{"id":22474,"date":"2026-03-11T13:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/shaka-senghor-the-healing-power-of-forgiveness\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:14:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:14:19","slug":"shaka-senghor-the-healing-power-of-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/life-advice\/shaka-senghor-the-healing-power-of-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaka Senghor: The Healing Power of Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Shaka Senghor is a motivational speaker, a mentor, an MIT Media Fellow alum, one of Oprah Winfrey\u2019s Super Soul Sunday guests and the New York Times <\/em>best-selling author of Writing My Wrongs: Life Death and Redemption in an American Prison<\/em>. Seven years ago, however, Senghor was still an inmate serving a 40-year sentence for second-degree murder.<\/p>\n

The Detroit native was just 19 years old on the night that changed his and another young man\u2019s life forever. Paranoid after being the victim of a shooting himself, Senghor believed the young man (whose real name he keeps private out of respect for the victim\u2019s family) was a threat to his life. In reality, Senghor was the threat, and, in a drug deal gone bad, he shot and killed his victim after an argument.<\/p>\n

In his memoir, Senghor shared that he was often physically assaulted by his mother for small infractions. Those \"\"beatings caused him to feel rejected and unloved by her. At 11 years old, his parents split, and though he remained in good relationship with his father, his anger and feelings of abandonment by his parents only grew. His honor roll grades began to drop. After his mother threatened to kick him out of the house for bad behavior, he decided to leave on his own and eventually got involved in selling drugs at 14 years old. <\/p>\n

“Day by day, we were all being stripped of our morals,” he wrote of the impact of the harsh environment he’d become a part of as a drug dealer, as compared to the respectful way his family had raised him. Due to his mother’s rejection and the life of a criminal he was leading, Senghor began to wrestle with feelings of worthlessness, and even planned his own suicide. The thought of his 2-year-old nephew who lived with him finding his lifeless body was the only thing that stopped him. But his pain didn’t go away.<\/p>\n

By the time he was 19, confronting an unhappy customer with the gun he’d carried ever since he had been shot two years earlier, Senghor was so full of anger, sadness and hurt that he took another man’s life without thinking twice. It would be 5 years before he began to accept the full weight of what he’d done that night.<\/p>\n

While in prison, Senghor received a letter from his victim’s godmother, asking him why he’d killed her godson. Riddled with guilt, Senghor began to use writing as a way to deal with his emotions. \u201cSaying I am sorry for robbing you and your family of your life seems too small a gesture,\u201d Senghor wrote in a letter to his victim five years into his sentence. \u201cI wish I could restore your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also wrote back to the godmother, apologizing for what he’d done. Senghor first learned of the healing power of forgiveness two weeks later when she responded to him, telling him that she forgave him and that he should seek God\u2019s forgiveness, as well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI took her words to heart,\u201d he said. But \u201cit would be five [more] years before I reached the point when I could truly forgive myself.\u201d<\/p>\n