The F Word: Stories of Forgiveness

As the year draws to a close we’ve been reflecting on 2022 and all the work that your donations have supported.

We published the final three episodes of the second series of the F Word Podcast, talking with storytellers from America, England and Australia:

• Episode 8 - Pardeep Kaleka on finding forgiveness after his father was killed in one of America’s deadliest race-based hate crimes
• Episode 9 - Mary Foley on faith, forgiveness, and how writing to her daughter’s killer brought her peace of mind
• Episode 10 - Ray Minniecon on the power of apology and why ideas around healing and forgiveness can be problematic for Aboriginal people

 You can explore all episodes of the F Word Podcast here.

We released our Prison Chronicles series on Vimeo on Demand. Exploring the stories we tell – how we shape them and ultimately how they shape us – these intimate conversations reveal an unexpected space where the line between ‘victim/ survivor’ and ‘perpetrator’ becomes blurred and where telling your story can save you from it.

We delivered five workshops on the theme of Making meaning as a foundation for change, in collaboration with the NHS South West Leadership Academy. The workshops offered a deep-dive into how we might heal, restore and return to ourselves. This exploration of how people can create new meaning after harm and pain provided leaders and those they support with appropriate tools to begin this process. - ‘This was an incredibly impactful and unexpected session. The facilitation was amazing and gentle. I would highly recommend.’

We were delighted to be back in person with The F Word exhibition in Sheffield and with our RESTORE prison programme in HMP Eastwood Park.

We held a series of live conversations looking at shame and the profound impact it has on how we understand ourselves and our lives: Speaking the Unspeakable: exploring shame in the stories of our lives. Understanding how unprocessed trauma can often manifest as shame was a huge part of our learning from our work in prisons and these conversations explore this idea of how shame can cut us off from ourselves and others, reduce empathy and impact how we heal. This series is now available to watch on Vimeo on Demand. 

We also created and ran an online training, Developing a Shame Informed Approach, which we will be making available to view on demand in the new year.

As well as this our Founder, Marina Cantacuzino, published her latest book, Forgiveness: An Exploration, which unpicks and debates the limits and possibilities of forgiveness and how it can impact on our lives. You can purchase this along with our other books in our online shop.

Thank you again for all your continued support and as always, if you have any questions on our work please don’t hesitate to contact us.

With warmest wishes and deepest gratitude,
Rachel and all the Team at The Forgiveness Project
rachel@theforgivenessproject.com

Dear Friends,

We are delighted that The F Word has finally gone back out into the world! The exhibition went to Sheffield University for a week for the sixth global conference of the International Association of Chaplains in Higher Education (IACHE) and then spent a further week in Sheffield at St Mark's Church, Broomhill and Broomhall.

Throughout June and July we held a series of live conversations looking at shame and the profound impact it has on how we understand ourselves and our lives - Speaking the Unspeakable: exploring shame in the stories of our lives. 

This work developed out of our prison work with RESTORE where we witnessed how the unrecognised roots of shame are often enmeshed with pain and trauma, causing difficulties to individuals and those around them.

As part of this work we are offering a new online training exploring how to develop a Shame Informed approach in your work on 26 September.

This training will provide a grounding in Shame Resilience Theory and its application in facilitating a Shame Informed approach, including the use of specific creative techniques to support shame to be expressed safely. You can find out more and book here.

And finally we're delighted to announce the publication of our Founder, Marina Cantacuzino's latest book Forgiveness: An Exploration. The book explores what forgiveness is and what it most definitely isn’t, how it can be an important element in breaking the cycle of suffering, and ultimately how it might help transform fractured relationships and mend broken hearts.

‘This is an utterly memorable book – beautifully written, fascinating in its insights, and extraordinarily moving. We all need to forgive, and this book, through its recounting of the stories of people who have something really significant to forgive, will be an inspiration to help us reach a state of forgiveness. This is a book that will stay with the reader for a very long time’ – Alexander McCall Smith

Thank you again for your support and as always, if you have any questions on our work please don’t hesitate to contact us.

