How to forgive yourself

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Forgive Yourself"

The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Original Air Date: April 10, 2026
Guest: Professor Maisha Cherry, UC Riverside, expert in the moral psychology of anger, empathy, and forgiveness

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the nuances of self-forgiveness: what it means, how it differs (or doesn’t) from forgiving others, and why it is both necessary and difficult. Host Sean Illing and returning guest Maisha Cherry engage in a frank, philosophical, and personal conversation, blending real-life experiences with moral theory to untangle the complexity of forgiving ourselves for past wrongs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Study Forgiveness? (02:22–03:53)

• Personal and Social Motivation: Cherry explains how her interest in forgiveness stemmed from both personal experience and public events, particularly around anger and how society often misconstrues forgiveness.
  • Notable Quote:

    “I got interested in anger first and forgiveness is kind of like that, that connected to anger. Particularly because people think that forgiveness is still letting go of anger and because I'm just pro anger. Of course I'm going to think, you know, kind of disagree with that particular view and try to correct people about what forgiveness is and what it isn't.” (02:29–02:59)

• Cultural Pressures: She discusses incidents like the Charleston church shooting and the pressure put on victims to forgive, saying this often leads to misunderstanding the real nature and role of forgiveness.

2. Is Self-Forgiveness Different from Forgiving Others? (04:01–06:18)

• Philosophical Definition: For Cherry, the mechanism is the same; only the object is different: sometimes we must let go of anger or contempt toward ourselves, not just others.
  • Notable Quote:

    “So they're not different, it's just target towards different persons, which in the case of self-forgiveness, it is a self.” (05:35–05:46)

• Real-World Stakes: The difference, says Illing, is you can't get away from yourself:
  • “...you have to walk around in your own head.” (06:18)

3. The Necessity of Self-Forgiveness (06:21–08:00)

• Living With Yourself: Not forgiving oneself makes “being you and living with you very difficult, but also quite destructive,” Cherry argues.
  • Notable Quote:

    “...as much as I say that we don't necessarily have to forgive others, I do believe not today or not tomorrow, we do need to go about the work of forgiving ourselves because as you say, we need to live with ourselves. And the only way to do that productively is to eventually forgive ourselves.” (06:49–08:00)

4. Do We Have the Right to Forgive Ourselves? (08:00–10:20)

• Complex Morality: Cherry explains it’s possible to harm others and oneself in the same action—e.g., destroying a relationship through infidelity means you’ve also harmed your own life.
  • Notable Quote:

    “When we harm other people, particularly when it comes to our loved ones, we are invested in our loved ones…when we harm them, we disrupt that.” (09:50–10:20)

5. Regret, Guilt, and Shame (14:24–19:57)

• Lingering Moral “Residue”: Even after forgiveness, remorse and regret often persist. Cherry notes that while rumination can be toxic, regret can be a force for good if it leads to personal growth.
  • Notable Quote:

    “Let it remind you of your values, let it remind you of your moral compass, but also allow it to motivate you to do better next time.” (17:59–18:12)

• Shame vs. Guilt: Cherry draws a key distinction:
  • “When we are shameful, we are ashamed of who we are...With guilt, we're disappointed in what we've done, not necessarily who we are.” (18:24–19:23)
  • Guilt can impel repair; shame can prompt withdrawal or hiding.

6. Are Some Things Unforgivable? (31:06–36:16)

• Degrees of Harm and Intent: Cherry and Illing debate whether motives matter and what, if anything, is truly unforgivable, referencing public scandals to explore if some acts reflect not just bad actions but fundamental character flaws.
  • Notable Quote:

    “...the degree of the reason, depravity wise because now we've gotten to depravity really makes you think is this who you are? ... that calls for some other kind of work and introspection and reasons to really to indeed feel shame.” (35:11–36:16)

7. Consequences of Not Forgiving Yourself (38:53–39:32)

• On Living and Flourishing: Failing to forgive oneself hampers personal flourishing, affecting mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.
  • “I don't think you can really go on...living in the Aristotelian sense of flourishing. Flourishing in a sense in which your moral life is good, your psychological life is good…” (39:04–39:32)

8. On Moving Too Fast or Too Slow Toward Self-Forgiveness (39:32–42:15)

• Pitfalls to Avoid:
  • Forgiving oneself too quickly without true reflection or action
  • Minimizing harm or blaming victims
  • Hiding behind “greater good” rationalizations
  • Notable Quote:

    “...if you do it in ways in which you allow yourself to forgive yourself because you kind of minimize the harm…that's problematic.” (40:00–41:00)

• Recommended Process:
  • Sit with what happened, face its impact, take responsibility, repent, confess, and commit to doing better.

