Shadow Grieving: Introducing Resilience to Healing

By Aqueelah Wheatley, Marriage & Family Therapist

There is a particular kind of grief that lives inside some Black women — not because they feel more sorrow than others, but because they have been taught, generation after generation, that sorrow must never inconvenience the world around them. For these women, grief does not always begin with wailing and tissues and long reflective conversations. It may begins with quiet, with composure, and a culturally cultivated smile.

When Black women grieve, they often do not fall apart publicly. They make lunches, return messages, bathe their children, attend funerals, give eulogies, go back to work, and pick up grocery bags as if nothing inside of them has ruptured. It’s not that they don’t feel grief — they feel grief deeply — but the grief does not always exit through tears. Grieving may exit through responsibility, stillness, and fatigue.

This is not willful emotional avoidance. It is neurobiological protection shaped by identity grounded in equating vulnerability to weakness and emotional failure. Some grief is loud, but Strong Black Woman grief can be like water traveling beneath the ground — steady, unseen, quietly saturating everything beneath the surface.

If you carry the Strong Black Woman schema — the belief that you must be self-reliant, emotionally contained, resilient, caregiving, and unshakably calm — grief will move inside you differently than it does for others, contending with guilt and adverse identity models. Not because you refuse to feel, but because your body learned long before adulthood that vulnerability was unsafe currency.

Recent research confirms that SBW conditioning is not just social or psychological — it becomes physiological. Black women who endorse SBW traits experience increased chronic stress activation, elevated cortisol profiles, and more autonomic dysregulation than non-SBW women (Jones, Hill-Jarrett, & Jean-Ceide, 2025). This is not personality — this is a nervous system pattern. It is as if the body has been trained to hold grief in its hands like a fragile secret, trusting no one with it until the room feels safe.

Your body is not suppressing grief because you are emotionally distant.Your body is suppressing grief because it was trained to protect you before you ever learned the language of grief.

And grief becomes muscle, breath, digestion, tension, insomnia, irritability, numbness, or emotional flatness not because you lack feeling, but because your nervous system is storing feeling until safety arrives.

Grief becomes what the body carries when the heart is not allowed to speak.Sometimes grief feels less like sadness and more like heaviness in the ribs — a low-burning storm that refuses to pass because the clouds were never able to open.

Grief as a Biological Event — When Movement Is a Survival Strategy

Grief is not just a feeling — it is a full-body physiological event. The moment a loss occurs (death, miscarriage, divorce, broken expectations, friendship endings, spiritual betrayal), the limbic system interprets threat. The amygdala lights up, the sympathetic nervous system prepares for release, and the body begins mobilizing emotional activation the same way it mobilizes stress.

Grief wants movement. It wants tears, shaking, storytelling, hugging, communal mourning.It is like wind that needs to pass through the room — air cannot stay without pressure building.

But emotional expression requires felt safety, and if safety is not available — internally or externally — the nervous system shifts into containment.

This containment reflex is not cognitive, not moral, not spiritual — it is survival physiology. When emotional exposure historically made one less safe or less believed, the body learns: hold it, silence it, stabilize it, function first.

And this is where grief takes a different road inside Black women.

Instead of moving upward (crying, sharing, collapsing into comfort), grief takes the long way down into the chest, the diaphragm, and the gut. The body becomes a locked room where sorrow stacks itself until the structure begins to sag under its own weight.

The vagus nerve, responsible for emotional regulation and autonomic safety, carries that unexpressed grief into digestion, breath, voice, and cardiovascular rhythm (Wilms et al., 2023). If grief cannot exit safely, it becomes:

• stomach knots

• heavy lungs

• jaw tension

• chronic fatigue

• emotional numbness

• irritability without cause

• cognitive fog

• pain that has no medical origin

This is not psychosomatic weakness.This is the body metabolizing grief as survival — like a river rerouted underground when the terrain above is too dangerous.

Active vs. Restorative Resilience — How Strong Black Woman Conditioning Interrupts Grief Completion

Black women are deeply resilient — but most of that resilience is active resilience.

