Well - I am one year and 5 months past my last d-day.

I have been through these stages-

RAGE

SHOCK

MY HEART RIPPED OUT AND SPLIT IN TWO

NUMBNESS

DISBELIEF

MORE RAGE

RE-ORIENTING MYSELF TO MY NEW REALITY

DEEP SADNESS AND DESPAIR

WALKING AROUND IN A CLOUD

ANGER

BARELY FUNCTIONING

WORKING ON MYSELF

WORKING ON THE MARRIAGE

WAKING UP AND FINDING MYSELF MARRIED TO A STRANGER FOR 31 YEARS

TRYING TO DECIDE WHETHER TO STAY MARRIED OR END IT

THERAPY

THERAPY

MORE THERAPY

FINDING MARRIAGE BUILDERS

TRYING TO FIGURE OUT MY LIFE

TRYING TO SEE IF I CAN LET MY FWH INTO MY HEART AGAIN

AND THAT BRINGS ME TO THIS TOPIC:

FORGIVENESS



i know to really live a happy, fulfilled life in the light- i need to forgive the people who i find it most difficult to forgive.

that includes my H, and some of the OW who i thought were my "friends" .....

but HOW??????
i keep repeating words to myself - " i am ready to forgive this person, for not being the person i wanted him to be. i release him and forgive him for myself".


BUT - i dont know if it is working. i still feel anger at him, and i dont trust him and am afraid to let myself get close to him.

DOES ANYONE OUT THERE HAVE SUCCESS WITH FORGIVENESS?? i need some tips.

i have read so much and i know that by not forgiving - i am only hurting my own life. I NEED TO FORGIVE -HIM AND THE OW TOO.

ANY SUGGESTIONS????

I personally am not in a place where I'm ready to forgive. But I know that at some point I'm going to have to go there.

I've been going to a Divorce Care course through my church.

http://www.divorcecare.org/

They have a bookstore on their website. It has several books on forgiveness. Maybe one one of those will help.

http://www.parable.com/churchinitiative/group.DC-Forgiveness.1599.htm

Sunflower I wrote this a while ago but it's till relevant I feel....

So many of us here have had and may still do, have difficulty in forgiving a spouse who has betrayed you or if you are a spouse who did the betraying, forgiving yourself.

I have myself struggled with it and I guess I shall in some ways for the rest of my life. But I must strive to forgive myself as my most beloved husband has forgiven me. Even when, perhaps even more importantly when you are righteously so bitter and hurt because of your spouses actions against you, you should forgive them for YOUR sake.

Why am I sitting here in the early morning or late at night, its about 4am here, thinking about this? I reading my H latest letters from Afghanistan as he describes some of what he’s going through and realizing the trust he places in giving this information to me, sharing the horror of war in stark and brutal lines because I asked him to share it with me. I hope I pray it will help me help him on his return God willing.
After all I put him through he writes “When I am alone out in the night waiting for ……. to come to me I often think of what a wonderful thing it was to have met you and loved you. I’ll never stop loving you, my darling no matter what happens. “
I have received an act of grace, a precious gift which I’m not sure I deserve, but accept and treasure.

I have spent some long and agonizing times wondering about forgiveness. There are supposed to be two different kinds of forgiveness. The first is a willingness to forgo vengeance, but not to try to repair the relationship.
Giving this type of forgiveness is really just plain good mental health for anyone. Its I think the easiest of the two for many. My priest gave a sermon on this and said
“Ask yourself how much does your hatred/pain hurt your husband/wife and how much does it hurt you? What will your vengeance, if you ever can find it, cost you? Will it ever be enough? Is there anything you can do to keep the hate/hurt from eating you up except to release it?
This type of forgiveness is what allows you to stop letting what someone has done to you to control your life. It does not mean that you have to spare the other the consequences of what they have done. You don't have to like them or even wish them well. The important thing is that you can't forget about them until you have decided to forgive them. “

The other kind of forgiveness, full forgiveness, is much harder. It involves trying to re-establish a relationship, perhaps never as it was, never as it had been, but a new full loving supporting relationship. The thing is though that full forgiveness is only possible if the other party repents and also works to repair what they've done.
When you think on it. It’s all pretty standard MB thinking isn’t it?
"Forgiveness is a decision not an emotion."

