MK forum

Thanks for being willing to deal with things and to live in reality, Raz!
Keep up your good work on behalf of the MKs.
I hear we're getting there.

Bemused, I really like the physical analogy of a spiritual problem. Of course there is some truth in what this reprimander said but she sure doesn't get the whole picture. The one we must keep in front of us is this was a crime. Sin is sin but some sin is also a crime. I wish this reprimander would read all of Raz's posts, she might get her eyes opened. I wonder how much correspondence she has addressed to the abusers. Full stop.

@ Raz

Thank you so much for sharing and your activism. You are a voice where others may not be able to speak. As that NTM mother should already know (by the extensive training at NTM) taking the less traveled path is never easy.

This weekend I sat down and watched a documentary called Forgiving Dr. Mengele. It was very powerful and throughout my mind kept coming back to this forum and the trail of broken spirits that NTM continues to scatter about. Eva Mozes Kor was a twin at Auschwitz and subjected to Dr. Mengele's "experiments." She decided later in life to forgive and NOT forget. She became a pariah in the Auschwitz survivor community because of this. However, the forgiveness was for her so she could move forward and live. I think it was more of a letting go of her hate towards the Nazis. She continues her work speaking out against the Holocaust, fighting for justice, and talking of her style of forgiveness.

My words cannot scratch the surface of her powerful concept and struggles. You must see for yourself. It is streaming on Netflix.

Thanks, AnotherMK!

That was written last September.

I am still hanging in there/here!

Raz, that so many people still think this way, forgive and forget it. They don't realize to solve a problem you have to first identify the source of the problem. When we know the source we can plan how to deal with it.

Cliches like "forgive and forget" work fine, till suddenly one discovers that it is your child or yourself that has been abused, then the tune changes.

Of course for some of us there is nothing to forgive and forget, because unbelievably the fallacy is still being expounded that nothing ever happened.

Still getting my head round that one. But there is none so blind as they that refuse to see.

When we were children we were told to forgive. It is an action that one does when someone hurts us or breaks our toys. Then after we forgive we are to play together like nothing happened. When abused we are told to act as though nothing happened. So forgiveness takes on a very negative emotion as a child. Emotions we learned as children never go away. So don't tell me to change my emotions. I can release the control the abuser has on me, I can release my expectations of an apology, I can even if I chose release the abuser from every paying me back for what he did. But I can not change that emotional response I have when told to forgive, it is there and I live with it and respond to it as I know I can. All the explanations of what forgiveness is and isn't are good and I think mostly they help those who have not been abused to understand the abused a little better. Understanding the emotions of the abused is learning another language and you really are not fluent until in some way you learn the emotions, often by experience.