“Forgiveness is not something that you should do. It’s something that you can do.”
Emily Ricks
Featured Guest: Emily Ricks
Emily Ricks had an idea of what parenting a teenager would look like. When her oldest son’s behavior did not match that picture, she responded with stricter rules, more lectures, and greater efforts to get him to understand her expectations. The harder she tried to control the outcome, the more powerless she felt. Motherhood mattered deeply to her, and the distance between the parent she wanted to be and the way she was showing up became a source of guilt and shame.
In our conversation on The Next Baseline, Emily described how that pattern began to change when she questioned the expectations underneath it. She started listening, asking questions, and getting to know her son beyond the version of him she had imagined. Today, she describes a close relationship built on trust and open conversation. Her story brings an often-abstract subject into everyday life: forgiveness can involve releasing our insistence on how a relationship was supposed to unfold so we can participate more fully in the one before us.
The Stories That Keep the Past Present
Emily, a mother of four and host of Parenting Teens for LDS Moms, approaches this work through the stories people carry about their experiences. Drawing on Dr. Fred Luskin’s work, she introduced the idea of a “grievance story”: a recurring account of what happened, what we should have received, or how someone should have behaved differently. These stories can surround a broken promise, a painful separation, or a family relationship that never became what we needed. The event may be over while the argument about it continues inside us.
That distinction matters because remembering an experience and repeatedly reliving the case against someone can serve different purposes. Reflection may help us understand what happened, recognize a boundary, or decide what we need. Rehearsing the same argument can leave us circling the same disappointment without discovering anything new. A useful question emerges: Is revisiting this helping me move through the experience, or is it keeping the experience at the center of my life?
Emily compared unexamined grievances to boxes pushed into a garage. Each one gets set aside, perhaps because we do not know what to do with it, until the collection occupies far more space than we realize. The image captures how quietly old hurts can become familiar company. We may notice the exhaustion, irritability, or reluctance to reconnect before we recognize the story we keep carrying into the room.
When Expectations Become Unenforceable Rules
Underneath some of those stories are what Emily, again drawing on Luskin, called “unenforceable rules.” We have expectations for how other people should think, respond, apologize, or demonstrate care, but wanting those responses cannot guarantee them. Honesty, respect, and kindness remain meaningful standards; recognizing our limits does not require abandoning them. It asks us to distinguish between the values we can practice, the boundaries we can set, and the behavior we cannot make another person choose.
This is where the conversation connected directly with Confrontation in the C2R2E framework. Confrontation requires facing the circumstances that exist, including the parts we wish were different. Acknowledging that something happened does not settle whether it was acceptable. It gives us a starting point for deciding what to do now, instead of making every next step depend on the past becoming something else.
Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Responsibility
Forgiveness also needs to be separated from reconciliation. Emily emphasized that someone can forgive a person who has died, making clear that forgiveness cannot always depend on a conversation, an apology, or renewed contact. Rebuilding a relationship raises additional questions about trust, conduct, and mutual willingness. A person can work toward peace while still deciding that distance is necessary or that trust has not been restored.
Emily’s coaching approach places particular emphasis on how our interpretations shape our emotional experience. She invited listeners to write down what happened, the meaning they attached to it, the feelings associated with that meaning, and the actions that followed. The purpose is to make a familiar pattern visible enough to examine. Taking that perspective need not become another accusation against someone who is hurting: responsibility for another person’s harmful conduct remains with that person, and emotional recovery is not a test of how quickly someone can think differently.
Choosing Curiosity in Our Relationships
One practical implication is that our values can guide our next response even when someone else does not share them. Emily described how demanding kindness or respect can lead us to act in ways that undermine those same values. Her experience as a mother made that tension personal. As she became more curious about her son’s experience, she found more room for the compassion she had wanted to bring to parenting all along.
Curiosity gave that change a concrete form. Listening did not require agreeing with everything her son said, and understanding him did not require becoming the same person. It meant allowing his perspective to be heard before deciding what it meant or how to respond. That distinction matters in relationships where every difference has begun to feel like a challenge: there is room to ask another question before delivering another correction.
Reclaiming the Parts of Life We Miss
I recognized a different version of this work in my own life. During the episode, I shared how resentment connected to experiences several years earlier had affected my willingness to return fully to Latin dance. Dance had been a source of expression, connection, and enjoyment, yet those past experiences had become entangled with my participation in it. Letting go of some of that resentment helped me return, reconnect with people, and recover something I had missed.
For me, the change became visible in what I was able to enjoy again. Within C2R2E, that is part of Reclamation: recovering agency and making room for meaningful participation in life. Forgiveness can support that movement when it frees attention for relationships, interests, and possibilities that have been crowded out. The measure is personal and practical—what becomes available when an old grievance no longer occupies quite so much space?
Making Room for What Comes Next
Emily closed with an important invitation: forgiveness is something we can pursue, rather than another obligation to use against ourselves. That leaves room for readiness, grief, and the time it may take to understand what we are carrying. A beginning might be as modest as writing down one recurring thought and asking what it means, what it costs, and whether it tells the whole story. We do not have to force a triumphant ending to become more deliberate about the next chapter.
The past remains part of our history. The people, relationships, and experiences still ahead of us deserve our attention too. As we begin deciding where that attention belongs, we return to the question at the center of The Next Baseline: What do we build now to reach our next baseline?
Listen to the Full Conversation
This Elevatus Editorial accompanies a conversation with Emily Ricks on The Next Baseline podcast, exploring forgiveness, grievance stories, parenting expectations, curiosity, and reclaiming emotional energy for the life and relationships we want to create.
Listen to the full episode below.
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About the Author - Danny DeJesus
Danny De Jesus is a transformational resilience thought leader, strategic thinker, and the founder of Elevatus Coaching—a practice built to help people rebuild their lives after major change. Drawing from his own experiences with divorce, co-parenting, and career shifts, he created the C2R2E Framework to guide people from collapse to elevation with clarity and confidence. Through the Elevatus Blog, he shares insights for anyone navigating disruption, rebuilding direction, or shaping a new chapter with purpose.