9. Practical Advice for Those Stuck in Guilt/Shame (42:15–44:09)

• Acceptance and Self-worth: Cherry underscores the importance of recognizing that the past cannot be undone, but self-worth and second chances always remain possible.
  • Notable Quote:

    “...you are not what you've done, that you are still worthy of dignity and respect, that you are worth your own self love. And that means you're also worth a second chance and you're worth a new beginning.” (43:08–44:09)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On defining self-forgiveness:
  “So they're not different, it's just target towards...different persons, which in the case of self forgiveness, it is a self.” — Maisha Cherry (05:35–05:46)

• On the residue of wrongdoing:
  “Regret is defined as kind of like this deep sorrow that we have as a result of our wrongdoing...Let it remind you of your values, let it remind you of your moral compass, but also allow it to motivate you to do better next time.” — Maisha Cherry (17:59–18:12)

• On guilt and shame:
  “When we're shameful, we are ashamed of who we are...With guilt, we're disappointed in what we've done, not necessarily who we are.” — Maisha Cherry (18:24–19:23)

• Practical advice:
  “You are not what you've done, that you are still worthy of dignity and respect, that you are worth your own self love. And that means you're also worth a second chance and you're worth a new beginning.” — Maisha Cherry (43:08–44:09)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:21–02:22] Introduction – Maisha Cherry’s background and why forgiveness became her focus
• [04:01–05:46] Definitions and distinctions of self-forgiveness
• [06:18–08:00] The necessity of forgiving oneself
• [14:24–18:12] Personal anecdotes and the concept of “moral residue”
• [18:12–19:57] Shame vs. guilt
• [31:06–36:16] Unforgivable acts, character vs. action, and high-profile examples
• [39:53–42:15] Signs you’re letting yourself off the hook vs. really forgiving yourself
• [42:15–44:09] Practical guidance for stuck listeners

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Tone and Flow

Conversation is heartfelt, candid, and (at times) self-deprecating, with both host and guest sharing personal stories to make complex philosophical concepts accessible. The back-and-forth is open, sometimes raw, with honest admissions of moral struggle and an emphasis on growth rather than perfection.

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Conclusion

The episode argues that self-forgiveness is a morally serious act—not a matter of excusing ourselves or minimizing the impact of our actions, but of grappling honestly with what we've done, learning from it, and recommitting to doing better. True self-forgiveness, in Cherry’s view, is essential for living well and being at peace with oneself.

Transcript

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[Sean Rameswaram]

Welcome to the Gray Area. My guest today is our returning champion, Maisha Chery. She's a previous guest on the show and she has kindly decided to return. She is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside where she studies, among other things, the moral psychology of anger, empathy, forgiveness, which we're going to talk a little bit about today. That is how I describe who you are and what you do. How do you describe who you are and what you do when you're at those fancy philosophy parties?

[Maisha Chery]

No, I'm a philosopher. I not only do it for a living, but it's just who I am. That's how I see the world, that's how I view the world, but also do public stuff. So I'm interested not only in just teaching in academy, but also sharing all the all these thoughts that I come up with with public audiences. So that's why I'm so happy to be with you again today.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Why? Why the interest in forgiveness? Like why did that feel like something that like you actually wanted to study seriously, philosophically?

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah, I mean, there's a variety of reasons, personally and interpersonally. I mean, I would say that I got interested in anger first and forgiveness is kind of like that, that connected to anger. Particularly because people think that forgiveness is still letting go of anger and because I'm just pro anger. Of course I'm going to think, you know, kind of disagree with that particular view and try to correct people about what forgiveness is and what it isn't. But also, you know, historically, the church shooting in Charleston really kind of inspired me to really kind of think about what forgiveness is. I felt that people were reading the Victim's forgiveness of a white supremacist in a courtroom very wrongly. The questions that was being asked in press conferences after the police shooting of black men doing Black Lives Matter. This question of can you find it in your heart to give? Can you find a new heart to forgive? All this rhetoric about forgiveness in ways that I felt that people were just getting it wrong. They were having too much hopes in it. They were putting too much pressure on victims to do it. And so I was just trying to figure out why are people so interested in forgiveness? Why are people mentioning forgiveness so much? Why are people obsessed with it? I feel like they're getting it wrong, but what are they getting wrong? And so just looking at the world just made me have all these, all these questions.

