"Forgive him? Are you nuts? Never!! He doesn't deserve to be forgiven! Do you know what he did?" We can just as easily substitute the female pronoun in those exclamations. Anger, hurt, and resentment are not gender-bound.

And why should we forgive someone who has offended us or deeply hurt us or betrayed us? They were wrong, and they deserve to pay! Right? They deserve all of our angry punitive feelings, don't they? Well, yes, maybe so; or even probably so. But here's the big question: What good does it do? How does your pain and revenge-filled heart change them or fix them or, more importantly, fix the situation? What it does is keep you miserable and restricted. And the offender may not even be aware of your anger and resentment. And if they are aware, they may not be affected by your anger and resentment. So who ends up paying for all those vengeful thoughts and feelings? You do!

About 20 years ago I was betrayed in ways that I felt horribly damaged my entire family. I spent many years creatively thinking how I might seek revenge upon the betrayer, the person whose lies I had allowed myself to believe. Until one day, I finally realized he was not receiving my vengeful thoughts; he was not feeling my angry condemnations; he was not experiencing the pain I wished for him. He was probably enjoying his new playground and probably had forgotten I and my family ever existed. I was the only one being hurt by my desire for retaliation. And I didn't deserve it! What an awakening and what a relief. Then I realized I could turn my energy where I wanted to invest it, to making a positive impact wherever I turned. I stopped allowing my pain and anger to control my life.

Katherine Piderman, Ph.D, staff chaplain at Mayo Clinic defines forgiveness as "the act of untying yourself from thoughts and feelings that bind you to the offense committed against you." So how do you truly forgive someone or something you feel has harmed you? First of all, you start with forgiving yourself for whatever part you played in the circumstance that created the hurt. "But I didn't… they did�" you protest. You truly feel like the innocent victim. Reread the previous paragraph; especially the "lies I allowed myself to believe." I allowed myself to believe what was said because I wanted to hear it even though I knew in my heart it was a fantasy. And my complicity allowed it to continue. Here's what will help the self-forgiving, "You did the best you could with what you had at the time." You truly did! And here's the other one, "If you knew then what you know now, you would have done something different." But you didn't then, did you? So you couldn't, could you? Of course, now that you know, you won't let it happen again!

And you can apply the same logic process to the person who offended you. Universally, people behave in ways they feel they need to in order to survive. Even the most perverse people are just trying to survive in their own warped world. If they had the capacity to behave nicer, they would. So your job is to let it go. Letting go and forgiving doesn't ever mean what they did was okay or that they got away with it or that "they won!" It just means you don't have to carry it anymore. You have your own life now, and you deserve to live it in the best way you can.

Allow yourself to recognize the pain and to accept that you do not deserve that pain. Begin to forgive yourself and your offender for being just another weak human. Then begin to release your pain to the universe, choose to leave the pain behind, and step out into your real life with new strength and courage.

In case you're ready to be active in your forgiving, Sunday, Aug. 3, is Worldwide Forgiveness Day; www.forgivenessalliance.org/day and Aug. 27 is Global Forgiveness Day; www.globalforgivenessday.org for some very helpful steps to forgiveness.

Judy Ashby, MS, LCPC, is the Executive Director of the LifeSavers Training Corporation, a mental health counselor at Catholic Social Services, and a member of the Jackson County Mental Health Action Team.