Pulling Up Roots: How Unhealed Hurt Becomes the Offense We Carry
Alexandra Hoover
20 min read ⭑
I’ve been trying to heal from hurt for what feels like a lifetime.
It was a meeting at work, and I’d prepared for it for weeks. I was ready and excited to share my ideas with a roomful of people whose approval held more power over me than I cared to admit. The stakes were high, and I knew that being heard was about more than just career advancement; it would be validation, a chance to prove I belonged.
I began my presentation with a steady voice, carrying all the weight of my effort and hope. But before I could finish my thought, a coworker — someone known for steering conversations in his direction — interrupted with a dismissive tone. “We’ve already tried that,” he said, finality and irritation in his voice, his words landing like a stone on my chest. This wasn’t his first time showing this kind of behavior toward me or others. I rolled back my shoulders and caught my breath.
The silence that followed felt suffocating. I glanced around, seeing the polite, indifferent expressions on everyone’s faces, and in that instant, I felt the ground shift beneath me. The meeting carried on, and the conversation turned away from my idea as if it had never mattered. I sat there nodding, pretending the sting hadn’t reached me, pretending the dismissal didn’t chip away at the confidence I fought so hard to build.
Later, when the office emptied and the echo of my colleagues’ voices faded, the weight of that moment settled in. I replayed it over and over, dissecting every word and every pause. That night, when I was back at home, the memory replayed itself, looping in my mind. The hurt wasn’t just about the interruption or irritation toward me — the rejection and constant posture of disapproval was something I had gotten used to. It was about feeling small, overlooked and invisible in a moment when I had longed to be seen. I thought about all the things I could have said, the ways I should have defended myself. Their rejection left a mark, as much as I didn’t want it to.
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Moments like this have a way of reminding us of the wounds we’ve left unhealed for far too long. And it did. I sat there in my living room while the kids tried to share their day with me, and I felt the weight of offense overwhelm me. Every other unhealed wound and carried offense in my life showed up. Every memory where I felt unseen, silenced or dismissed came rushing back, weaving itself into a narrative that whispered, “See? You don’t matter. You never have.”
The truth is, I wanted to believe my coworker’s words didn’t matter. I wanted to pretend that the hurt dissolved with each passing moment. Instead, they rooted themselves into the corners of my mind and built a home there.
I feel like this may have been the last offense that did it for me, the one that numbed me to love, to life, to healing. I became more cautious with my words and more guarded with my dreams. I had spent years trying to believe God would fight my battles, but I felt safer when I took matters into my own hands. That wound, ignored and untended, joined others in shaping the way I perceived everything that came after it. I took up offense, and it held me hostage.
Where Has Offense Led You?
Carrying offense has led me only to insecurity, defeat and anger. Where has offense led you?
The hurt I’ve been carrying around has left me more:
resentful
impatient with others
critical
harsh
callous
emotionally reactive
envious
And it’s left me less:
hopeful
secure
patient
forgiving
soft
confident
But how offense has left you is not the end.
I’m not here to explain your pain away. I want you to feel seen and deeply loved. I want you to know that Jesus offers a way in and through your wounds. Every ounce of offense you’re carrying is safe with him, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.
Hurt is universal. None of us escapes the effects of living in a fallen world. Disappointment, rejection and unmet expectations are inevitable. Wounds are among the hardest parts of life, second only to grief and death. But they are not the end of our story. They do not define us.
The thing about offense is that it isn’t just found in a passing moment. It’s a collection of stories our minds and hearts hold on to, a library that catalogs each moment we are misunderstood, overlooked or deeply hurt. Faces we once trusted become tinged with pain whenever we recall them. Places that once brought joy now carry an ache, a reminder of conversations that should have gone differently. Offense is made up of more than just what was said or done; it is also about what was left undone. The words we wish we had said keep us up at night.
Offense is the quiet mourning of a version of ourselves we wanted to protect — the person who would have stood tall, known better, said the right words, or walked away sooner. But life is rarely that clean. We collect these offenses, replay our responses, and, without realizing it, allow them to shape us. Each unspoken defense, each moment we wish we could rewrite, becomes part of who we are and how we see the world. And we continue to hold on to all of it, even when everything in us wants to let go.
My whole life, I have wanted to pretend that people’s words and actions don’t hurt me, but they do. I want to be someone who can easily let go of moments, feelings and experiences. I want to move past the past. But it chases me in the present. I am made of flesh and bones, and each time I’ve let a wound go untended, it has become part of the framework from which I see my life. A hurt left untended becomes an offense I pick up.
