“Sometimes,” as the Elton John song says, “sorry seems to be the hardest word.” An upcoming pop-up installation and workshop at Forbes Library wants to help change that, giving participants the opportunity to make their own apologies – even if they’re not yet ready to share them.

Artist, performer, and educator Gabrielle Revlock’s installation, ”The Apology Nook,” part of a project called “Anonymous Apologies,” will be open inside Forbes Library’s Reference Reading Room from Thursday, March 27, to Sunday, March 29. Physically, the installation itself will be fairly simple: at its center will be a table with bench seating on both sides, like in a diner, enough to seat two people. It will have an envelope with printed apology letters inside, compiled from anonymous submissions to her website, plus stationery and writing supplies for guests to handwrite their own apologies and a box in which to deposit them. Inside the nook, there will also be chocolates and plant cuttings (“which I like as a metaphor for something that is cut but that is growing new roots,” Revlock said); outside it will be a collection of books related to apologies for guests to peruse.

“The Apology Nook” began last April as a one-day installation, “The Apology Room,” at Neilson Library at Smith College, from which Revlock graduated with a master’s degree in dance last year. The concept was similar: library guests could read and transcribe other people’s apologies or anonymously write their own. (They could also, if they wanted, enjoy a piece of candy.)

Revlock’s website features two of those apology letters. In one, a writer apologizes that they didn’t visit a loved one before that person passed away.

“You died on my birthday,” said the writer, “and in hindsight, I really rather would [sic] have been with you.”

Another apologized for blindsiding a former partner, “pretending everything was fine, until it wasn’t.”

“I know you felt deceived,” they wrote. “That’s on me. You might be interested to know that I’ve discovered my sexuality is much more fluid than I had thought when I was seeing you. So that’s something. Anyways, I’m sorry.”

Another letter from that installation, which Revlock shared with the Gazette, reads: “I never wanted us to drift apart, and I will do more to close the gap. I hope I’m not too late. I love you, truly.”

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On her website, Revlock wrote, “If we loosen our grip on right and wrong, and the blaming that follows, we can begin to notice how complicated most interactions are and to take responsibility for our part. Apologizing does not mean that the fault is entirely yours. Apologizing is a courageous act and requires humility, generosity, and compassion. It can feel good to apologize! The more we practice writing (or saying) apologies, the more it will become a part of our culture.”

During a time in which people nitpick public apologies with a fine-toothed comb, Revlock doesn’t want people to come into the installation with a sense of fear that their apology will be “wrong.” Rather, she sees the installation as a practice space, a space for all apologies, even those that aren’t fully ready to be shared: as she put it, “If I know I’m not gonna be judged by not getting right, let me just try.” “The Apology Nook,” she pointed out, is not staffed, so “no one is there to say, ‘No, you didn’t do it right.’”

“This thing that we can feel so afraid to admit, to acknowledge we’ve made a mistake, makes someone seem human to me,” she said.

Even so, Revlock had a few suggestions for how to make a good apology: for one thing, try to put yourself into the other person’s shoes, imagining how your actions must have felt from their perspective. For another, she said, “Think of what the 1% of a conflict is that you can take responsibility for. The subtext of that is that you can still think it’s 99% the other person’s fault. I’m not taking that away from you. All you have to do is think of that 1% that you can take responsibility for.”

On Tuesday, March 25, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Revlock will host an apology writing workshop at Forbes. The event description notes that participants “do not need to have an apology in mind to attend the workshop.” The thing Revlock is most looking forward, she said, is helping people – and herself – foster a sense of connection.

“That is what drives this project, is desire to feel connected to others, to feel connected to oneself, to feel in line with my integrity,” she said. “In doing this project, this is also me reinvesting in believing that this is important, even though it’s a hard thing to do. It’s hard, but this is an effort to keep myself on that path and to bring others along with me.”

To submit an anonymous apology letter for the installation, visit gabriellerevlock.com/apologize.

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.