The look in my father's eyes when I said I had lost my job. What about you?

My birth family has always treated me like an outsider. I am their dirty little secret - the child none of them wanted to or offered to help. 

My adopted family was not much better. When I was 15 I spent the entire summer taking care of a grandmother who never called me by my name - I was 'that girl' or 'girl' if she had to talk directly to me. She hated me and let me know it every day.

I've never forgiven either family for treating me like I was less than a person.

I've also never forgiven the social worker who lied to the judge and said my foster parents didn't want me back so the only place I had to go was back to my abusive family.

I can forgive most things, and am rarely one to hold a grudge. I do struggle to forgive people who have hurt my friends and family, that is really the only exception

My life partner deceiving me and thinking I would never find out - but she will never know how much I've given up for her, so I supose it balances out in the end.

i find it hard to forgive people when they try to blame what they have done on someone else, sometimes me. i find it dificult because i know they wont stop if i forgive them, this time i refuse

its hard for me to forgive someone who thinks they know more about me than me.

But also, I actually can forgive someone who acts like they know more about me than me... because I definitly used to think I knew more about people then they knew about themselves.

Still though, when someone doesn't listen to me because of their preconceptions about me.. grrrrrrrrr I get so angry. Its hard to forgive. 

Lets see I also cannot forgive... u know what, forgiving is just kind of in my nature. 

My ex-friend who tried to make a fool outa me in front of all our class. I don't like mean.

I cannot forgive the priests and brothers who sexually abused young boys (including me) when I was at a Catholic boarding school. I have a deep and abiding distrust of all organised religion and church heirarchy. I have had counselling and therapy trying to forgive and purge my demons. I just can't. It is the only blight in an otherwise very happy existence, so I guess I'm luckier than most.

My dad's friend thinking it was OK to offer me paid sex when he could see i was in a mess around my dad being gay and my parents splitting and stuff. 

Hi

 re forgiveness: I think it all depends on the definition of forgivenes you are using. It means different things to different people. To me, it's about letting myself stop having a hard time. If someone has done something horrific to me or mine (and believe me they have) the only person to be affected by me not 'forgiving' is me. No matter how much angst and agony I put myself through over what happened, I am the only person who will be feeling that agony - and why would I choose that?

The action will always be wrong, will always remain something that was a bad experience, will never be right - but I don't need to keep the pain of it forever as I would then be choosing to punish myself ad infinatum.  So forgiveness for me is to accept that I don't need to continue letting the person who committed the action/ deed, whatever,  have the power to make me suffer for longer than I choose. 

xH