[Sean Rameswaram]

When you were here last time, we mostly talked about forgiving other people.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

And we just barely touched on self forgiveness. And I had a lot more thoughts on that. And it just, that felt like something I wanted to dig into a lot more. And that's why we brought you back on to talk about that specifically. Do you think of self forgiveness as something different from forgiving other people? Is that a different process, a different thing altogether? Do you make a distinction like that?

[Maisha Chery]

No, I don't think it's different. So for people who have yet to forgive, watch that episode. You know, I define forgiveness very broadly. And so to forgive someone, you can let go of anger, or you can let go of contempt, or you can refrain from revenge or a whole bunch of other kind of moral practices, but you do it for the purpose of either repair or reconciliation, relief or release. So there's a variety of more practices and a variety of aims. I think when you apply that account to individuals or to the self, the only thing that changes is the object or the target of your forgiveness. So what does it mean for me to forgive myself? It could be the case that I let go of anger that I have towards myself so that I can have a sense of release and kind of repair myself. Or I can decide to stop beating up on myself and stop looking at myself as. As less than having contempt for myself so that I can go for it in the future with a sense of wholeness. So they're not different, it's just target towards. Towards different persons, which in the case of self forgiveness, it is a self.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Well, there is a big difference though. I mean, you write about it in the book, right? Like, the difference is that you gotta live with yourself. Like you gotta get your ass out of bed every morning and, and go about your Life. And it's hard to do that if you're at odds with yourself. Like, does that make it different, the fact that you don't have to live with other people all the time, but you gotta walk. You have to walk around in your own head.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah. So all the time.

[Sean Rameswaram]

And so you almost have to forgive yourself.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah, I agree. So I think another kind of important difference is not only is it target towards the self, but one of the things that I argue. One of the things that I argue is that, you know, when it comes to other people, we don't always need to forgive them. Right. There's other things that we can do in order to kind of reach repair.

[Sean Rameswaram]

But also other people are annoying. And we're always like the righteous ones, right. Like, I mean, you know, it's always other people fucking things up. Right? We're the ones that.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah. So it's not necessarily the case that people needed to forgive Dylann Roof. You know what I mean? And in some circumstances, I would suggest that that may be appropriate for some and inappropriate for others. But when it comes to the self, it's a kind of different scenario. Like you said, we live with ourselves and the kind of consequences of. Of not forgiving yourself kind of makes being you and living with you very difficult, but also quite destructive. And so as much as I say that we don't necessarily have to forgive others, I do believe not today or not tomorrow, we do need to go about the work of forgiving ourselves because as you say, we need to live with ourselves. And the only way to do that productively is to eventually forgive ourselves. Now, I do say eventually because, like forgiving others, forgiveness is a process. And you shouldn't do it too easy, easily. You shouldn't do it too quickly. But eventually, I think for the individual, we need to ultimately forgive ourselves if we are to continue to live or to flourish. That is indeed necessary.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Well, what gives us the right to forgive ourselves? I mean, it is normally the victim, right, who has the right to forgive? Because the victim is the one that was wronged. So can I forgive myself when I'm the asshole?

[Maisha Chery]

So here's the thing. There are instances in which you are the assholes to other people, right? But we also need to kind of expand, I wouldn't say the notion of victims, but expand our notion of people who are impacted by wrongdoing. So let me just kind of make this. Make this clear by an example. It could be the case that I destroy a relationship by cheating on a person, for example, and so I violate the trust of that particular individual and hurt them in a very intense way. But as a result of doing that, I also destroyed a relationship that was good for me. And so I also have harmed myself very differently. It's a very different harm, a very different degree of suffering. But I also have harmed myself in that particular regard. So what would it mean to forgive myself? Why I'm forgiving myself because I fucked up. Can I say, can I say the F word?

[Sean Rameswaram]

I think I've already done it like four times.

