This paper shows how the turn from narrative to embodied research practice offers a space to women survivors of war-related sexual violence to rehearse forgiveness in the post-conflict setting, where its realisation seems unimaginable in the face of the extent of the crimes committed and the current sociopolitical situation. Using the case of ‘Mother of the Oppressor’, a short performative act created through the ethnographic research process, the topics around the relationship between survivors’ individual desires to forget, the pain stored in their bodies, and the collective demand from different social and political institutions to forgive are being discussed.