There is a powerful myth, depending on if you believe it or not, that forgiveness is not a waiver of justice and it does not endorse wrongdoing. It is just a choice to stop carrying on grief or injury of the past. Forgiveness is not an approver, it doesn't give you freedom, it doesn't mean you have to do it over and over again to that person, to anger the person or hurt the person.
The fact that I forgive you does not give you the levity and the freedom to do something bad again. I forgive means that I don't want to carry the hurt and at the same time I can take chances into my hand to make sure that I stay away from you so that you don't do such a thing again to me. Most of us grew up with a narrow, moralized view of forgiveness.
To forgive is to say the offense was acceptable, to lower the standard of right and wrong or to let someone off the hook. That misunderstanding keeps people chained to a wrong thing they have endured in the past. When someone hurts you, two things happen at that point in time, there are two burdens that is conjoined together, first is the original wound and the second is the ongoing work of carrying it all around, it can even increase whenever you see that person.
Anger and resentment becomes every object you hold in your hand, though at first they may feel righteous because if the person hurts you and your anger or your resentment is genuine, after all they confirm the injustice you experience but over time they bend your posture, they make you exhaust your energy on things that you shouldn't and shape how you relate to the world. Forgiveness removes the extra load without declaring the harm meaningless, so you have to choose your peace over every punishment. Forgiveness does not erase consequence, accountability, justice and boundary setting.
Though all these things should still matter, whenever you forgive someone and you let that person know what he or she has done, it doesn't mean you have to stay in an harmful relationship and keep on doing that kind of a bad thing. Forget what happened, block legal and practical recourse, instead forgiveness is an internal transaction you trade the hard currency of resentment for. While you cannot always control whether the person who hurts you changes or pays a price, you can control whether you remain defined by the harm.
Forgiveness is also very hard, it takes emotional courage, a lot of emotional courage to handle forgiveness and it requires naming the hurt properly and perfectly right, don't add emotions to it, you have to acknowledge any desire of revenge and you have to examine it compassionately, then you must be willing to set boundaries so that such a thing does not happen, you don't get hurt over and over again and stay in a toxic relationship because you want to forgive. Then you have to accept that forgiveness is your own welfare, it's not your offender's welfare. People often mix forgiveness and reconciliation together and it's a two different thing.
Reconciliation involves rebuilding trust, this always comes after a big fight or an injury that was so severe, in some big cases it can also mean war. Reconciliation involves that forgiveness is unilateral and internal. Reconciliation deals with acquiring or requiring changes on the part of the offenders and to make retribution.
There are so many practical approaches that you can take to choose peace. If you want to move forward, forgiveness without your experience, you can try to recognize and validate the hurt, reframe the forgiveness, take a symbolic step and reinforce the choice. Holding on to resentment cannot help you and it will help you to shadow the truth, also you won't be able to even forgive easily.
It prolongs suffering without changing the past. Choosing forgiveness is the best thing you can ever do for yourself. Though forgiveness does not guarantee immediate relief, I know it is sometimes a long process with setback, but every time you are choosing to stop carrying that weight, you become very light and you can carry on in life as fast as you can with that.