[Maisha Chery]

But we didn't say the F word though. I harm myself by harming that. I harm myself by harming that particular person, right? So I would have the right to, to. To indeed, to indeed do that. So that's, that's what I mean by having, having, having the right. It's not necessarily that I harm myself, but when we harm other people, we also indirectly harm, harm ourselves, right? And then we also, when we harm other people, particularly when it comes to our loved ones, we are invested in our loved ones, right? We made certain kind of commitments to our loved ones and then when we harm them, we disrupt that.

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[Maisha Chery]

what would make it the case that I would have the right to forgive myself in that case would be, well, I harm someone that I care about or harm someone that I have invested in. So I kind of have impeded on my project, on my morrow and loving project. I messed that up by harming that particular person. So in that sense, I will also have the right to forgive myself.

[Sean Rameswaram]

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[Sean Rameswaram]

So I would say in my own life, I can be an and like, often I find myself in the house just day to day. Maybe I'm cranky, maybe, I don't know, shit didn't go well at work that day. Or maybe it just got out of bed wrong. Maybe I'm just pissed off at the world and I'll be an. Or I'll be too short or too selfish. And like, almost immediately I know that and I feel like shit about it. And my wife and my son will, like, very quickly forgive me and move on. But those little, like, micro failures, when they happen, it really eats me up. I don't know. Like, I'm not the dad or the husband or the person I think I am.

[Maisha Chery]

So hearing you say what you just said, hearing you say what you just said, what that communicates to me is that you have certain kind of standards for yourself, right? And so you know what it is to be. You know what it is to be a good Sean, or you have standards of what it is to be a good dad, what it is to be a good partner, what it is to be a good Sean. And then you have the failure in which you don't live up to that particular standard. So not only have you let perhaps your family down, but you've also let yourself down. So in both those instances, you may have asked your family to forgive you, but now you have to figure out how to forgive yourself, right? Which is not forgiving yourself necessarily for the harm that you've caused to them, but also forgiving yourself for not living up to the standards that you have for yourself. But there's also something else that's going on there. We can get frustrated with ourselves. And all that combined, even in the midst of the forgiveness leaves something. It leaves residue. It leaves what philosophers call kind of a moral residue. And I think what is important for us to note here is that we think that after forgiveness, everything becomes all right, all right, we can just forgive and we can forget, right? We can just wipe the slate clean. But particularly when it comes to ourselves, it's not that easy. So even after I've forgiven myself, my family members have forgiven me, I can still feel like an asshole. I can still have regret, I can still have remorse. And I would say, well, that's the remainders of wrongdoing. Regret is defined as kind of like this deep sorrow that we have as a result of our wrongdoing. And sometimes that can just last for like a week or it can come and go. Or in the case of me not living up to the standards of what it is to be a good daughter. You know, I can be minding my own business one day and just feel this pain of like, damn, I really messed up when my mother was alive. And that's what regret is. That's the, that's the residue of wrongdoing. The question is, is that a bad thing? It can be. If we ruminate, you know, over it, if we allow that to stop us from entering into relationships, or if we allow that to allow us to have kind of this obsessive self reproach, it becomes a good thing. And Daniel Pink talks about this in his book the Power of Regret. When we make use of it. And how do we make use of it? Learn from it. Feel the sorrow, feel the pain. Let it remind you of your values, let it remind you of your moral compass, but also allow it to motivate you to do better next time.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I think it's about shame for me. Do you think much about the distinction between guilt and shame and sort of like how that relates to forgiveness?

[Maisha Chery]

I think when we are shameful, we are ashamed of who we are. Right? It's kind of an assessment of who we take ourselves to be, you know, our whole kind of personality or character. With guilt, we're disappointed in what we've done, not necessarily who we are. And so just by that distinction alone, one has much more potential. We have taken us into a better future than the other. Right? Shame. If you, if you are, you know, have a kind of negative response based on who you are, then there's no way out of that, right? Because you've already accepted who you are. You already have this kind of view of I'm a horrible person, I'm a bad person. And as much not redeem, you know, you might even say, well, because I am a horrible person, I am irredeemable. But there's something quite different from I'm a horrible person to I did a horrible thing. And we can make room for redemption in that. It's like, okay, don't do the horrible thing anymore.

[Sean Rameswaram]

But isn't like the definition of being a horrible person someone who does horrible things? Like, how do you. What's the difference?