Wounded? I feel it.
Betrayed? I carry it.
Rejected? I live it.
Belittled, overlooked, undervalued? I hide because of it.
Offended? I embody it.
I used to avoid confessing when someone hurt me and downplayed any offense that crept into my heart. Honestly, there are still moments when I resist owning up to it. I get tangled up in the hurt, caught in its trap and tied to its lies. The offended heart knows what it needs to thrive: pride, resentment, bitterness, insecurity and an unforgiving spirit. These are the weeds and vines that choke out new life, and they have been my wilderness.
Offense has a way of following you around once you pick it up. It’s everywhere you go.
The comment from your friend that didn’t sit well.
The belittling remark your coworker made.
The statement from your spouse that cut deeper than ever before.
The wound you received from the severing of a friendship that couldn’t be repaired.
The unforgettable pain from your childhood.
The rage you carry, passed down from the hurt others handed you.
The apology you never received.
The invite you never got.
The “I’m sorry, but we decided to go with someone else.”
The silence that followed when you needed someone to speak up.
The feeling of being unloved or overlooked by the very people you thought were safe.
The kind of betrayal that doesn’t just break your heart — it breaks your trust in people.
I can understand, for the most part, why things happened the way they did for me. I can even process the reasons behind the hurt. But making peace with my pain? Finding true acceptance in it and learning to move forward? That’s the challenge. It’s as if living unoffendable is an impossible dream, an existence that feels out of reach, especially when the wounds run this deep. I want to be able to experience hurt without letting it define me. And I want to honor my experiences without allowing them to victimize me.
One challenge in facing our hurt is to stop numbing it long enough to actually see it for what it is. But we are terrified of pain, so we medicate it. We numb it by whatever means we can find, whether through distractions, avoidance or simply shutting down. We are constantly looking for ways to escape the hurt. Defensive, guarded, angry, resentful, bitter, exhausted, suspicious — we wear it all like armor, thinking it will protect us, but in reality, it only makes us more vulnerable.
Here’s the hard truth: Medicating pain doesn’t heal it. Numbing hurt doesn’t remove it. Bitterness won’t heal on its own. Anger won’t heal the wound; it will only trap us beneath more layers of offense, building up resentment, bitterness and exhaustion. We often try to explain away our hurt, thinking it’s easier to just move on. But this merely masks it, allowing offense to remain, grow and begin to define us.
Acknowledging the hurt might feel like admitting defeat, as if facing it makes it more real or permanent. We fear that if we look too closely, we might unravel everything we’ve worked so hard to maintain. But the more we guard our hearts from pain and close ourselves off to healing, the more we will continue confused and defensive. We must be brave enough to face our offense.
Offense, My Copilot
When I was in kindergarten, my mom dressed me in what I now realize was peak nineties fashion: velvet dresses with bows and shoulder pads, the kind you’d see in a JCPenney holiday catalog. But these weren’t just for Christmas or Easter — we wore them year-round. In my family, appearances were everything. No one could know how deeply we were hurting. Whatever was happening on the inside, we made sure the outside looked perfect.
But before those dresses and our move to the US, my earliest memories were rooted in Caracas, Venezuela. I can still feel the warmth of the breeze, the kindness of the people and the vibrancy of the culture. It was a place where I felt a sense of belonging so deep it still lingers. Joy lived there — unshaken, untouched by the storms that would come later. Sometimes I wonder what life might have looked like if we had stayed. Venezuela held my happiest memories, my purest joy.
Everything shifted when we moved back to the US. My parents had been separated, living in different countries, but I missed my dad deeply. I longed for his love — for a chance at family again. My mom said yes to leaving behind the life we knew, even though it terrified her. She made the move with hope in her heart — hope that maybe, just maybe, something could be restored. She wanted more for me. A father. A family. A future we could reclaim. But her sacrifice unraveled quickly. My dad chose himself over us — preferring another woman and, above all, alcohol. The betrayal cut deep. It didn’t just hurt; it hollowed. And pain like that doesn’t stay contained. It spills into everything. It steals vision, chokes out hope and leaves you grasping for meaning.
For my mom, the pain became her identity. I saw it in the way it drained the light from her once playful and charismatic spirit. And I learned from her. As a little girl, I fought to protect her and myself, but in doing so, I picked up the same offense she carried. It became my lens, distorting how I saw the world. All I could see was that no one was coming to love me or save me.