With warmest wishes and deepest gratitude,
Rachel and all the Team at The Forgiveness Project
rachel@theforgivenessproject.com

Dear Friends,

2022 has not been quite what anyone expected but we are excited that hiring of The F Word exhibition is now possible and we continue to explore new ways for people to access these stories and our work.

We are delighted to announce that the Prison Chronicles series is now available online. These six live conversations were recorded between October 2020 – April 2021. They delve deep into the work of RESTORE, The Forgiveness Project's award-winning prison programme. In conversation with the storytellers as well as a former participant and former officer, these enquiries, like the work of RESTORE, explore our shared humanity and ask us to imagine – if we had lived each other’s lives, would we have done things any differently? Find out more here.

There are now a total of 20 episodes of The F Word Podcast available and the series has so far received almost 21,000 downloads in 106 countries. You can listen here – or wherever you access your podcasts. The most recently released episode features Ray Minniecon and is an incredibly moving and powerful conversation about issues around healing and forgiveness in his work highlighting the plight of the Aboriginal people and the Stolen Generations in Australia. 

And finally, as part of our ongoing work to make our resources more accessible we're also pleased to be able to offer a selection of our videos available with British Sign Language to support our friends in the deaf community.

Thank you again for your support and as always, if you have any questions on our work please don’t hesitate to contact us.

With warmest wishes and deepest gratitude,
Rachel and all the Team at The Forgiveness Project
rachel@theforgivenessproject.com

We are very excited that we are beginning to receive enquiries for 2022 for hiring The F Word and we very much hope that next year we will see a return to normal events. In the meantime we continue to explore how we heal, restore and re-humanise in other spaces and we are delighted to announce the launch of our second season of The F Word Podcast. 

Hosted again by our Founder, Marina Cantacuzino, season two continues the deep dive into even deeper conversations with our storytellers – exploring the complex, messy, gripping subject of forgiveness.

We have ten new episodes to share with you over the coming months and will be releasing a new episode every fortnight so do follow us on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on.

With podcasts growing increasingly popular, we were excited to introduce the stories to a whole new audience. The series continues to receive an average of 34 downloads a day with listeners from 90 countries (as of 12 November 2021) and the reviews show how it has moved people to consider their own lives:

• ‘This podcast has engaged, challenged, and moved me. Above all, it has motivated me to think considerately about my own actions and prejudices.’

• 'Listening to these podcasts with their gentle and sensitive, yet direct questions and the brave and powerful responses inspires me to strive to be a better person in all I do. The exploration of forgiveness as a possibility could not be more relevant to these challenging times.'

The way stories are often told in the media can re-traumatise and divide; we support our storytellers to explore the telling in ways that encourage healing and reconciliation – we call this restorative storytelling.

Restorative narratives show how people and communities are learning to rebuild and recover after incidents of harm. In a society where the media focuses on tragedy and devastation, The Forgiveness Project aims to redress the balance by sharing stories with an emphasis on recovery and restoration.

So if you have yet to explore The F Word Podcast, click here to start your journey.

While for many of us life is slowly starting to open up, we’re still keeping things virtual here for the foreseeable future. We will keep you updated and very much hope that the situation changes soon.

In the meantime we continue to do what we can to adapt our work and share our knowledge and learning. So we are very excited to share with you our new course, Working with stories of lived experience, which is running online from October to December 2021.

Drawing on 17 years of learning and practice from The Forgiveness Project, this is a skills-based course offering a unique combination of tools, techniques and knowledge for anyone working in such fields as Criminal Justice, Conflict Resolution, Social Care, Mental Health and Well Being, Community Arts and Social Justice.

The course explores approaches and perspectives relating to forgiveness, restorative narratives, shame and resilience. It builds participants’ knowledge and practice of the use of storytelling in their work. In addition it offers new and innovative approaches to working with individuals and groups, in order to support participants to develop resilience and empathetic relationships with clients and colleagues.

The course will be facilitated by Sandra Barefoot, The Forgiveness Project’s Programme Development Lead along with our storytellers from The Forgiveness Project. The course will also include input from Marina Cantacuzino, Founder of The Forgiveness Project.

““A deep dive and sensitive exploration of how to turn traumatic events into new narratives to live by.” – Previous Course Participant

To find out more please visit our website.