[Maisha Chery]

So now you, let's go back to Aristotle. Of course, you know, for Aristotle, what it is to have a character of something is that you must do it repeatedly. It does indeed become who you are. So horrible people do horrible things, but a person who've done a horrible thing is not necessarily a horrible person. All right, so that's what Aristotle. Aristotle would say. But here's the thing about the self.

[Sean Rameswaram]

What Maisha said.

[Maisha Chery]

Maisha says that self reproach, obsessive and irrational self reproach will have you think or make you believe that that is who you are. And we can beat up ourselves so much when we're beating ourselves up because we have accepted or we have been led to believe that that is who we are. So we have to beat ourselves up, beat that person up, because they are what they are. And I think that's an irrational way to think about ourselves. What I believe a lot of the times, and this can change by context, that we are beings in the making, that we are a lot of things, and we do a lot of things, but a lot of things that we do really don't really define us. But it's so easy to beat ourselves up. It's so easy to do that

[Sean Rameswaram]

well, especially if you're the overthinking in your head, too much type, you know? Yeah, I think I'd say, like, most of the things I probably let myself off the hook for, certainly in the past and probably still now more than I care to admit. But, you know, for me, it was like just not showing up for the people I care about because I was too involved with my own shit. I think I've gotten better about that. I hope I've gotten better about that. But I do feel a lot of shame for that kind of thing. And of course, at the time, like everyone, I made a million different excuses for it, but it. It's. It seems like a big deal because that sort of cuts to the heart of being a good friend or a good family member or a good partner or whatever. Right. Like, not showing up for people is sort of unforgivable, I think.

[Maisha Chery]

Okay, there's a lot of things I want to say. The first thing I want. I want to point to is your use of shame. And I'm going to ask you a rhetorical question. I'm going to make a statement, and then I want to know what your response is. So my rhetorical question is shame, what you actually felt? Okay, I said that. Guilt. You kind of make an assessment about something that you've done, so you kind of. It's a response to people's anger, people's disappointment as a result of what you've done. And shame is in response to who you are. Guilt makes you want to repair, to reconcile, to fix things. But shame typically makes you want to hide and so the reason why I'm posing a question, a rhetorical question to you, Sean, is to say, how do you know it wasn't guilt? Right. Did it make you want to hide, or did it make you want to do better? Now, both of these things feel awful, makes you feel awful about yourself. So let's just put that to the side about how you felt about yourself. But right now, I'm talking about what philosophers call the action tendency. Right? What did you feel compelled to do? Did you feel compelled to kind of hide yourself, or did you feel compelled to, like, fix things or do better?

[Sean Rameswaram]

Well, it depends on how long the timeline is. Eventually I got to the place where I felt like I needed to. To change, and did. But it took a long while to get there. Like, an embarrassingly long while to get there. I think probably what I went through first was just a lot of denial.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

But then at some point, you just sort of. You know, you can't. You can't not know what you know. And I think. I think it was shame. Although maybe you would. You would call it guilt. Because I had to sort of, like, reckon with the possibility that, like, maybe I'm not the guy I thought I was. Like, maybe I am actually more selfish than I thought I was. And, you know, at some point, we all. We all lie to ourselves about ourselves all the time, you know, some more than others. But there are those moments where, I don't know, it's just sort of the foundation of the bullshit collapses, and you got to kind of look yourself in the mirror. And I got to that point, but it took. It took a while to get there. Like, way longer than it should have. So I don't know. I mean, I kind of meandered a little bit, but did I. Did I answer your question, or did that tell you anything about.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah, you did. You did. I'm a moral psychologist, not a psychologist, but. Okay, so. So. So. So in your instance, in the example that you just used, you say that it took you a while. Even if it takes you a while. I mean, that's what forgiveness and reconciliation is all about. It's a process. It always takes a while. Right. But does that mean that what you did was unforgivable? Right. The fact that. Let's just say you have forgiven yourself. We don't need to go down a therapy thing about you, Sean, but let's just say you have forgiven yourself.

[Sean Rameswaram]

You go as far as you want.

