What I'm Bringing With Me (Part 1) : The Freedom of Forgiveness

I don’t make new year's resolutions. Many years ago, one of my mentors encouraged me to focus on setting life goals in five-year increments with the belief that the most important things that a person wants to accomplish require focused attention and patient capital to plan, execute and sustain. The longer arc allows for life's disruptions, learning and course correction which are inevitable but can be discouraging when operating on shorter timelines. I'm currently in year two of my current five-year plan and I'll be staying the course in 2025.? That said, I immensely enjoy the practice of annual reflection that typically leads to the setting of new year's resolutions. During the last two weeks of every year, I begin turning the mirror inward to examine the outcomes of the decisions that I have made, consider progress toward the five-year goals that I’ve set, and reflect on the experiences that I've had. In doing so, I hope to find wisdom that can guide, inspire and encourage me in the year to come. And each year, this practice unfailingly reveals important truths about my life journey and pinpoints important milestones in my growth that I might have overlooked otherwise.? I’ve never publicly shared my reflections before, but this year’s revelations are pushing me to lean into sharing what I might have once considered as being for my eyes only.? In this three-part series, you’ll hear my thoughts on the freedom of forgiveness, how I embraced my inner gummy bear and my desire to let go.? These are at the top of the list of things that I’m bringing with me into 2025.?

First Up:? The Freedom of Forgiveness.

When the changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program were announced a few years ago, I didn’t even bother to review them and I didn’t get my hopes up when the Biden administration proposed broader forgiveness efforts.? By 2017, I had already experienced the devastation of having two applications declined for this poorly administered, dysfunctional program that was supposed to provide debt relief for government and nonprofit workers who made at least 10 years of qualifying payments. Like so many student loan borrowers that I know, month after month, year after year, for more than a decade, I made timely payments only to see the principal balance largely unchanged.? With the PSLF program no longer an option, personal and family goals were down-graded, delayed or abandoned and I had resigned myself to the likelihood that I would still be paying these loans well into my retirement years. I stopped imagining what it would be like to be free.

Thankfully, a good friend of mine intervened and convinced me to re-apply for PSLF in Fall 2023. To my astonishment, in February 2024, my application was approved. I made the letter my screensaver on my phone and re-read the approval and discharge letter nearly everyday for weeks. But It wasn’t until my credit report reflected the loan forgiveness that I finally allowed myself to let go of a breath that I had been holding for far too long. Since then, I’ve followed the public discourse about student loan forgiveness and have become well-acquainted with the criticisms about student loan forgiveness:? It is an “abuse of the loan system.” People who can’t afford to go to college shouldn’t attend.? However, this just doesn’t consider the reality that those of us who don’t come from privileged backgrounds can least afford not to go to college. Or that a higher education system that is inaccessible without incurring this kind of debt is an unjust one that perpetuates inequity. The chances for us to permanently escape poverty are slim even with a degree but much less possible without it.? The critics are either woefully ignorant or deliberately overlooking the fact that even with a bachelor’s degree, Black women who work full-time only earn 62.5 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. Gratefully, my wise mother understood what was at stake and never considered it optional for me to attend college. She did everything that was within her means to do.? Unfortunately, like many low-income families, this did not include creating a college fund. Federal student loans were the only viable option to close the gap between tuition and financial aid and, in just 10 short months, student loan forgiveness has already proven to be one of the most critical events in my quest to break the curse of generational poverty for my family.??

As I enter 2025, I am bringing the freedom of forgiveness with me.? Student loans made it possible to become the first in my family to receive an undergraduate and graduate degree and convert my passion and purpose into a meaningful career. I have no regrets about incurring the debt that it required and I would have fulfilled the obligation, if necessary. But the reality is that the burden of that debt was often difficult to bear and came at a cost that was wholly impossible to anticipate at such a young age. It shrunk my ambitions and suffocated my vision for what it could look like to realize my full potential - for myself, my family and my community. The freedom of forgiveness is the freedom to take risks, the freedom to dream boldly and the restoration of hope that those dreams will be realized. These are freedoms that were returned to me.

One of my core beliefs is that dreaming is not a luxury; it is a necessity. It facilitates the transition from surviving to thriving - and everyone deserves to thrive. Dreaming is also key to overcoming the massive number of social and political challenges facing our country. Our collective future depends on our ability to imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist but should and a daring hope that, together, we can build the new systems and ways of being together that will get us there. My newfound freedom has affirmed for me that some of the most important work that we must do is identifying and removing the barriers that prevent us from pursuing, unhindered, the liberated future that we deserve. We must help one another find and go after our most audacious dreams. What is holding each of us back might be different but everything that holds us back must be dismantled so that no one remains in bondage. As Toni Morrison once said, “If you are free, you need to free somebody else.” The assignment has never been more clear to me and I am motivated to double-down in 2025.