Active resilience is externally visible, performance-oriented, pragmatic, and role-centered. It is what allows the woman to carry casseroles into her cousin’s repast with swollen eyes and a steady gait. It is the strength that generations witnessed in mothers who cooked dinner with tears drying on their cheeks, grandmothers who buried sons and still hosted Sunday service, professionals who wrote emails from hospital rooms, and caretakers who showed up at choir rehearsal two days after losing their best friend.

Active resilience is not dysfunctional — it is ancestral armor.

But we must make a critical distinction:

Active resilience keeps life moving. Restorative resilience allows grief to move.

Active resilience stabilizes performance and identity.Restorative resilience stabilizes the nervous system.

Active resilience says, “I must keep going.”Restorative resilience says, “Something inside me must stop.”

Active resilience says, “I can’t fall apart; there’s too much to do.”Restorative resilience whispers, “If I don’t fall apart somewhere safe, grief will keep living in my bones.”

Active resilience is strength as endurance.Restorative resilience is strength as recovery.

And here is the most important truth:

The Strong Black Woman schema overdevelops active resilience and starves restorative resilience.

Because restorative resilience requires:

• emotional slowing

• boundary setting

• role renegotiation

• safe witnessing

• non-performance

• softness

• grief ritual

• spiritual lament

• somatic release

• emotional rest

But SBW identity has taught many women:

you are safe only when you are functional.You are respected only when you are composed.You are loved only when you are dependable.

So when grief arrives, the body does not collapse into restorative resilience the way

Western grief models idealize. Instead:

1. the nervous system braces

2. functioning becomes the grief response

3. grief gets pushed into the body

4. emotional expression is postponed for later

5. later rarely comes unless resilience is redefined

It is as if the nervous system is a mother keeping the children quiet in a house where crying would wake something dangerous.

Again, this is not willful avoidance — it is shadow grief, grief without witness, grief without permission, grief stored until a door opens.

Studies in racially diverse grief populations suggest that chronic containment increases risk of complicated or prolonged grief because emotional processing is delayed, fragmented, or incomplete (Grant, 2024; Tarazi, 2024). SBW identity does not eliminate grief — it interrupts grief expression, forcing the nervous system to hold emotional weight much longer than it was designed to.

A Revised Grief Cycle for SBW Women — The Shadow Grief Model

Traditional grief stages assume vulnerability is safe, community is available, emotional openness is supported, and roles can pause.

Those conditions are rarely present for Strong Black Women.

So grief takes a different route — more like a storm that never fully releases, but slowly drains into the soil:

1. Grief Activation- Loss occurs; the nervous system mobilizes.

2. Survival Containment- Emotion is muted; composure becomes protection.

3. Functional Resilience- Daily tasks resume; caregiving continues; grief expression postponed.

4. Somatic Grief Storage- Grief relocates to the body — digestive distress, headaches, fatigue, insomnia, numbness, short temper, brain fog.

5. Shadow Processing- Small micro-releases happen: a cry alone in the car, tears during worship, a journal page that feels like bloodletting, a sudden wave of exhaustion after a triggering memory.

6. Restorative Resilience Opportunity- If emotional safety, communal witnessing, spiritual ritual, or therapeutic support becomes available, the system finally begins emotional completion.

7. Integration- Loss becomes metabolized into meaning, not by logic, but by nervous system regulation and emotional restoration.

This model is materially different from Western grief theory because Black grief is not only emotional — it is occupational, communal, historic, spiritual, and embodied.

The nervous system is doing exactly what it learned keeps Black women safe.

Acute vs. Complicated Grief — Where SBW Identity Increases Vulnerability

Acute grief is expected and time-bound — emotional, physical, cognitive activation that eases as loss becomes integrated.

Complicated or Prolonged Grief arises when emotional processing is chronically interrupted, unsupported, or unsafe.

SBW identity increases risk for complicated grief not because Black women are unwilling to feel, but because their nervous systems prioritize functioning over restoration.

The body will finish grief when the environment becomes safe enough — not before.

But if safety never arrives, grief becomes cumulative, like an unfinished story the body keeps rereading long after others think the book is closed.

Black women often report:

• exhaustion without sadness

• numbness without acceptance

• irritability without anger

• physical pain without explanation

• tears only in solitude

• faith without relief

• responsibility without restoration

This is not emotional coldness — this is grief deferred until safety exists.

And when safety is delayed indefinitely, complicated grief becomes more likely (Smith-Greenaway, 2024).

