'Twas a time when I had an international rep for holding grudges. I am eternally grateful Interpol was not fully computerized in the 70's.

Old habits die hard, but more and more I believe holding a grudge is like drinking poison while I wait for the other person to die. My bitterness seldom affects the other person, but it festers like a viral pandemic inside my own psyche. It doesn't take long for the bitterness to infect neighboring systems.

In my own healing journey, I needed to separate the concepts, "Forgive" and "Forget." I was raised and conditioned by the family mantra and it served to bring me to age with my very first psych dx, "Trauma Induced Amnesia." Who needs to forgive what can be forgotten? Alas, all that forgettance carries an enormously high psychic price. There is considerable debate on whether I will ever regain full use of my memory functions.

Over the decades of psycho therapy I bought the philosophy that forgiveness is not the pardoning of offenses. It is about letting go of the bitterness which is toxic to my soul and making peace with my personal herstory.

I don't think that forgiving means forgetting however hopefully in time at least some healing can come

Forgiving is something that we do for ourselves not for the other person(s).... As anger can take a lot of room up in our noggin and it can be toxic for us so I believe that forgiveness is good for ourselves

Hanging onto a grudge just makes our lives miserable so I try really hard not to do that

At times I can go back and forth with anger.... I'll believe that I have forgiven and then something creeps back in to bite me

Big hug of peace while you figure it out.... xo

There is none perfect, no not one. Quoted from scripture. Then there is the scripture about plucking the board out of one’s eye before commenting on the splinter in the neighbor’s eye. I could quote a lot more. These are the Words of God that He wants us to live by. He has very good reason for us to be forgiving if we only stop to think about it long enough. No matter what we do in life, we will suffer the consequences of our actions. Right or wrong., big or small. That’s how it is. It is always our own choice, we have free will. Just some food for thought.

Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting, but I don't regard remembering as a grudge. A grudge, to me, is more active. Also, my main abusers are dead, Kinda poiontless to hold grudges against ghosts, IMO.

So... Forgive, yes. Forgive the pain. Forgive the grief. Forgive the person.... well, to do that, they need to express remorse. Ain't gonna happen, so I get as far as I get, an dthat's that.

And I wish I could forget. If only!

but it's like ocean waves. I'll think I'll have set one adrift for good and it rolls back ashore out of nowhere and I'm like, "Wait? What? THIS?!"

And processing starts again.

(Processing... I hate that word. We need better ones.0

Oh, yeah, I just set them down a lot so I can use my hands for other things, too. We all went through this in Uruguay when out 12 year dictatorship fell to democracy in 1985. Some who were tortured by military death squads wanting an accounting for what they had done. We got it: the dictator was tried and convicted, put in prison, and died there. His sons were in my class in high school during the dictatorship, and they were total jerks then, but not when daddy went to jail for what they'd all been a part of.

No US president has ever been put on trial, much less convicted or jailed. For us to believe in democracy again, it had to happen just like the Nazis were put on trial in Germany. To this day, Germany pays reparations to Israel for the attempted genocide of the Jews in the Holocaust. The motto of the Holocaust museum is "Never forget." In Uruguay we followed their lead and have had a healthy democracy again since 1985 for it.