Holding onto resentment keeps me down. It keeps me constantly preoccupied with what went wrong instead of what went right. Today I recognize that forgiveness is a gift that that benefits not only someone else, but me. It is a gift that releases my own spirit, that  restores my own inner peace. If I can embrace a forgiving attitude in all my relationships, my life is easier. Just because I forgive something,  it doesn’t mean I am condoning it. It only means that I value my own inner peace more than carrying resentment.

                                          I forgive to free myself

I was doing a show on victims confronting their criminals. A 17-year-old girl was on the air speaking to the man who, four years earlier, had beaten her beyond recognition and left her for dead. She’d had 17 surgeries and complete facial reconstruction. She said to him, “I don’t hate you. I hate what you did to me. And I have had to learn to forgive you so I could go on with my own life.” To this day it is the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen. In that moment, she expressed why we’re here-to learn to love in spite of the human condition, to transcend the human condition of being fearful. We get so bogged down in worldly things we don’t understand that we’re here for a spiritual quest. Understanding that this is a journey is the most exciting part of being human. It has revolutionized my life.

Oprah Winfrey