November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

The Long Road to Forgiveness

(Page 7 of 7)

March-April 1999
by Molly Layton, from Family Therapy Networker 
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We're part of the main, and anyone's loss diminishes us all. Strange to think that sometimes the only way we have a chance to truly experience the losses other people suffer is when, no longer able to contain their own grief or greed or rage, they cause us harm.

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Forgiveness dissolves the clear distinctions between perpetrators and victims, self and other. It's an illusion to think we can keep what is good separate from and uncontaminated by what is evil, that it is our birthright to live a gated life. There's no way we can stay aloft, like angels, never making the blue dive. It's an existential dilemma—inevitable, human—living as we do with the outrageous fortune of both leaping and falling, of riding out irresistible urges both to save everything and to destroy it all.

Molly Layton is a therapist in private practice in Wyndmoore, PA. From Family Therapy Networker (Nov.-Dec. 1998). Subscriptions: $24/yr. (6 issues) from 8528 Bradford Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20901.

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