Have you ever heard of Corrie Ten Boom? She was a Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II. The Nazis arrested the entire Ten Boom family on February 28, 1944 with the help of a Dutch informant, they were sent first to Scheveningen concentration camp, then to the Vught political concentration camp (both in the Netherlands), and finally to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany in September 1944, where Corrie's sister Betsie died. She had pretty good reasons to not forgive I think. It was she who said, "Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. It is those who are able to forgive who are best able to rebuild their lives."

Forgiveness is as much about helping you as it is for those you forgive, even if they don’t want it.
YOU are the winner.
What’s easier I wonder … forgiving or accepting the forgiveness?


AW

Awesome post aussieswife.

I've always pictured unforgiveness of people as walking around carrying those people on your back. Who wants that? If you're a person who refuses/won't forgive people, imagine the crowd on your back, causing you to bend over when you walk, you can't hold your head up, your back hurts all the time, you're always in pain, because of that darn person/crowd on your back.

Forgiveness is flinging them off one at a time. "I forgive you, and you, and you. I may never see you again or want you in my life, but I won't be burdened down with unforgiveness toward you."

Yes... An awsome post.

In the book I'm reading right now (Hope for the separated) I just got to the chapter about anger, bitterness, and forgiveness. So I find this to be a very interesting thread.

In church this morning the pastor touched on this. Very appropriate for me. I'm stuck in a rut. I need to release my anger and bitterness toward my WW in order to move on.

S-55,


We meet again.


This time, I won't ask questions!


My story, which I haven't told really completely to anyone here or anywhere else, goes to you, because you really need to hear it to understand forgiveness. You need to hear it, and I think that today, just today, I can tell it. My tears come just as I write this paragraph. I'm afraid, but I will keep going anyway.



I was seven years old, and it was a summer night. My yellow curtains were blowing softly from the breeze, as my mom had left the window open to let the air in to keep my upstairs bedroom cool through the night. There was a sound in the hall, and at first I was a little afraid because it was dark, and I was always afraid in the night when I woke up. I was relieved to see my older brother come in to check on me. He was the family favorite - everyone knew mom liked him best. He got into bed with me, he had never done that before. He said nothing, just shushed me to keep quiet. Then he began touching me, and I was frozen with fear - and had no idea what was happening.

I knew that I could not tell my parents. He was mom's favorite. And my father would beat me. Dad beat me for everything - even things I did not do. Dad beat me for things that I didn't even think about! Dad would actually hit me and say, "That's for NOTHING. Now do something."

I was petrified, and knew I was in trouble.



Had I known that night would begin a two-year episode that led to rape by my brother, would I have made a different decision? Probably not. Because I lived in fear of my father - he was so physically abusive I hid from him when he came home, or when I even thought he was coming home. I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to avoid speaking to my dad, being seen by my dad, or being near him. Because nearly every time, he would find a way to hurt me. Unless he was in the mood to make up for something - on occasion, he would take us on trips and be really nice for a few days.


When I turned 8, my brother's friends down the street decided they needed to help him. They did, and there was an event in a basement with them that is difficult for me. As boys around 17, they would be prosecuted for rape today. I don't know what the laws were then, but they were bad kids. I know one of them did ultimately end up in jail for something. I don't follow their lives, they are gone.........


One night, when I was 10, my brother came in. I had thought long and hard about how to make him stop. I decided that I needed to tell him - NO. That night, I did. I told him "NO". He didn't understand - and I said it again. He left, and never came back. After that, he was different towards me, living in fear, I think. He should have.


My dad became worse and worse. After I got married and moved out, he turned his anger onto my younger brother. There was a horrible problem with YB, but none of us really knew it. YB had been scarred from watching me being beated over and over. YB had wanted to rescue me, and to stop my father from hurting me. There was an incident with my dad hitting me with a chair that later became a problem for YB. Somehow, YB developed severe psychological problems from the upbringing, and he absorbed the things that had happened to me - believing they happened to him. The triggering incident was the chair incident. YB attempted suicide twice.


As a teenager, I dated a young man who was physically abusive. I did this for three years. I wasn't even married - yet could not leave him. Looking back, I can see why. Then, I thought this was how people lived. It was how I lived........and I even apologized to this guy after I was placed in protective custody and spent the night in jail because he was trying to beat me to death. Yes, I apologized to HIM. I was sorry that he "had to beat me in public". Yes - I did this.