The Practices That Move Grief From Shadow to Integration

Black women do not need to abandon strength.They need environments where

restorative resilience is allowed.

That means:

1. Somatic Grief Release

Slow cadence breathing, open-throat vocalization, shaking, crying, embodied prayer, stretching, rocking — activities that allow the sympathetic charge to complete its arc (Balban et al., 2023). The body carries grief like a storm; somatic release cracks the clouds open.

2. Safe Witnessing

Someone who can hold space without asking you to perform functional strength. Grief requires being seen without judgment — it is like truth knocking on the door, needing one person to say, “I hear you.”

3. Ritual

Worship, lament, singing, altar building, grave tending, journaling, lighting candles, drumming, communing — ritual gives grief a home and grief never heals without home.

4. Boundary Reclamation

Re-negotiating responsibility when the body is heavy. Grief requires permission to step out of roles that demand emotional silence.

5. Restorative Stillness

Sleep, solitude, disengagement from performance, emotional slowing. Grief does not heal through motion — only through restorative cessation. Stillness is where the body

finally exhales.

Restorative resilience is not luxury — it is biological necessity.

Final Word — The Nervous System Is Not Your Enemy

If grief has lived in your stomach, your ribcage, your sleep cycle, your irritability, or your silence, you have not failed grief.

Your body has been holding your grief exactly as it was trained to — faithfully, protectively, quietly — until the world felt safe enough for the tears.

Strength is not the absence of grief.Strength is the dignity to let grief arrive in its own language.

Let restorative resilience open the door.

Grief has been waiting the whole time.

REFERENCES

• Balban, M. A., et al. (2023). Brief structured breathing improves mood and reduces physiological arousal compared to mindfulness meditation. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100918

• Jones, M. K., Hill-Jarrett, T. G., & Jean-Ceide, C. (2025). The Strong Black Woman Schema and Mental Health: Examining the Role of Personal Mastery. Journal of Black Psychology, 51(5), 617–641. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41020148/

• Smith-Greenaway, E. (2024). The New Sociology of Bereavement. Annual Review of Sociology. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-soc-090324-035534

• Tarazi, R. R. (2024). Understanding Grief Among Ethnoracially Diverse Young Adults. CUNY Academic Works.

• Grant, G. M. (2024). Understanding Complicated Grief, Resilience, and Coping Skills in African American Women: A Phenomenological Study. Liberty University.

• Wilms, T., et al. (2023). Stress and gastrointestinal function: Mechanisms and consequences. The Journal of Physiology, 601(9), 1573–1591. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP281951

• Baptiste, D., & Gooden, A. (2023). Strong Black Woman Persona: Mental Health Impacts. In Promoting Black Women’s Mental Health. Cambridge University Press.

• Mares, M. (2023). Culturally Sensitive Grief Treatment with Black and LatinX Populations. Pepperdine University.

• Castelin, S. & White, G. (2022). I’m a Strong Independent Black Woman: The SBW Schema and Mental Health in College-Aged Black Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly.

The Science behind the Screams We Swallow: How Emotional Suppression Becomes Physical Distress

There are moments in life when emotions gather inside of us like unfinished sentences. Not spoken, not cried, not fully felt — just sitting there, vibrating beneath the skin. It is not simply sadness, not entirely grief, and not exactly anger. It is a kind of emotional pressure that feels like a scream trapped in the ribcage with nowhere to go. And when you’ve lived long enough with emotional interruption — emotional silencing — you begin to recognize this sensation immediately.

You may say, “I’m fine,” but your body is not fine. Your throat tightens when someone asks you to explain yourself. Your stomach knots when you try to move on too quickly. Your chest heats when you remember a conversation you never got to finish. Your body becomes the place where unfinished emotion fights to survive.

Many of us have been taught that regulating emotion means containing it — not expressing it, not disrupting harmony, not “making it a thing.” But if the emotion never completes its arc, the nervous system does not simply turn off. It stays activated, holding tension, waiting for the release it never received.

Emotion is not only psychological — it is biological.

