Finds Its Place
Through the work on my doctoral dissertation, this gradually remained as one of the most enduring insights.
Professional social work is not about freeing people from their past.
No one can do that.
It is about contributing to the slow process through which the past finds its proper place.
Not as a denied part of life.
Not as the whole of life.
But as one part of a much larger story.
Perhaps this is the deepest form of reconciliation.
Not that the person forgets.
Not that what happened becomes less serious.
But that the past no longer has the final word.
For the final word always belongs to the life that is still being lived.
Professional social work is not about freeing people from their past.
This essay was written in a conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT
This essay is part of the series “From Dissertation to Essay” and is based particularly on the doctoral dissertation’s existential-dialogical discussions of shame, identity, dignity, narrative understanding, and the human possibility of gradually reclaiming one’s life after violations: Pettersen, K. T. (2009). An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shame within the Context of Child Sexual Abuse: An Existential-Dialogical Perspective of Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre. NTNU.
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