I self-medicated with alcohol, and did try marijuana. Not much worked. After I was married, I carried much of the pain and anger with me. I had not forgiven, and used the anger from my past for the arguments and - frankly - for everything that made me angry or upset in the world.

I was a mess.


I changed my life, and walked away from this life. The only thing that saved me from myself was forgiving these people.

I did not, could not, ask for them to repent, repay, apologize, or in any other way make restitution.

I could not ask them to acknowledge their crimes. My father would not, and as an adult I could look back and recognize that he was probably manic-depressive, and was on some medications that likely skewed his moods and thinking. My big brother had turned to alcohol and drugs, and was a man who was a mess in his own right. The neighbors, who knew where they were? And the ex-boyfriend was an alcoholic who worked in a kitchen for minimum wage and had made absolutely nothing of his life save for having a great bowling average.


I, on the other hand, had a husband who was willing to walk forward with me after a marriage that had suffered a rough start on both our parts. He was willing to start over with me, in spite of my problems.


And I needed to make a break from a past that held me down like an anchor.

I needed to figure out what held me there.


THEY HELD ME THERE.

I was so focused on THEM, that I lost the idea that to heal, I needed to change the focus. I needed to look at myself, and understand that I had qualities separate from the events that had occurred to me.

I was not:

the rape
the molestation
the abuse


Sure. These things HAPPENED in my life. They were not ME. But I was so broken. Inside and out, I was broken.

And I had to look at the people who did them to me. What were these people? When I took a really good look at them, they all had a single thing in common:

They were broken.

Far more broken than I was.


Now, I had perspective. I could see that they were pitiful people. People who had no self-control. People who had no sense of conscience, no ability to alter themselves, no ability to feel guitly enough to stop their own abusive and abhorrent behavior. People who could not admit their own transgressions long enough to stop themselves.

I was broken, but they were somewhere down the scale of broken from me.

I recognized they were in need of forgiving, because what little I could offer them - they needed.

And I recognized they had no power over me, not really. They were broken people, powerless over themselves. They could not control my thoughts, my heart, my anger - ME - any longer.

It became very easy to forgive them when I recognized just how pitiful they were.



And with that, I found the road to forgiveness was no longer rocky. It was paved.


It didn't take long for me to be lifted into the freedom that forgiveness gave me.


SB

Schoolbus,

I'm so sorry those terrible things happened. You're ability to survive by forging is inspirational. You're awsome!

The anger and bitterness is hard to overcome for me. But you have overcome a Mountain.

The issue is not "forgiveness," you want to FORGET and completely bypass recovery. You are in what is called RECOVERY! What happens when someone experiences a traumatic shock is they go through stages of GRIEF. This is how the psyche RECOVERS.

None of this has anything to do with forgiveness or your inability to forgive, it has to do with your psychological need to RECOVER. When my son was killed, I was not able to flip a switch and just FORGET. Neither will you be able to do so. I felt:


That is called RECOVERY. It is NORMAL! You can't fix normal! CARRY ON!

Mel is right.


I do not forget anything that happened.

I have prayed to forget. God's answer to that prayer has been, "No."

I learned to accept that answer. That remembering is part of the process. Somewhere in there I have learned many, many things about life, about love, about humanity, about evil, about brokenness........and many other things.


I learned also that I have more to me than I once thought I had.

For years, I was crumbled inside. I built my self-esteem upon that which others had taken from me. Thus, I had nothing upon which to build, because they had sufficiently ripped from me what I did not understand I had actually GIVEN them.

I had given them my own power.


I know this sounds crazy to many people, but having been through what I have been through, I know it to be true.

I gave these people my power. I handed it to them, believing that they were stronger, smarter, and in control.

The truth was the opposite, in all three cases. They were weaker, and exerting power over a child was the only way they could garner any sense of power in their broken little lives.

They were not smarter, if they had been, they would have been able to see their own stupidity and mistakes. Only ONE of them has - he is my father, and he has apologized, done the work, and made amends. He is in my life, and our relationship is MUCH DIFFERENT today. He is a changed man, because in the end, he found that he was wrong. He was able to change himself, own his mistakes, change the behaviors, and prove - over time - that he is changed. The big brother? His life is a mess, on his third wife, and he drinks and does drugs, their marriage is wrought with affairs and OC and they have drama and craziness.....and their kids leave and do not go home again.

