Love in Action: The Therapeutic Power of Apology and Forgiveness, Deborah Levinson, LCSW (1 hr)
Description
What does it take to repair a relationship after it has been wounded? Love alone is not enough. It takes courage, skill, and the willingness to do something most of us were never taught how to do well: apologize meaningfully and forgive genuinely.
In this rich and clinically grounded presentation, Deborah Levinson explores apology and forgiveness as two sides of the same coin, and as among the most powerful tools available for relational healing. Drawing on the vivid metaphor of a tree, she invites participants to consider how relationships, like living things, require intentional tending. Just as a skilled arborist prunes dead wood to restore vitality and growth, couples and families can learn to identify and release the unhealthy patterns that quietly erode their bonds, making space for deeper connection and renewed love.
Grounded in Gottman's Love Map and a practical toolbox of conflict negotiation skills, this presentation offers clinicians a clear, immediately applicable framework for facilitating meaningful apology and genuine forgiveness. Whether you work with couples, families, or parent-child relationships, you will leave with concrete tools to help your clients repair what matters most
Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
Apply evidence-informed skills for negotiating conflict in couple and parent-child relationships in clinical practice.
Describe the five dimensions of apology and how each dimension supports relational repair
Discuss the tree-and-pruning metaphor as a tool to release harmful relational patterns.
Deborah Levinson, LCSW, is a Johns Hopkins and Catholic University-trained licensed clinical social worker with more than four decades of experience helping individuals, couples, and families navigate life's most profound transitions. Her clinical work has long centered on the healing potential embedded in human relationships, with particular expertise in the therapeutic dimensions of apology, forgiveness, and relational repair.
Mrs. Levinson is best known for developing the Spousal Loss Model, a clinically researched framework for rebuilding identity and purpose after major loss. Over the course of her career, she has come to understand forgiveness not as a simple act of letting go, but as one of the most powerful and complex interventions available in clinical practice. She has facilitated groups for widowed and divorcing individuals through the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services in New York and has presented to professional audiences at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Gerontological Society of America, and the United States Secret Service Employee Assistance Program, among others.
She is the author of three books, including her widely used workbook Surviving the Death of Your Spouse (New Harbinger, 2004), and has published clinical research in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss and Illness, Crisis and Loss.
A member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Lambda Theta, Mrs. Levinson brings decades of clinical wisdom, scholarly grounding, and genuine warmth to her exploration of the transformative power of love expressed through apology and forgiveness.