My dad’s choices rewrote how my mom saw herself — her worth, her value, her security. She gave everything she had to hold us together, but offense is a venom that poisons everything it touches. Her depression became a silent storm that swept through both of us, shaping my life in ways I’m only now beginning to untangle.
That first week back in the US was heavy with tension and unspoken disappointment. Life doesn’t wait for you to catch your breath. I started school, and my mom and I became actors, masking our brokenness with tidy exteriors. I remember gripping her hand tightly as we walked down the school halls on that first day. Neither of us knew how to navigate the trauma we were stepping into. We had no support, no resources. We had felt so brave leaving Venezuela, so hopeful that this time would be different. But it wasn’t.
My mom regretted the move almost immediately. The weight of what we had left behind, coupled with the pain of what we had returned to, became too much to bear. She blamed everyone — my dad, herself and even me, questioning why I ever thought coming back to him was the right choice. But I was just a little girl, and I wanted a dad. I couldn’t see the truth of what was happening; all I knew was that I longed to be loved by him, to have him there. Her regret felt suffocating, leaving no room for us to feel settled or safe. The pain she carried shaped everything, and I could feel it shaping me too, though I wasn’t yet old enough to understand the depth of it.
Offense and hurt have a way of clouding our ability to love and live with empathy, making us the most selfish and prideful versions of ourselves. My mom’s bitterness and regret weren’t just her personal struggles; they became a filter through which I saw everything. It was hard to love when it felt like we were both drowning in the same weight of pain.
“The longer we carry offense, the more it shapes us, making it harder to see the life we’ve been called to — one of abundance, love and release.”
Layers to Healing
There are layers to healing. Sometimes our genesis stories don’t look the way we envisioned or would have wanted, and yet God does something only he can do in them and in us. He reaches back into our past to heal our present. There’s always a way forward when God invites us into a new life with him. It’s never too late. If we allow it, facing the immense challenges of life can lead us through a deep process of healing. It has the power to unlock strength, peace and hope we never knew were possible. Ultimately, it can guide us to the place we’ve always longed for — a place of true acceptance, security and wholeness.
One of those layers that needed to be healed began to form in the cold hallways of my new school. My mom had dropped me off, and I was scared for a million reasons. I felt my stomach twist and my chest tighten, my body signaling its anxiety and fear. My throat was dry as if it were closing up, and each breath was difficult to draw. At that moment, I thought, This is my new life. Despite the unease, I was excited for recess to arrive. I knew just enough English to get by, and I had my kindness — something my mom had gifted me, along with her smile. She had an incredible ability to bring joy and gentleness wherever she went, loving people so deeply. Suffering can either soften the heart or harden it. It hadn’t totally taken hers yet.
On that cold, gray fall day, the playground structure loomed before me, the red metal sharp against the chill. I climbed up the bars, eager to go down the slide. But as I reached the top, an overwhelming awareness washed over me: I was wearing a dress. Behind me, a group of girls waited their turn to slide down. They didn’t have dresses on.
“Hi!” I said. Despite my embarrassment, I couldn’t wait to make new friends. A few girls were kind and waved back. We went down the slide, one by one, until my dress got caught on the side. I scrambled down and clumsily met the mulch on the ground. Brushing myself off, I got up and stood to the side, waiting for the other girls to slide down after me. My heart raced with anticipation. I wanted to ask if they would play with me.
As I think back to that moment, I see a willing, openhearted girl, one who reached out first with hope and bravery. What I didn’t know then, and what I would learn much later, was that this kind of vulnerability, this openness, would one day feel like weakness to me. An invitation for betrayal. The sting of past rejections would try to convince me that guarding my heart was safer and that protecting myself was survival.
Before I knew it, one of the little girls was mocking me. “You don’t speak English!” she said. Tears filled my eyes, but I was too embarrassed to cry, so I just stood there. Kids will be kids, but no one warns you how much words shape who you become. I ran to my teacher, hoping for comfort. Instead, she brushed me off and told me to stand by her until recess ended. I didn’t fully understand what was happening, only that the feeling was familiar. I had felt this shame before. My mind flashed back to the first time I heard my dad say he didn’t want us around anymore — just that week. The shame and sense of being unwanted washed over me. My body tensed, and my defense mechanisms kicked in. I had learned what rejection felt like before that day, and this fresh pain only added to my wounds.
Our origin stories give us a framework through which we view the rest of life. My story began with the grueling reality of my dad’s alcoholism and betrayal. I picked up that hurt and met offense early on. I became friends with it. I learned to live offended with people and life, and God.
