What are the hardest words in the English language? They’re not “I love you” or “I’m sorry”, according to author and presenter Paris Lees. But they might be: “I forgive you”.
“I’ve always been really fascinated with forgiveness, just because it’s a really, really, really, really powerful human experience,” she says. “I’ve always been moved when you see people in the context of war or terrible crime say that they forgive, when really, they didn’t have to.”
Is forgiveness always possible? It’s one of the questions Lees attempts to answer in her new eight-part BBC podcast, The Flipside, in which she hears two contrasting life stories on a different human theme each episode.
She’s joined in this one by Bassam, a man working for peace between Israel and Palestine, despite losing his 10-year-old daughter in the conflict. Bassam says he’s ready to forgive and move forwards, if only the culprit will take responsibility. Today we’re here to talk about Lees’ own journey towards forgiveness – but it has something in common with Bassam’s story.
Her tale begins on a council estate in the former mining town of Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where growing up trans left her feeling ostracised by her community. By 14, she was selling sex to men, in what she now recognises as abuse. At 16, she was arrested and imprisoned for her part in a robbery.
After the eight-month sentence, she decided to pursue her A Levels and later, a university degree. Now, she’s an author, Vogue columnist, Pantene hair care model and regular on BBC’s Question Time. She shares her experience to educate others, but tells me she isn’t a fan of the label “activist”.
Therapy helped her to unpick past trauma, says Lees, which eventually enabled her to forgive the people who drove her towards destructive behaviours.
“During that process, I forgave somebody. I’d actually been carrying a lot of hate and anger towards them,” she says. “People say that hating somebody is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get ill, and it’s true.”
Lees tells me she had “every right to be upset with this person,” but doesn’t want to go into the “ins and outs of it” again. “It will be pretty obvious for anybody who’s read about my life,” she says. “There was somebody who made me very unhappy when I was growing up. For years, I fantasised about taking revenge upon this person.”
