The Book of Forgiving

coherent story about their lives and the traumas they have experienced. In other words, if you are able to talk about your life and the joys and sorrows you have experienced—if you know your story—you are much more likely to be a skillful parent. Your unhealed, unforgiven traumas will not rear their ugly heads, as our disowned experiences so often do.

Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel explains that the best predictor of how well a child will be attached to his or her parents—have positive, loving relationships—is whether the parents have a clear and

Walking the Path

We invite you to lay down your sorrows and trust that nothing will be asked of you that you are not able to give.

To relegate someone to the level of monster is to deny that person’s ability to change and to take away that person’s accountability for his or her actions and behavior.

Healing does not mean that what happened will never again cause us to hurt. It does not mean we will never miss those who have been lost to us or that which was taken from us. Healing means that our dignity is restored and we are able to move forward in our lives.

person who injured us also has a story. They have wounded us because they have stood inside their own story and acted out of pain, shame, or ignorance. They have ignored our shared humanity. When we see pain in this way, we are able to see our common bond. We might even be able to empathize with the perpetrator. We can begin to let go of our identity as a victim and their identity as a perpetrator.

A part of me knows this is not how I should respond, and it does not feel good when I respond in kind. There is a certain kind of dignity we admire, and to which we aspire, in the person who refuses to meet anger with anger, violence with violence, or hatred with hatred.

After understanding what forgiveness is not, we must look deeply at what forgiveness is and the actual process of forgiving. None of us wants to have our life story be the sum of all the ways we have been hurt. We are not created to live in suffering and isolation.

Forgiveness does not subvert justice—it creates space for justice to be enacted with a purity of purpose that does not include revenge.