For me, forgiveness means totally reorientating my values. If I don’t forgive, I am bound to what I hate. If I do forgive, it means I am choosing to embrace the Good as I understand it, feel it. The hardest thing about being hurt, the real violation, in my mind – is the way it seperates you from a sense of goodness, trust, safety, and love. I’m not a God believer, at least not in the conventional sense of it, so forgiveness has been a difficult concept, and practice, to wrap my brain around. But I get it. This is about choice. It’s about choosing what I want and the direction I want to go in, and what I want to feel and be connected to. Forgiveness means letting go of the crap, and hanging onto the good. It really is the same thing, but it is very hard to hang onto the good and work toward it when you’re hanging onto the bricks. Forgiveness, for me, means setting these down, and moving forward. It means choosing love over pain and anger and confusion and fear.