Forgiveness is a gift from a Higher Power/God of our understanding/or whatever you care to call HIM. It is not something one works towards but one that one prays for. Only God forgives unconditionally just as He loves unconditionally......we humans must pray for forgiveness. When we have been given this wonderful gift we feel it in our hearts and we no longer feel anger towards someone. When we ask for forgiveness from someone we should not expect an immediate act of forgiveness. We should make our amends by changing our behavior. Once our behavior has changed, than and only then do we ask for forgiveness.

I had a huge problem with this issue when I was first working through the steps. I had three resentments and they were all to do with my childhood. I felt that if I let them go, it would be letting those people off the hook and that just made me feel so angry - they would have 'gotten away with it'. So, I just kept on holding those resentments but there came a time when those resentments landed me in a mental hospital feeling suicidal and homicidal. I realised that I had to let them go and gradually I did, but I felt that I was not spiritually capable of forgiving those people. I asked my minister to define forgiveness, but it had no resonance with me, I looked the word up in the dictionary and it was no help, I talked to so many people but none seemed able to help me.

All the time that I had held the resentments, I hadn't realised that it wasn't those people that were 'on the hook' - it was ME.

Then one day, I got an email from an AA email group which gave a definition of forgiveness that worked for me and I was finally able to forgive them. I believe that my ability to forgive is through the Grace of God, but I had still needed to understand precisely what it was that I needed to do in order to do it!!

This is what that email said:

âForgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behaviour. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimised and martyred.
Rather, it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present, free of contamination of the past.â

(Joan Borysenko)

It helped me a lot, I hope someone here finds it useful too!

When I was drinking I hurt people. In soberiety I tried to make amends and repair all the damage I had done. I am sure that I cannot remember all the people I hurt or all the emotional damage to others that I had done. I am therefore willing to do everything I am able to make amends and repair the damage. I do not expect everyone to forgive me. I make amends change me, not to change them.

As far a my forgiveness to those tho harmed me, I am no saint. I am becoming more spiritual, but even Jesus got angry with an olive tree and 'withered" it. I do not hold any resentments to those who did injury to me. But I don't hang around with them either. I have looked closely at all those situation I can think of. With the help of a sponsor, I have seen that in most of those situations, I have had some role in it. When appropriate, I make amends for those actions too.

Bill W. wrote that is that our troubles are caused by aour natural instincts run wild. In order for me to forgive someone for the harm done to me, I first need to know they have changed and are not doing it to others today. If they have not stopped hurting others, why should I forgive others? BUT I also don't dwell on my anger much either. I try to keep the natural instinct to be angry at some level below "running wild." I ask my Higher Power to remove the inappropriate levels of anger I have toward others. My higher power seems to have done for me what I could not do for myself. (Or else I have simply stuffed them again. LOL)

Those who hurt me were simply doing what they believed was the next right thing. I pray for them, and often feel sorry for them.

I had a lot of resentment against my parents for a very long time, and neither of them ever really asked to be forgiven for much of anything. My dad once "admitted", so to speak, he would be considered a child abuser if he did today the kinds of things he did so many years ago, but that is about all he has ever said about any of his own past wrongs or harms ... and I can accept that as the reality it is.

In my heart, I have surely forgiven my parents ... kind of like, "Father, please forgive them, and even though they still do not really even know what they did." However, I have not also "forgotten" what they did any more than I would foolishly "forgive and forget" my wild "housecat" sometimes tries to bite me, and there is no way either of my parents is ever going to hurt me again ... and not even if my still-living dad actually does yet seek the forgiveness already waiting for him right here and now.

**Bump** This crops up with my sponsees so often - come on in and share your experience!

Forgiveness has been relatively easy for me in the case where I am unlikely ever to see or hear from people again.

I have found it harder with people who are still in my life. There have been times when I have thought I had truly forgiven people but found resentments recur in my ongoing interaction with them. I have been willing to forgive but have not totally forgiven.

I find prayer and another attempt is never ever wasted. I have only to look at my own imperfections and wrongdoings to see that we are all capable, through wrong decisions and self-seeking motives, of inflicting considerable harm upon others. This usually helps to balance it out for me and to see where others have forgiven me, surely I can do likewise.

I love the expression "Hate the sin, not the sinner."

As Lee pointed out, it is not necessary - or even advisable - to forget as well as forgive. I don't see how I can forget unless it is a truly minor matter. It is how I feel in the remembering that tells me if I have really forgiven. If it no longer stirs up turbulent emotions in me I think I can truly say I have moved on from that binding unhealthy attachment to past events in my life.

>> It is how I feel in the remembering that tells me if I have really forgiven.

There is a nugget to hang onto!