[Maisha Chery]

Let's just say that you have forgiven yourself. It just took a while. It doesn't necessarily mean that what you did or how you showed up was unique, forgivable. Right. It is interesting that we're talking about the selfish stuff. And the reason why I'm kind of familiar with the features of selfishness is because I'm currently writing a chapter about selfishness about a book that I'm working on. So, you know, I'm keenly aware about what selfishness is, particularly because I also think that in my love relationships, I have been selfish and justified it and reasons that I felt was beneficial for everybody. Right. I need to just focus on my career. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. First person in my family to have kind of like this income bracket. I have a responsibility to maintain this and leave some money. That's how I was justifying. Of, I can't go back to Mississippi for the Christmas because I need to work on my book. Right. So all these justifications of my neglect, of my inconsistency, of me not being around for my family has been justified. Of, oh, I need to do my work. I need to do my work. And I've just come to the realization of just how freaking selfish that has been, that the book would not suffer if I go home for three days. Right. My academic or professional world would not fall apart if I call my niece every week. And coming to that realization and then being, you know, you talk about shameful. You know, really feeling awful about who I have been. And here's the interesting. Shawn, you talking about therapy. Recognizing that I thought I learned a lot from neglecting my mother when she was alive. But here I am again, doing the same thing to my sister and my nieces and my nephew and feeling horrible about that. But here's the thing. If I am to be. Be better and to do better and really be a good family member, feeling shame ain't gonna do it. Right. Feeling guilt. Yeah. Feeling remorse. Yeah. Feeling regret. Yeah. But I gotta do something with all these feelings. And the question is, what do I do with this regret? What do I do with this remorse? What do I do with this disappointment? You try again, Maisha. You do better. So what are you going to do? I was just thinking about earlier today. I need to make it the case that my niece and nephew finally come to California so we can have a good time for a week. Work on that now. Right? That's. That's the future. Like, let the regret do that kind of work. But the whole beating stuff up and ruminating over what you've done and just feeling awful you feel awful for a reason. Do something with that. And that's what, that's what I'm working on.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I mean, not that there has to be a hierarchy of like, of shamefulness here, but at least like that justification isn't as bad as mine, right? Like mine would be as bad sometimes as, you know what, I can't make that Thanksgiving family dinner because I want to go fucking ride my motorcycle with my friends.

[Maisha Chery]

But then you say, well, self care.

[Sean Rameswaram]

It's not like I gotta finish my book or, you know, I gotta get that 10 year package, you know, to pop. It was like, it was just. This is even worse, right?

[Maisha Chery]

So like, no, I wouldn't.

[Sean Rameswaram]

You said, is it unforgiven?

[Maisha Chery]

Sean, don't say that. Because here we are, we're doing the thing, right? We are exemplifying the very thing that we're diagnosing, which is irrational self reproach, right? You saying, oh, your explanation is what I'm doing is worse than you. And I think that's irrational. No, I didn't call you irrational. I said irrational self reproach.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Okay?

[Maisha Chery]

Which is, I wasn't thinking.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I was just.

[Maisha Chery]

Just clarity that what you've done is worse. Worse. And that that worst thing, right, is the thing that can keep us, keep us stuck, right? And I also just want you to be gentle with yourself. Because I think, I think even though you look back and you say to yourself, well, what I actually wanted to do was to go ride motorcycles, I think in your thinking at that moment, perhaps, and you tell me this is not the case or not, because I'm not also trying to give you an excuse. Is it just, I want to go have motorcycles with my friend or is it because I work so damn hard and I need a break? And perhaps you thought in that moment, if I don't get this break, I'm not going to be able to be of use to other people. Now, you could have been wrong about that, but you also could be wrong about the fact that it was just motorcycles. I think it was more than that. And does that say that? Does that not suggest that your priorities were still messed up? Perhaps. And I'm also not to make an excuse for you, Sean, because you could just be a horrible person. You know, I don't. We just getting to know each other. I don't know. And I think there are some people who are horrible people, but we need to be very careful with assessing ourselves. And at the time, you may have thought that that was the best decision. And then you think to yourself. Oh, that's kind of. That was kind of selfish. And I'm more concerned about what we do for the future.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I do appreciate you, like, trying to throw me a rope and pull me out of my own shit, but I'm just being real, like you, so I'll honestly answer. No, I don't think I had some. I don't think it was because of, you know, I worked too hard that week and I needed a break. I think I was just being selfish and I wanted to go ride my motorcycle. Right. But that's the shame part. Right. Okay. Is it truly unforgivable? I don't know. But if you have a duty to the people you love, it is to show up when they want you to show up when they need you to show up. And if you don't do that, like, you're just failing the most fundamental test. Right. And I think if I could have justified it to myself in those terms that you suggest, and I may have. I may not have felt shame about it to the extent that I did. I think I felt shame because I was just being an.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Not because I was too tired or. Not because, you know, some other, like, semi noble reason. I was just. I was just being a bad person. And that's not okay. And that's why I felt shameful about it. You know, I don't know if I ever forgave myself. I just stop doing that and then the rest sort of takes care of itself.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

But anyway, I should have just taken the rope you threw me, but.