And they were not in control. They were all so very out of control, their behavior speaks for itself. There was NO control there.



Forgetting is different from forgiving. I have not told before that my big brother is the perpetrator of the first rape. It was hard to do that. You see, it unfolds over time. Even still, after.............almost 50 years.............it remains there somehow.


When we talk of affairs, and some compare to rape, I often think "nope, it doesn't compare for me", but I can see how it can for some people. For me, the rape more than tops the list.

Yet, I can tell you that I can be in the same room with my big brother, and feel safe. I have forgiven him, without expectation of anything from him. There is nothing there to be had from him - I recognize his brokenness from his life, and his drowning in the way he lives. I know that when he tries to sleep, he sleeps in fits and starts with guilt and pain. He could ease himself, but because he cannot move toward me to make it all go away, he suffers this way. I could ease it for him, but from where I stand, the move must be HIS = or it would not mean anything to him at all. I cannot save him, he must save himself.

I am free of it - and I say that with all honesty. I found that freedom in forgiving him, and the others, a very long time ago. I was 22 years old. I remember the moment very very very well. It was as though I was lifted from the depths of hell.

I was.

Thank you, God.


SB

SB and Mel,

You two continue to touch people lives, by sharing your utmost pain and process of recovery. I don't have any correct word to thank you for your ability to help others because it's absolutely humbling to witness you two as you give and continue to give.

You are amazing people. I read and read all the wisdom and patience you show people and thank you so much for being here.

We all have our own journey's that are our own horrors, but everyone once in a while, G-d graces me with the reality that I am one very lucky and blessed person and that I have nothing to gripe about.

Thank you for being her....

Schoolbus- HI OLD FRIEND!!

I was so glad to hear from everyone who posted - so many wise words that i am still trying to digest.

Schoolbus - thanks for not asking questions!

Your story of childhood touched me deeply. I am in total amazement of you! The amount of suffering you have endured and THE TOTALLY CENTERED, MENTALLY HEALTHY PERSON YOU ARE!

You have dealt with pain and betrayal, and you have become a person who can forgive!

not only that - but a human who comes to these boards to help others with your wise words.

you help others who are trying to change their lives

others who are trying to go from broken to whole- as you have.

other people like ME.

if you can forgive people who have caused you the extreme pain of rape and abuse,

people who have not even apologized or showed remorse,

then i KNOW, thati CAN forgive too.

i know there is hope.

Just - a few questions-

to really forgive -did you have to TELL the people that you forgave them???

OR - did you just forgive them in your heart?

and if that is true - that you didnt have to tell them that you forgave them - how did you handle it when you had to see them?

did you have mental and physical stress when you saw them?

i still continue to see two of the most hurtful OW - my fake friends- as they are moms of children in my daughter's school.

i am MUCH better than i was - i no longer feel like i am going to throw up or pass out when i see them, as i can show no emotion because we are always in public at some school event.

but i dont know if i can ever look at them and say a casual "HI".

in fact, the one who was my fake best friend, said hi to me last spring at a school event, and i just shook my head at her and walked away.

i continued to be disturbed that we were in the same room for the next few hours.

and you are RIGHT - i dont want to give her or any of them- the power over my emotions - the power to upset me.

you told me once before to hold my head high and just walk past them.

things flast through my mind continuously - them eating dinner or lunch at my house with my husband, the daily phone calls and fake comraderie - the extensive questioning of me about my sex life with my husband - THIS IS TRULY SICK!!

but anyway - i digress.

if i see them as PITIFULL - it can become somewhat easier.

i try to see them as mentally ill.

i try to see my FWH as recovering from mental illness. i try - and as i told you before - i hold myself back from becoming vulnerable - and maybe this piece of forgiveness is what i am holding onto to keep me safe??

am i getting closer to forgiveness?

SF

One of the things that my AA sponsor told me over and over again, was hurt people hurt people.

Someone who is happy, joyous and free in their lives, don't hurt people.

It's probably too simplistic considering the pain you have been through, but sometimes keeping it simple can just make the pain easier day by day.

