Empathy is about feeling with and responding to the pain of the other. There is a reciprocal emotional process taking place between two people, one asking for empathy and one offering it. This mutually shared emotional dialogue happens between a perpetrator who asks for forgiveness and a victim who offers it. That meeting was a big relief for me. That chapter is now closed.
Forgiveness is a journey.
It establishes possibilities that are essential for peacemaking and reconciliation. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela BI '99 is the current Jean and Joseph Sullivan Peace Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute. A clinical psychologist from South Africa, she was a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for two years.