Living offended happens when we make the choice to live from a place of hurt. And it’s a choice not just to live with the hurt but to live with the resentment and bitterness that accompany it.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies show that when we experience rejection, there is a physical response in our brains that imitates the reaction of physical trauma to the body. Rejection physically manifests as pain in our bodies. Offense hurts. I know this firsthand, and I want us to finally learn to heal from it. I want our hearts to experience a new sense of freedom in Christ, one that breeds forgiveness and compassion for both ourselves and others.
God made us to be people free from the chains and the weight of always living offended. He desires for us to have the confidence to live life as he designed it, with love, patience, kindness, self-control and joy. Through Jesus, he calls us to live in the security of his love so that no matter what comes our way, we will be like a tree, rooted and firmly planted by streams of living water (Ps. 1:3).
We all have defining moments of pain in our lives. But young or old, we have a choice. We can either live offended or release our grip on bitterness. We can’t control whether people hurt us. We will sin and be sinned against. Our ability to let go of offense begins with God, with him as our compass and guide. Because time alone won’t heal our wounds, but time with God will.
You might be reading this article because your heart might be tired of living constantly wounded and offended. Maybe you haven’t been betrayed but have been widely disappointed and discouraged by someone you trusted. Or maybe you have been betrayed, and the idea of forgiving that person still feels impossible. Perhaps you’re tired of feeling constantly insecure and isolated in your pain. You’re stuck in the symptom of offense, and it’s crippling you. You’re weary, wondering how on earth you’ll ever love, trust or walk in victory again. You’re tired of living for the consistent need to be loved by people because that previous wound left you empty — looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead of living securely, you’re living resentful and angry. You’re waiting for the apology, but it’s been years and nothing yet. Maybe you’re bitter and can’t stand who you’ve become. You’ve tried being the bigger person, but turning the other cheek is starting to hurt more than the hurt itself. You won’t forgive, but you’ll think about it. You won’t let go, because being right and justified in your pain feels better than you’d like to admit. You want to believe the best, but every time you do, you’re constantly let down.
For me, picking up the offense has felt more justifiable than letting it go. I have become more accustomed to a life of offense than a life of peace and acceptance. I learned how to live offended for most of my life. It may sound dramatic, but it’s the truth. Until recently, I didn’t know a life without that nagging companion, that terrible copilot, constantly whispering lies about my lack and my inability to be loved.
Offense feeds on my doubts, deepening the cycle of self-criticism and hesitation. In my mind, no one seems safe enough because I’m not sure anyone will ever truly love me. Offense keeps me just far enough away from those I care for that real intimacy feels impossible. It feels too costly. This mindset clouds my judgment, making me question my worth and anchors me in fear and shame.
When we’ve been walking too long on the path of offense, it’s like stepping through wet cement — fresh, heavy and clinging to everything. At first, we think we’re moving forward, but over time, our feet sink. The longer we stand in it, the harder it is to move. Eventually, it hardens around us, and we find ourselves stuck — trapped in the very things we never meant to carry this long.
Friend, we have a choice to make. We can continue to hold on to the hurt and offense we are carrying, despite it breaking our backs, or we can choose freedom. This doesn’t mean excusing sinful behavior — ours or theirs — but rather healing from it. We are allowed, along with Jesus in Gethsemane, to ask God to let this cup pass from us while we process the pain to make peace with it. We will walk with God on this journey of learning to let go. We won’t deny our pain or minimize the hurt, but rather, we will let the hurt hurt. And as we do, we will notice where we need God most.
Weeds and Vines
What resonates with you as you read this is important. The Spirit reveals the things that need his touch and our attention. We can’t outrun hurt, but with God, we can prepare ourselves for the inevitability of offense. We can understand, grow from and even be freed from its symptoms. Living offended is a choice, and we have the power to let it trap us or to free ourselves from it.
When I first began thinking about this idea of letting go, I couldn’t help but picture vines. Despite my collection of houseplants and trips to the garden section at Home Depot, I am no gardener. When my oldest daughter was around five years old, she was obsessed with having flowers in our backyard. She wanted a planter, so naturally, I didn’t take the easy route. I didn’t just buy one off Amazon. Instead, I looked up “DIY planters” on Pinterest, found the most straightforward plan, and built my girl her planter. A few weeks later, we purchased and planted the easiest flowers to keep alive. We were thrilled to see the first sprouts emerge, but a few months later, we noticed some unexpected visitors — weeds. We figured our feathered friends must have carried seeds from their travels, giving the weeds a new home to grow. At first, some of the weeds seemed pretty, but they quickly took over the planter. They choked out the flowers, leaving little room for anything else to thrive.