[Maisha Chery]

No, no, no, no, no. Only you know, you know you. And that's a good thing that you know yourself. It's a good thing that you know yourself.

[Sean Rameswaram]

You can know yourself too much. Do you have too much self knowledge? I don't know. Sounds like you. Sounds like you forgive me. I don't know if you have the right to forgive me, but I don't

[Maisha Chery]

have the right to forgive you in that context.

[Sean Rameswaram]

All right. I don't know. I wanna. Let me ask you something.

[Maisha Chery]

Can I. Can I put an aside? Can I put an aside, Sean? Can I make an aside? I'm gonna tell you what came to my mind when you said what you said. And we'll. We don't. Probably shouldn't, you know, release this response, but I was listening to this podcast last night, and I don't know if. Okay, I'm not gonna say the person's name, but it was a famous physician, and this is the Epstein files, which just released. And the famous physician had Wrote a book last year. And in the book, he talks about how there was a time in which his wife was having complications with their infant son and he was out of town.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Is it peer or to you.

[Maisha Chery]

Oh, shit. Yeah, yeah, you know, exactly.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Yeah, no, we name names.

[Maisha Chery]

Okay, okay. And he couldn't be there for them. He was out of town, and he didn't return back home until a week. And the podcaster were basically saying when the Epstein files was released and the podcaster had read the book, the emails that were being exchanged with him and Epstein at a particular situation where he was talking about, hey, are you going to be around for New York? That it wasn't just that he had professional responsibilities of why he didn't get back to his wife and child. It was because he was hanging out with Epstein. And he talks about. In his book because he doesn't talk about the Epstein stuff, how he felt so bad and all this other stuff. And I think that's an example of. Yeah, I can. I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of guilt there. The Epstein stuff made me think about, oh, you should feel shameful. Right. It seems like that's the degree until. Which not only did you not do it for professional reasons, it's like this other reason makes it the case that. Oh, that was kind of a reflection of character and misaligned desires and priorities and all this other messy, messy, messy stuff. So that's what I was thinking when you mentioned your example, Sean, that it really does depend. It's not just the act, the fact that you don't show up sometimes. I really think that the reasons can vary in degrees. That makes it the case with this reason, even if it's a selfish reason, warrants guilt. But this reason weren't shame.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I haven't always been the guy I want to be, but guess who's not in the Epstein files. This guy. You can control f. That motherfucker many times as you want. Healing is not going to pop up. So at least there's that. But. Okay, so that guy, he did that. Let's say he did that. All right, I'll just. Let me just. Okay, let's just take it for granted. Or allegedly, if the legal people need me to say that. Right. If. If he really did that, should he forgive himself for that?

[Maisha Chery]

That seems.

[Sean Rameswaram]

You said. You asked me if anything is truly unforgivable. Hey, if that's not unforgivable, you got to tell me what is.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Or what isn't.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Yeah, that's a lot worse. Than just going to ride your motorcycle.

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah, yeah, that would be, that would be tough. If I'm just putting myself in.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Would you forgive him? What if, what if that was your husband? Yeah.

[Maisha Chery]

Oh, if that came out, I would have been gone. Because here's the thought that I was thinking as I was listening to the podcast and I was driving at the time so I knew exactly what exit I was at. My thought was if she's just hearing this today, this changes the relationship like this. This fundamentally changes who you think took that your husband to be it seems like the, the degree of the reason depravity wise because now we've gotten to depravity really makes you think is this who you are? And then that calls for some other kind of work and introspection and reasons to really to indeed feel shame. And let me just also say this for a lot of people may say, well you know, Myesha's pro guilt and she doesn't think, you know, shame is warranted. I do think shame is important and I think particularly in our political context, I think people need to feel more shameful.

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[Sean Rameswaram]

If you are someone who, for whatever reason, can't forgive yourself, what does your life look like? How do you go on?