WHEN THE MIND SHUTS DOWN EMOTION, THE BODY TAKES THE HIT

Neuroscience fundamentally shifted emotional theory when researchers demonstrated that emotions are not just thoughts or stories we tell ourselves — they are embodied physiological events. Emotion originates in brain–body circuitry; it has muscle, breath, temperature, heart rate, and biochemical effects (Damasio, 1994). When emotional expression is blocked — voluntarily or involuntarily — the sympathetic nervous system remains activated longer than it needs to, preparing for emotional completion that never arrives. What does that look like in everyday life? You might want to cry but cannot.You might have words, but they lodge in the throat.You might walk away from an argument looking calm, yet your hands shake and your chest burns. Emotion was meant to move upward and outward — through crying, speaking, vocalizing, exhaling, shaking, or physical gestures of self-soothing. That is its natural cycle. When emotional completion does not happen, the energy sinks into the body. So the scream does not disappear — it relocates.

Clients often tell me, “It feels like something is trying to get out.” That is not dramatic. That is neurobiological reality. The emotional activation is still present, but without a release mechanism, it becomes musculoskeletal tension, visceral discomfort, or autonomic dysregulation.

Your body listens to every emotion your voice was not allowed to express.

THE BODY REMEMBERS WHAT THE MIND LETS GO

When emotional processing is interrupted or minimized, the brain continues to signal threat even after the event has passed (van der Kolk, 2014). The amygdala holds onto emotional activation while the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for logic and meaning-making — believes the issue is resolved. This creates internal conflict: your mind thinks it has moved on, but your body has not.

That is why:

• You can intellectually know you’re over it

• While your stomach churns anytime you hear their name

• Or your chest gets tight when you are asked to “let it go”

The vagus nerve — the longest nerve connecting brainstem to heart, lungs, and digestive organs — carries emotional signals into the gut, diaphragm, and voice channel. According to Polyvagal Theory, the nervous system moves into immobilization, tension, freeze, or fawn states when emotional expression is blocked or unsafe (Porges, 2011). This is the root of the stuck emotional scream.

So you feel it here:

• Chest (tightness, burning, shallow breathing)

• Throat (pressure, constriction, difficulty speaking)

• Stomach (nausea, “knots,” appetite disturbance)

This is not symbolic. It is the body’s somatic language.

THE GUT–BRAIN SYSTEM: WHERE EMOTION AND DISCOMFORT COLLIDE

The gastrointestinal system is heavily innervated and sensitive to stress signals. It is sometimes called “the second brain” because it has millions of neurons communicating continuously with the central nervous system. Emotional stress disrupts gut motility, increases inflammation, alters digestion, and can manifest as reflux, stomach knots, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, or abdominal discomfort (Mayer & Tillisch, 2011; Wilms et al., 2023).

Chronic emotional tension also elevates cortisol, which increases gastric acid production and can exacerbate conditions like reflux or functional dyspepsia. Recent physiology research confirms that sustained stress states are strongly associated with digestive changes and gut dysregulation (Wilms et al., 2023). When emotional activation is unresolved, the body becomes the stage on which stress performs.

Your body is not dramatizing—it is metabolizing what the mind avoided.

WHEN SADNESS CAN’T BE SADNESS, IT BECOMES ANGER

Emotion is relational. When the environment is safe enough to allow sadness to emerge — through tears, shaking, vulnerability, storytelling, or lament — the body completes its emotional cycle and returns to equilibrium.

But when sadness is interrupted, the emotional system interprets the interruption as threat. Hurt without acknowledgment becomes anger. Not because the sadness changed, but because the nervous system has to mobilize to protect you.

This is the emotional space many people live in: where grief and anger coexist.

You might feel heavy and irritable at the same time.You might want comfort and isolation simultaneously.You might snap at something small while completely forgetting the original emotional trigger.

You are not unstable — your emotional completion was interrupted.

HOW SOMATIC RELEASE OPENS THE DOOR AGAIN

One of the simplest and most supported ways to complete emotional activation is intentional breathwork. A 2023 randomized-controlled clinical trial found that just five minutes of cyclic sighing — a structured breath pattern with a long exhale — reduced anxiety, decreased physiological arousal, and improved mood more effectively than mindfulness meditation alone (Balban et al., 2023). This is a powerful finding because it demonstrates that emotional regulation is not only cognitive — it is embodied.

Why does breath matter so much?

