What she did to you was terrible. There aren't enough bad adjectives that I could stick in that sentence that would adequately communicate how terrible her actions were towards you.

Everybody has their own individual way of thinking about what forgiveness means. I am not trying to tell you what it's about for you-- it is not unreasonable to see it as about what the person who did the terrible things and his or her deservingness of forgiveness. I don't see it as a gift you bestow on a worthy individual, either because of your generosity or because they have sufficiently groveled and apologized to earn it.

For me, forgiveness has been about whether or not I need to be the kind of person who (in that moment) forgives the other person. It is definitely not about communicating that forgiveness, and it doesn't matter to me whether someone has asked for it or not. When I forgive, I move on-- and I'm not saying that you can't move on without forgiveness. But I forgive because I don't need to hold onto whatever I'm still holding onto, and I forgive because I want to be the kind of person who doesn't need to hold onto that sense of outrage or anger or grudge or whatever those complicated emotions are. Forgiveness has been, for me, a new start.