I think we can be hurt but not that other people can hurt us; they are outside of us and it is our experiences and perceptions that create the hurt.

For me, forgiveness is only for others who ask for it; it is to make them feel better because they feel they have done something wrong and want to square their own psyches away. I don't believe we can really "forget" things; we can suppress them or they can not mean as much to us so don't bother us enough to get remembered but I think anything that really makes us feel/respond in life, can't then get forgotten.

That leaves me with squaring my own psyche away, with incidents where I do not like what another has said or done that I feel relates to me.

My stepmother use to punish me physically, harshly. When I was first getting to know my husband, I was teaching him how to make pancakes in the blender and he was not a very good/fast learner At one point he struck my arm hard and my brain responded, KILL! I have a strong will though and am very fair-minded and I was able to restrain myself from striking him back immediately and ask, "Why did you hit me?" Apparently I had gotten sloppy and was turning on the blender before the container was properly seated and I could have gotten both of us seriously injured if he had not stopped me.

So, we have my stepmother striking me often enough as a child that I was trigger-ready to strike another, versus another striking me to protect me.

My stepmother is dead and cannot strike me anymore. For a long time I resented that she had struck me in the past, but there's no future in that? In a real sense, we pretty much make our own reality. What I think and perceive (the sky is green) is how I see the world. "Everyone is out to get me" may not be literally true, but, to me, it might be my reality. I cannot change literal truth but I can change how I think and perceive things so that my reality is more comfortable to me. I was in therapy for many many years and part of my trouble was that I'm extremely strong willed and extremely creative, good at fantasy and I would "decide" X was Y and guess what? X was Y for me!

What does that have to do with forgive or forget? We don't need to forgive or forget what happened to us in the past, the past is "gone". My stepmother cannot physically hurt me anymore. Yes, because my stepmother did physically hurt me in the past, a pattern was established so when I am physically hurt in the present, I go right to my stepmother's type of hurt and, now, as a big adult (I remember very well when I realized I was larger/stronger/younger than my stepmother) I can "protect" myself better from such physical assault. But I have many other attributes and patterns and the ability to create even more, positive patterns if I decide to! I did not hit my husband after he hit me and I acknowledged he was "right". I have a pattern of deciding to be fair-minded and asking questions before I kill people In the future, when I'm struck I probably won't lash out, I'll ask why I was struck, I'll look for reasons.

As a child, I wasn't able to do that with my stepmother, wasn't able to know or understand her frustrations and patterns such that she was thoughtlessly physically acting out on me, a child. I can't/have no need to "forgive" my stepmother, she's dead. I have no need to forget her physical violence; as a matter of fact, I need to not forget it. Why? Because it's part of me and my patterns and if I forget, then when someone strikes me in the present, I have no reference point to figure out my response in the present? That's probably why my stepmother struck me in the first place; she was disconnected from her earlier, childhood frustrations and patterns. Did her mother or someone else strike her? We don't know.

Life, for me, is about making connections; within ourselves and with others "out there". Someone asking for my forgiveness for something they perceive they did wrong, helps create a connection between the two of us. Me, remembering, helps create connections within myself.