Because exhalation is the physiological mechanism by which the parasympathetic nervous system activates. When you release breath with sound — a sigh, hum, moan, or open-throat “ha” — the vagus nerve responds, and emotional energy has a pathway out.

Body shaking is also instinctive emotional completion. Animals discharge stress this way following threat: trembling, shaking, rhythmic movement, and vocalization. Humans override these impulses because they feel embarrassing or uncontrolled, but these movements are natural biological restoration.

Naming sensation rather than narrative — for example, “my chest feels heavy,” “my stomach feels tight,” or “my throat feels closed” — reestablishes communication between emotion and cognition without re-traumatizing or rehashing the story. Somatic therapy research consistently shows that describing sensation interrupts dissociation and facilitates emotional integration.

And sometimes emotional completion does not come through cognitive processing at all — it comes through surrender. Many people experience release during prayer, worship, lament, song, or embodied spiritual expression. Studies show that spiritual emotional release is associated with reduced physiological stress, improved emotional resilience, and increased mental well-being (Koenig et al., 2020; Khalaf et al., 2021). This is not superstition — it is nervous system regulation through meaning, connection, and embodied ritual.

Your body does not care whether the release comes through science or spirituality — it only cares that the emotional cycle completes.

FINAL REFLECTION

If you have lived with a scream stuck inside — a cry in your throat, a burning behind your ribs, a heaviness you cannot articulate — hear me:

You are not being dramatic.You are not too emotional.You are not “making something out of nothing.”

You are carrying emotional activation that never got permission to finish.

The goal is not to “be stronger” or “get over it.” The goal is to let the body finish what it started.

Healing is not forgetting. Healing is completion.

When the body finally exhales — in sound, in tears, in trembling, in prayer, in breath — it returns to safety. Not because the story changed, but because you changed the way your body holds the story.

Let the body speak. Let the scream come through the door it was searching for.You deserve relief, not containment.

REFERENCES

• Balban, M. A., et al. (2023). Brief structured breathing improves mood and reduces physiological arousal compared to mindfulness meditation. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100918

  
  

• Wilms, T., et al. (2023). Stress and gastrointestinal function: Mechanisms and consequences. The Journal of Physiology, 601(9), 1573–1591. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP281951

  
  

• Khalaf, S., et al. (2021). Spiritual coping, vagal function, and emotional regulation: Psychophysiological perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 699338. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.699338

  
  

• Koenig, H. G., et al. (2020). Religion, spirituality, and health: A review and update. Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, 34(1), 43–57.

  
  

• Mayer, E. A., & Tillisch, K. (2011). The brain–gut axis in abdominal pain syndromes. Annual Review of Medicine, 62, 381–396.

  
  

• van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.

  
  

• Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam.

Ephesians 4:17–27: A Guide to Emotional Maturity and Inner Healing

Understanding Paul’s Message

Ephesians 4:17–27 is often quoted as a manual for Christian behavior, but Paul is writing about something much deeper than merely correcting behavior. He’s describing the formation of a mature inner life — a life transformed in mind, body, and spirit. When he says not to “walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds,” he warns against becoming emotionally numb, spiritually disconnected, and psychologically rigid. This kind of hardness creates what he calls “callousness,” a spiritual and emotional shutdown where sensitivity, empathy, and self-awareness erode.

The Invitation to Emotional Intelligence

Paul isn’t simply offering moral advice; he is inviting us to develop an emotionally intelligent relationship with God. This relationship requires honesty about our anger, grief, and hurt. When he says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” he is not instructing anyone to chase reconciliation with another person by midnight. Instead, he invites us into the discipline of reconciling within ourselves before the day ends. The work is internal: loosening resentment, softening the heart, and releasing emotional pressure. If left unattended, these pressures can become even more volatile by morning.

Misunderstanding the Passage

This passage is often misunderstood because many read it through the lens of relational anxiety. They interpret it as, “Fix it with them now, or you’ve failed God.” However, the heart of this instruction is not about making others responsible for our healing. It is about tending to our own spirit so that bitterness does not take root. It involves putting off the old self — the self that ruminates, catastrophizes, manipulates, or suppresses — and putting on the new self that has been renewed “in the spirit of your mind.” This renewal is daily and deeply psychological. Here is where Scripture and mental health speak in beautiful harmony.

