Healing without Forgiveness

Our culture demands forgiveness, even to the point of protecting pedophiles at the expense of their prey, our children. Nancy Richards, who experienced horrific abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother's partners, writes sparingly of the gruesome details but long and clearly about how forgiveness, especially premature forgiveness, blocked her own path to healing. She felt doubly victimized, as though she was not healing in the proper way unless she could forgive her mother. Only when she stopped making forgiveness part of, or a signal of, her own healing, did she dive more deeply toward clarity, peace and letting go.