We all hear stories about forgiveness and the importance of it for our own well being and health, but what do we do when no matter how hard we try we just can't seem to get by what someone has done to us? I had such an experience nearly 30 years ago. I experienced a betrayal that hurt me to the very core of my being. I spent the next 30 years trying to get over it. Every time I encountered an article or a well meaning friend who would tell me to just let it go I felt it get stronger inside of me. Finally after many years of soul searching I came to the conclusion that forgiveness comes in many different forms. Sometimes you have to forgive yourself for not being able to forgive someone else. The moral of the "moral story" is that no two people think alike and no two people can forgive and forget just because someone tells them that they should. I struggled with this concept for many years because I felt I wasn't a good person and certainly not very spiritually advanced if I couldn't produce the forgiveness results. After years of trying to continue relationships that were not honoring to me I made a decision to discontinue them. I found it quite odd that the people who had hurt me were now angry with me for not accepting what they had done to me. Now the very people who I should have been angry with were angry with me. It seemed they too were having a problem with forgivness and couldn't forgive themselves unless I forgave them. It took me nearly 30 years to understand what my lesson in all this was. I never wanted anyone to be unhappy and most of all I never wanted anyone to be unhappy with me. So even when someone betrayed me and broke my heart I began to feel guilty because they were now angry with me for being angry with them. I began to question what is forgiveness, what is required? What came to me is that you have a right to protect yourself and to do what makes you feel safe and worth while. To accept your lesson and know why it came, but to be allowed to move away from those who delivered it and forget about it. That is the part I had been in turmoil about. It was next to impossible to forget about it when you were in relationship with them and still felt vulnerable to their attack. I had to trust myself and gift myself the confidence that I had made the right decision to remove myself from the situation. It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I had to do what I needed to do and now they needed to do what they needed to do, which was take responsibility and forgive themselves. They needed to stop expecting me to pretend they never did anything wrong so they could pretend they hadn't. I finally put it back on their lap where it belonged and I no longer carried it. Now some may think that this isn't forgiveness, but I disagree. Each of us must deal with our actions and we can't expect others to do it for them by pretending nothing ever happened. By moving away from those who have wronged us they now can examine themselves and have an opportunity to move differently in the world. If we don't move away and continue to shelter them from their own wrong doing they will continue to get away with things and not learn the lesson they were to learn in the whole situation. So you see there is a lesson to be learned on both sides. Finally nearly 30 years later I can leave the burden where it belongs and stop berating myself for not carrying it better.