The Science Behind Emotional Processing

Modern research consistently shows that unprocessed anger and unresolved conflict create physical and psychological strain. A 2022 study published in Social Behavior and Personality found that forgiveness reduces psychological distress because it decreases anger and increases hope — a pattern Paul himself could have preached (Kim, 2022). More recent work in 2025 demonstrated that individuals who hold onto resentment experience decreases in mental well-being across cultures. In contrast, dispositional forgiveness significantly increases overall mental health (Skalski-Bednarz et al., 2025). The findings are clear: reconciliation within the self is one of the most protective emotional health practices we have.

Emotional Regulation and Identity Change

Paul’s language around “putting on the new self” mirrors what contemporary psychology calls emotional regulation, cognitive reframing, and identity-based change. He describes what it looks like to no longer live from emotional impulse, fear, or reactivity, but from a renewed internal state that aligns with grace rather than resentment. In this light, “do not let the sun go down on your anger” becomes less about relational closure and more about emotional maturity. It calls for us to take responsibility for the condition of our hearts. This passage invites us to release the burden of unresolved anger rather than make others the victim of it.

The Burden of Relational Pressure

This matters because when people interpret this verse as a form of relational pressure — “Go fix it with them right now,” — they often place a heavy emotional burden on the other person. This burden may require them to heal instantly or make restitution that they may not have the emotional capacity for. Such expectations are a burden Scripture never asked them to carry. The anxiety of needing someone else to absolve you before bed is not spiritual obedience; it is a form of relational codependence. When reconciliation doesn’t go as hoped — when the person is not receptive, doesn’t forgive, or doesn’t respond — the result is not peace. It is shame, rejection, and even more anger. The very reaction Paul is trying to protect us from becomes the one we manifest for ourselves.

The Dangers of Unresolved Anger

Carrying the burden of someone else’s unforgiveness is one of the fastest ways to develop emotional exhaustion and compassion fatigue. Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that chronic, unresolved anger keeps the body in a state of elevated stress, leading to increased anxiety, sleep disruption, and physical illness (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2024). Insomnia research shows that people who hold onto emotional conflict overnight experience poorer sleep and greater next-day emotional volatility (Ioverno, 2022). This research supports the idea that Paul’s instruction isn’t just spiritually wise — it’s biologically sound.

The Deeper Message of Ephesians 4

The deeper message of Ephesians 4 is this: you can honor God with your emotional life without forcing someone else to participate in your healing. Reconciliation with others is beautiful, but like an apology, it is not always immediate and is never guaranteed. Reconciliation with your own heart, however, is both a responsibility and a freedom that doesn’t require anyone else’s permission.

Embracing Emotional Maturity

Maturity, as Paul describes it, is learning to release anger without weaponizing it. It is acknowledging hurt without drowning in it. It is recognizing when your heart has started to harden and choosing to soften it through vulnerability. It is letting yourself be honest with God about what you feel so you do not give opportunity for anger to lead to resentful or hateful acts. It is shaping your internal world so the external world does not shape you.

Conclusion: Letting Go of Burdens

So when people quote this verse as a form of relational pressure — “Don’t go to bed until you’ve fixed it with them” — I want to encourage you: the burden of someone else’s forgiveness does not belong to you. Do the work you can do. Release what you can release. Pray through what you can pray through. And let the rest be held by God, who renews both your heart and your mind. The sun setting is not a deadline for perfect relationships; it’s a reminder to give today’s emotions back to the One who can transform them.

References (All 2022–2025)

• Kim, J. J. (2022). Indirect Effects of Forgiveness on Psychological Health: Anger and Hope as Mediators. Social Behavior and Personality, 50(3). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10120569/

• Skalski-Bednarz, B. S., Toussaint, L. L., Makhashvili, N., et al. (2025). Dispositional Forgiveness and Mental Health and Well-Being: Adaptation of the Toussaint Forgiveness Scale in Georgia and Cross-Cultural Comparison with Poland. Religions, 16(6), 720. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060720

• Ioverno, S. (2022). The Benefits of Mindfulness and Forgiveness for Insomnia and Sleep Problems. Behavioral Medicine, 86(4), 324-334.

• Johns Hopkins Medicine. (2024). Forgiveness: Your Health Depends on It. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/forgiveness-your-health-depends-on-it