Melody-

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TELLING ME I AM NORMAL!!

and for sharing your own pain. I am so sorry for your loss.

i thought about what you said of me not wanting to forgive- but instead of me wanting to forget.

i see your point - you are right.

i see forgiveness - as schoolbus described -as a moment when the heaviness of pain will be lifted from my heart completely - when i will be healed.

isnt forgiveness and healing kind of the same??

dont i need to forgive to get to the healing stage??

for now - i will accept myself as in "recovery". as going through the normal phases.
so - s hould i stop working on forgiving????

SF

Queenie-
Thanks for that saying - I've heard it before too , but now i can keep it in my head - "HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE".

its not too simple at all. it just perfect!

i have also tried giving it to G-d, and asking Him to help me forgive.

I am reading Loise Hay- "Healing Your Life" ( have you read?) and she says that the key to happiness is basically two fold-

LOVE YOURSELF AND

FORGIVE ANYONE WHO HAS HURT YOU AND ESPECIALLY THE ONES YOU HAVE THE HARDEST TIME FORGIVING

she says - that until a person forgives- they wont have happiness in their life.

so i continue = as Mel said- through my recover.

i want it so bad.

thanks for the encouragement.

SF

SB-
YOu answer some of my questions even before i ask them!

I may sound like i am not getting this - but can you explain a lttle more -

when you were 22 and you forgave your brother- did you just do it by realizing how broken he was, by pitiful he was, that his abuse of you had nothing to do with YOU- but only with his own brokenness?

this is where i am trying to be with my own H - to think of his father abusing him,to think of how he couldnt learn in school and always felf bad about himself, to think of his two siblings being the favorites and no one noticing him, to think of how insecure he was - to think of his brokenness and how truly pitiful he was...

it helps to say to myself that his cheating was not AGAINST me - it was just his own self trying to make himself feel better.

of course - there is a huge hole in him that he did not honor his vows, that he wanted to feel good, and had no care for who he hurt.

i was very broken too, but as you said-
he and the OW were way more broken than me.

because with all my pain and unhappiness in the marriage - i stayed the course, i didnt run. i honored my vows. i was loyal.

yes - i may have screamed and yelled at him- to pay attention to me - to stop running away - but I STAYED IN THE MARRIAGE.

i love myself for that.

what i once saw as weakness - thinking i was just too scared to leave - i now realize was strength. the easy thing would have been to leave, because i was suffering from his verbal abuse daily.

i held my family together and loved my kids.

now - i am learning to love myself for the first time in my life.

also - my fake best friend - in an affair with my H for over 8 years- she was abandonded by her father - he ran off with another woman.

i so clearly hear her telling me that "she would never do to her kids what her dad did to her". how sad and broken she is- because now she is divorced and on her own.

when she first came on to my H many years ago - about 14 years ago, she told him that she had already had 5 affairs.

her swearing to me - and calling me up out of the blue ,(we hadnt spoken much) to tell me that she was getting divorced and she wanted me to know that she never cheated on her husband- her ease in lying and manipulating me and others - leads me to believe that she is seriously mentally ill.

i try for these thoughts to help me forgive?

SO - was it all this that brought you at 22 to forgive your brother?

I pray that through my recover - i can get to that moment too and G-d will help me forgive.

SF

Personally, I think forgiveness is a continual process. After all, we are all human. From time to time, you will experience emotions due to the trauma you have been through (Anger, pain,sadness, etc.) When you feel these things, you need to refocus, forgive at that moment, and roll on. As time goes by, these experiences will be less frequent

One thing to clarify. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. I can forgive without re-establishing a relationship with that person, I believe. I am not required to give my heart or trust to someone who does not deserve this, I believe. I can choose to do so, which is admirable, but not required in order to forgive.

Thus, I differ from a poster before in my feeling that I can give full forgiveness without re-establishing the relationship fully (ie- to the same level or advance from before).

For example, I forgive my ex wife for her disgressions but I will never allow her into my heart to repeat these experiences...

What a kind thing for you to say, Quennieslife! thank you.

SF-55,


You ask "was it just that easy, at age 22, to forgive my brother?".

Yes.

I can sincerely tell you that it was.


I remember so clearly what happened to me the day I was set free, that it remains with me now. I chose to let him out of my mind, my life, my very being - by forgiving him. It was as though his brokenness hit me right between the eyes. I could see him in his state of brokenness, standing before God, and could see God's eyes upon him. I could see God asking him about his sins, and could see him telling the Lord of what he had done. It was then I knew that each of us is broken - some more than others - and that in this case, my brother was so far gone it was beyond me to continue to view him in the light I had been viewing him.