When the COVID pandemic hit, like everyone else, we had to find new ways to fill our days. That was when I decided to become a “gardener” again — for all of five months. You can laugh at me. This time, though, I was prepared for the weeds. I knew how to protect our planters from being overtaken. I covered the potting mix with a layer of mulch, used weed barrier fabric and pre-weed killer, and even tried some home remedies like salt and vinegar (though I still don’t fully understand how those work). Armed with these tools, I hoped for a better outcome.
But it got me thinking: How do we move forward when our feet are tangled in the weeds of offense? How do we love again when our hearts have grown cold with self-protection? How do we step into lives of abundance when the things that define, defile and deplete us have such power? How do we rewrite our story to one of freedom when defeat keeps replaying in our minds like a song on a loop?
Unhealed hurt grows like weeds that pop up unwanted in our planter boxes, in a hurry to make sense of what’s happened. And when it doesn’t know where to go or what to do, the enemy of our souls does. He’s ready to show us a way out of hurt every time, and it’s never helpful or good.
The hurt grows and creates a habitable ecosystem in us, and then we notice that breathing through the pain has become almost unbearable, taking the breath out of our lungs and our love. Life begins to seem less and less hopeful, and we begin to demonize everything and everyone. No one is safe. We will never be hurt like this again.
It’s interesting how vines grow at the same speed as weeds. That was the other picture I got when I began thinking about the power of offense in our lives. Vines compete with trees for sunlight, water, nutrients, air and space. They want to grow and they will, no matter the cost, choking out the branches and even killing the trees. They grow aggressively, with one goal: to take what they need. Once a vine gets itself around something, pulling it off can be a tedious and exhausting experience.
Most of us have spent our whole lives trying to pull the vines of hurt and offense off our hearts and souls, to no avail. And no matter how hard we try to forgive, grow, move on, walk in confidence, be secure and find joy and life again, we end back up where we started. It’s like we made a bad deal and can’t escape it.
If we can’t pull the vines out of tall trees or other structures, we’re told to concentrate on killing or removing the roots. It’s the only sure way we’ll get rid of the vines. This goes for weeds, too. Pull them up.
When our hurt overgrows like weeds and becomes an offense we’ve picked up, it paints our lives in gray and tries to take every bit of the color out of it. It touches every good thing in its path and wraps itself around whatever it can find. Sometimes the wound is so complicated, nuanced and layered that we don’t know where to start. How do we pull the root from something so delicate and intertwined without causing mass destruction?
As I write this, I feel the tension of how complicated and tangled hurt is in my own life. I want to forgive. I want to overlook the offense. I want to look at the people who hurt me and tell them how long it’s taken to get over the words they spoke at me and over me. I want to go back six years and address a conversation I should have spoken up about. I long to reconcile with God just how disappointed I am with the amount of loss my family has experienced in the last five years, how much I miss the days when life wasn’t so full of grief, and how I can’t remember a season of my life without disappointment. I’ve tried to overlook offense through my best efforts. I stare at it just long enough to deal with the initial wave of discomfort, then find a way to live with it, then push it out of sight. I tell myself I’ve buried it deep enough, but it’s only an illusion.
The trap of offense creates fertile ground for resentment, bitterness and mistrust to take root — a toxic playground we often find ourselves stuck in. These emotions don’t just linger; they multiply, feeding on unresolved hurt and unforgiven wrongs. Over time, they grow into walls that foster division, isolation and a cycle of pain that feels impossible to break. Resentment and bitterness, born from wounds left untreated, lead to offense and anchor us in it, making freedom feel like a distant hope.
Wounds don’t just happen, and they don’t just disappear either. It’s tough to move on from how someone treated us or to forget the ache their words left behind. We replay the hurt over and over, and it starts to shape the way we see everything. The fear of future pain keeps us stuck in the past, unsure of how to let go of the words, the moments, or the people that hurt us. And unless we’re prepared for it, those words and actions can become our identity — they start to define us.
The longer we carry offense, the more it shapes us, making it harder to see the life we’ve been called to — one of abundance, love and release. The hurt hurts, but healing can also be part of our story.
Alexandra Hoover is a best-selling author, speaker and pastor passionate about helping women grow in their relationship with God and live with wholeness and purpose in him. Through her writing and teaching, she helps women overcome offense and hurt, make peace with their past, and step into the freedom Jesus offers. Alexandra serves on staff at a local church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Taken from “You Can Let Go” by Alexandra Hoover. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
