I'm really glad to see this posted.

I think that "Forgiveness" and "Acceptance" are often confused. I feel that the important part, for ourselves, is "Acceptance."

I won't go into details, but Forgiveness and Acceptance have been a significant part of my life for about 40 years.

I have been on both sides of the coin. There are people who have had to Forgive me (or not), and have had to Accept wrongs that I did them, and I have had to Accept, and, in some cases, Forgive, trauma inflicted upon me.

A big part of my life has been dedicated to making sure that no one needs to forgive me, or accept unacceptable behavior, on my part, and in making sure that I don't set myself up for needless trauma.

In order to move past trauma, we need to "defuse the time bomb." We need to Accept it. We may never be able to Forgive it, though.

I'm thinking about genocide survivors (I've known a few, including from events other than The Holocaust), soldiers (including child soldiers), families of murder victims, and rape/sexual assault/assault victims (I have known many; including a number of males).

It's unreasonable to expect trauma victims to Forgive their trauma-inflictors, but they must get to a point of Acceptance, if they ever want to live a life that's halfway normal.

In some cases, it's because many cultures on Earth (including family/clan/tribal cultures) consider Forgiveness to be weakness, or trauma victims to be "at fault" (I won't get into the specifics, there, but it happens -a lot). Even in those cultures, if we can separate Acceptance from Forgiveness, there's a chance that people can heal.

Despite all that, I have seen some that have truly Forgiven what I consider to be unforgivable acts. Before they can Forgive, though, they have always first reached a point of Acceptance.

Those people are my heroes.

Acceptance means coming to terms with trauma. It happened. It sucked. It was deeply unfair. It was wrong. It may even have been downright evil. It left scars (sometimes, literally). It may even have been self-inflicted, or exacerbated by our own complicity. The perpetrators "got away with it," and are still walking around, unconcerned, unrepentant, and unpunished. It's not happening anymore. Despite all that, it still needs to be put into a place behind us, and no one is going to be able to do that, except ourselves. Time won't heal this. It needs some elbow grease.

A very valuable part of Acceptance, is that it frees us to help others that have gone through (or are going through) the same trauma. If we can't Accept, we can't help others.

Another aspect of non-acceptance, is that unhealed trauma can actually make trauma victims dangerous. Hurt people hurt people.

I know many folks that have never learned to live in Acceptance, and their lives are a vale of tears. When the external trauma stopped, it was replaced by internal trauma.

There's a story I was told (completely made-up):

A man walks into a building, is immediately beaten badly by another man, and thrown out into the street.

They get up, dust themselves off, put up their fists, and walk back in.

Same thing happens.

This is repeated a number of times.

Then, one time, they walk into the building, and the other man is no longer there.

So they go looking for them.