Forgiveness

A question a couple weeks ago was brought to our circle, when a member was watching a documentary on forgiveness.

The questions she brought to us were: What is forgiveness? What does it mean to forgive someone? Is it "forgive and forget"? This is a question that was asked in the documentary and different people had different answers. And what does it mean to you to forgive? So, I too ask you what your answers would be. Mine are as follows:

Forgiveness to me is to let go of the wrong someone has done to you. I don’t necessarily believe in forgive and forget. I think that you need to learn from what was done and hopefully grow. Some people would say I forgive to easily and that I trust to easily. Forgive to easily, I don’t necessarily agree. But trust to easily, perhaps. I have always felt that I should give everyone a chance, and I have been "slapped in the face" more times than I can count by people who didn't deserve my trust.

If someone is able to give a heart felt apology I will forgive them, but I would remember what they did or said to cause hurt feelings. I would love to say that I would never think on it again, but in all reality I don’t think that would happen, and if it did it would take awhile for me not to be thinking on it when other disagreements arise. That person would have to build up trust again, depending on what was done or said, for me to feel comfortable with them again.

Forgiveness is most hard to do when it is yourself you have to forgive (at least for me). I struggle with it daily when trying to understand myself or come to grips with things about me that I am trying to change and having the hardest time changing. I wish that I could just accept myself for myself but it is extremely difficult for me, and that is something I am still thinking on. It is part of my goals to myself for Samhain, to learn and understand myself more, and to forgive things I cannot change about myself and my world.

I thought this was a good topic for a post given the season, and I thought I would share my thoughts. Now reply, email, repost, whatever you like. But think about what forgiveness means to you. I would love to know.