I had, for so long, seen him as this person who had betrayed me, hurt me, and victimized me. He was a looming figure in my life. Yet, at the same time, I did love him as my brother. I was caught in that I could not disown him - I cared for him as my brother, was in a web of a strange life in my family. Plus, I did love him. He was my brother. When he went to Viet Nam, I worried about him - and yet, he loomed.....this is so hard to explain. Yes, it was hard for me. It was like there were two people in him - and I recognized both of them.

I could see, from the time of the age of seven, that a person could have two sides to them. Good, and evil, that somehow people could carry within them bad things - yet also have other sides to them. It was something that perhaps I was to learn so that later on I might understand for the forgiving part? I don't know.

But when it comes to forgiving, I looked at him mentally. He wasn't there. I never told him I forgave him. I never told him anything. I don't have to - I am done with that part of my life, because I released him by releasing all that he controlled over me. That control was the anger I carried with me, the hurt, the rage, the pain, the guilt (yes, I felt guilty), the fear, the lack of self-control, and the lack of self-worth. I released all of that the day I forgave him. I took back my life.

They call it "self-esteem" because it belongs to ME. Nobody else owns it, and somehow I had handed it over to the people who had hurt me the most.


I took it back by releasing them from my life. Forgiveness did that for me.


I don't say it was easy. But I did think about a few things along the way before I actually got there:


Why is it easier to forgive a stranger for their transgressions than it is to forgive someone you know?

Every day, I saw stories of people forgiving others. For example, I saw stories of the families of murder victims forgiving the murderers on death row. If they can forgive, couldn't I?

I read in the Bible that Jesus forgave so many. He led people to understand that His purpose was to make us know that we could be forgiven. My thought was that His model for me was that I had to believe people could change, and that they were worthy of being forgiven. Unless I believed that, I was not worthy myself - I was not believing what he set forth as an example. Also, I had to believe that anyone may, at any time, make his peace with God. I had to have that faith, in every single human being. I have to leave that road open.

And in my own personal walk, I would hope that I would have the heart that if a person were to come to me today and ask, "Can you forgive me?", I would be able to say, "Yes, I CAN forgive you. I DO have an open heart, because I BELIEVE in forgiveness." This is what I believe my religion asks of me. To have that open heart.

What I CAN already say? "I HAVE FORGIVEN YOU." Before they already ask. I would like to be able to do this faster, to get to the point where it isn't so much work. I am not yet there. I'm getting better, though.


When I look at people, I see us all as broken. Just some a little bit broken, some a LOT broken. We all need to lean on one another.


And we all need to be forgiven for something. I probably did something today that someone has already forgiven me for - and I don't even know it.

After all, I drove somewhere today.


SB

Queenie,


Thanks for the very nice words. Mel is a giver - and she is a leader on these boards. She was there for me when I came here, and she stands strong for all of us!

SB

Schoolbus-
I want to learn so much from you about how you suddenly released your hurt and forgave- because i want the exact same thing.

Was it the same when you forgave your H after the infidelity? Was it easier to forgive him because you had already forgiven your brother?

The suddenness of your forgiveness is surprising to me- i thought it came on gradually.

the seeing your brother before G-d and hearing him talk about his life- this thought and image can help me with forgiving my H, but a little more difficult with the OW- who i have nothing to do with any longer.

i want the forgiveness - i want the instant feeling of being healed - of having the control of other people's actions huring me taken away.

and i know it is true - the only way i can do that is to develop my SELF ESTEEM.

IT IS SOOOOO HARD!!!

i am learning to love myself in stages - a little bit here and a little bit there.

i am learning to not feel guilty when i want something - and to accept it graciously and know that i am deserving of it.

but in my brain sometimes i start to say - "its ok- you dont have to do that for me."

then i stop myself - i say to myself - YES - it is ok - take this and be happy that you deserve that kindness.

if i forgive in my heart - will i smile and say hello when i see the OW (plural)?? or will i just look away and feel nothing??

somehow i think that if my behaviors exude forgiveness - then my thoughts will follow.

i will pray more and ask G-d for help in this.

i dont think i am getting it yet.

SF