[Maisha Chery]

I don't think you can really go on. And when I, when I say living, I'm. I'm talking about living in the Aristotelian sense of flourishing. Flourishing in a sense in which your moral life is good, your psychological life is good, your relationships with other people are good. And I think that when you don't forgive yourself, one of those areas are impacted in ways that doesn't really allow you to live the full life that you're capable of living.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Is there a simple test in the end for knowing whether you're forgiving yourself or just letting yourself off the hook without actually like sort of taking stock of what you did, which seems like a precondition for not doing it again?

[Maisha Chery]

Yeah. So we've been talking a lot about the extremes, right? Beating ourself up, obsessing over what we've done living with the shame, guilt, et cetera. Then there's the other end of the spectrum, which is just saying, I forgive, you know, hey, I forgive it myself after the very next day after doing this horrible thing. So there's, there's ways in which we can do it too quickly. And, you know, I don't have an issue with people who move fast, but if you move fast and you're forgetting steps, then that's problematic. I think if you forgive yourself too quickly without taking stock of things, without a full recognition of what you. You've done and an understanding of how you've hurt other people and also hurt your own life without a kind of a guide of, okay, how can you. You. You do better? Can you. You know, without. So that's one thing, right? So if you do it too quickly, then you probably know that that's a problem. But I also think that if you, if you do it in ways in which you allow yourself to forgive yourself because you kind of minimize the harmony where you basically say, well, what I did was. Wasn't really that bad, so I forgive myself, right? That's problematic. But another way in which it can be problematic is you, you begin to say, well, you know, yeah, it was my fault, but, you know, if they didn't or if they would have, right? So if you engage in victim blaming, then, you know, that's probably not what you, what you want to do. And here's another thing. If you basically say, you know what, I know I messed up, but look what came out of this, right? I call it the greater good, the greater good theory, right? Basically suggesting that allows you to forgive yourself or have no regrets because you think to yourself, something came out of this wonderful. So I don't have to really have the responsibility of the wrongdoing because everything works out for the good. If this. I think those are all problematic. We don't want to go down that, that direction. So if you're, if you're doing any of that stuff, then I would say stop all that erroneous justification. I would say, sit, sit with what you've done. Hear how what you've done have impacted others. Try to figure out how you can do better, repent, confess. And if you're doing those kinds of things, then I think you're going in the right direction.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Do you have any advice, practical advice for people, you know, that. That are just maybe stuck in the, in the guilt and shame part and haven't quite managed to, like, move on to the, you know, constructive action?

[Maisha Chery]

Part, you know, one of the things I would say is that when it comes to wrongdoing and the, you know, what happens at the wrong door, unfortunately, there's a lot of things that can't be undone. We think that we can recreate things out of the destruction that we cause to ourselves. That is to say, we think that if we beat ourselves up enough, things will get better or we can rewrite a wrong. And I want to suggest no matter how many times you beat yourself up, you can never undo what you've done. But that's not the end of the story. The good news is if you learn from what you've done and if you vow to do better, then you can recreate a better world. I want to say for people who are struggling to forgive themselves, I think I want to say to them that you are not what you've done, that you are still worthy of dignity and respect, that you are worth your own self love. And that means you're also worth a second chance and you're worth a new beginning. And to begin to see yourself in that particular way can make way for self forgiveness.

[Sean Rameswaram]

I'm gonna leave it right there. Before you go, I want to. I want to read our credits. New episodes of the Gray Area drop on Mondays. Listen and subscribe. The show is part of Vox. Support Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to Vox.commembers to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show or Maisha, let us know. Maisha, where can people go to read your work or listen to your pod or just follow you?

[Maisha Chery]

Well, every essay, academic and public, that I've ever written is on my website, maishacherry.org you can also find me be inconsistent on social media, Aishacherry. But also I have a new season of the UNBE podcast that's coming out at the end of February 2026. And so if you want to catch those episodes in which I talk to philosophers about the social and political issues of our day, it is available wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Sean Rameswaram]

Maest Cherry, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. You are so much fun to talk to and I just. They're not enough. I think I may have told you this last time you were on the show. There are just not enough academic philosophers who even care about actually engaging with the public and like writing for the public in ways that can actually be understood. And I just, I love that about you. And you're, you're such a good sport and I'd love for you to come back on for a third time if you'll have us at some point.

[Maisha Chery]

Thanks so much for those words, Sean, and so good to see you on top with you again.

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[Maisha Chery]

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