I can only speak for myself. I cannot say I've 'forgiven' anyone who has hurt me. I can say that I have found a way to accept what's happened to me. Not every trauma, not every person.

My childhood abusers have died. I'm still working through PTSD, and I am going through some of the experiences--feeling the sadness of what happened which started out with not accepting that the unacceptable happened in my childhood, and that it was as bad as it was.

As that has happened, its not like forgiveness has come with it, but acceptance and peace has been coming, little by little.

If you're a Christian, (I'm not, I'm a Buddhist) then forgiveness means something else to you spiritually--and I'm not the best person to help you address it.

But what's helping me move on with my life is to honor the truth of what really happened to me, and how long standing it affected me, and somehow that has helped things shift increasingly toward a soft hearted feeling.

As a non-Christian I don't think of forgiveness as a 'should'. I think anything that comes with a 'should' is not truth. Truth just is--our shared human condition--

Helen Keller said the world is full of suffering, and it is full of the healing of suffering (or there abouts).

Best wishes for continued healing and peace. May we all find happiness and the causes of happiness, and an end to suffering and the causes of suffering.

Buddhists have a whole technology for working these things through--but there appears to be some limit to how much I can share--some kind of religious restriction here.

sky