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|  | | Heal & Forgive II: The Journey from Abuse & Estrangement to Reconciliaiton
Nancy Richards draws the reader in with examples of coping with – and healing from – the effects of abuse and estrangement. Further, she offers hope and realistic measures to consider when attempting reconciliation.
p style="line-height: 150%;" class="MsoNormal">span style="font-size: larger;">span class="Normal1">span style="line-height: 150%; font-family: Times;"> /span>/span>/span>span class="Normal1">span style="line-height: 150%; font-family: Times;">a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6t9QhJ5CaE">span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">span style="font-size: larger;">View the one minute YouTube Video: Heal and Forgive II: Book Trailer/span>/span>/a>br />
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p style="text-indent: 0.5in;" class="MsoNormal">span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> | |  | | Heal and Forgive: Forgiveness in the Face of Abuse
Why Heal and Forgive?
For decades, I heard from friends, relatives, therapists, and Christians, that I needed to forgive my abusers in order to heal. This advice - and the attempts I made to forgive - left me open to further injury and damaged me deeply.
When I finally mustered the courage to buck societal expectations; not to forgive; and to put my own healing and well-being first, I achieved a level of healing that I never thought was possible. Not forgiving afforded me the greatest emotional growth of my life. Wow!
The unintentional by-product of this healing, was - ironically - forgiveness.
At that time, I realized that the old adage, "Forgive and Heal," was backwards. For me, it was "Heal and Forgive!"
"If I only knew then" that healing had to come first, it would have saved me a great deal of time and pain. So, now I shout it from the roof tops "Heal, THEN Forgive!"
a href="http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIFUwf-ljJA&feature=channel_page">span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">span style="font-size: larger;">View the one minute YouTube Video: Heal and Forgive: Book Trailer/span>/span>/a>
span style="font-size: medium;">Foreword/span> This story is painful to read. How can a parent abuse or allow the other parent to abuse children in the myriad of ways described here? Perhaps this "why?" has no answer. An answer would be helpful because part of what we humans long for in the midst of pain and chaos is to make some sense of it |
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