138 Comments on “The Forgiveness Letter” - Post your own?

Gilbert Oliver says

I have read most of the for­giv­ness let­ters and they are very mov­ing (feel­ings wise) This is a won­der­full idea, the first let­ter in my opin­ion was the best of all. Per­son­ally I have to write one myself to a love one. Would not be able to post it, as is very per­sonal. But will let you know of the results. Thank you for your help.

Pamela Murawski says

Mom,

I accept full respon­si­b­lity for our rela­tion­ship. I do not blame you anymore.

I for­give you for not lov­ing me in the past, criti­siz­ing me, ignor­ing me, shov­ing me away, treat­ing me like a child when I was an adult, always say­ing you are chang­ing I think finally, pinch­ing me, hit­ting me, abus­ing me, lis­ten­ing to oth­ers and talk­ing to oth­ers when spend­ing time with me, not car­ing what I have to say, favor­ing oth­ers in the fam­ily, talk­ing behind my back, call­ing my old­est daugh­ter to find out how I am and not call­ing me, back stab­bing me, gos­sip­ing about me, slan­der­ing me, tak­ing me to doc­tors when I was not sick, mak­ing me afraid of my dad, yelling at me, threat­en­ing me, say­ing you would put me away in a crazy bin, plot­ting against me, try­ing to take my energy, try­ing to take my place and hat­ing me, and for never being the mom I needed to love me.

I for­give you for all of it.

Love,

Pamela

Allen Lowe says

I can\‘t wait til he goes on tour again!!!! Im def­i­nitely in there!!! I hope they takin a break. They need time away from each other.

Cervical Cancer Symptoms says

Thanks for respond­ing and Happy Valen­tines, also.%d%aNo, I have not seen a doc about the gall­blad­der issue. Hav­ing a sec­ondary bac­te­r­ial infec­tion was a con­cern. But, since I am self-emloyed and have no health insur­ance, hav­ing that inves­ti­gated has been put off. Since my symp­toms were not inca­pac­i­tat­ing, my approach has been to attack any poten­tial infec­tion with nat­ural reme­dies and have seen improve­ment. I sup­pose the pos­si­bil­ity of lym­phoma just scares me more. But in my research, I haven’t been able to track down symp­toms specif­i­cally for can­cer invad­ing lymph nodes from the cervix.

Sue says

Linda,
I can relate to your sit­u­a­tion with your mother my mother was also nar­cis­sis­tic and she would malip­u­late by using guilt. It took me awhile but I stood up to her and told her that she was not going to make me feel guilty because I had no rea­son to. She has passed on and it may be awl­ful to say but I don’t miss her. She was never one to offer sup­port or a per­son I could talk to because she always brought the sub­ject back to her. She was never wrong and if you chal­lenged her she would blow up big time. It’s not easy liv­ing with a know it all.
My son is the same way, I must have really done some­thing bad in a past life to have to live with two nar­cis­sis­tic peo­ple. I’m not so sure about my hus­band but he alway feels he is right about every­thing too, but he doesn’t act as bad as my mother did or my son. But my son and hus­band have really gone at it a few times nei­ther one will­ing to con­cede to the other.
By the way they act I am the dumb­est per­son that ever lived. But I know bet­ter, it doesn’t do any good to try to dis­cuss any­thing with them because it’s impos­si­ble to have a ratio­nal con­ver­sa­tion.
Besides that I am going to do the let­ter because I don’t believe in hold­ing in anger towards any­one, after all I am the only one being hurt by it.

Sue

Julie says

This is a let­ter of for­give­ness to my Step Dad and myself.
Dear Dad I am strug­gling so hard to be able to for­give you fully for all the things you said and did to me since I was a child. I just dont seem to be able to get rid of the mem­o­ries from the age of 2 and now I am 50!!!
that is a long time to hold on to so much hurt­ful stuff, but I realise now that the only one it is hurt­ing is me!! all those years of vervbal and sex­ual abuse from the age of 2yrs to 21yrs then you died thats 19 years of being ter­rorised and it doesnt go away that easy.I so badly need to erase all those years and this year I am going to move on, I need to for me.I just want you to know that I dont hate you I never have done I hope you are read­ing this from the other side of the world you are in now. I often think that if you were alive now you would be locked up for many years for what you did to me and our fam­ily. I used to feel so guilty But I have noth­ing to be guilty about I was only a child YOU were the ADULT.The only thing that kept me sane for years was is the thought that you must have been sick to abuse me like that I was only a baby when you started and I was so afraid of you.For years I could never under­stand why Mam never did anthing about it,But now I realise that she just wasnt strong enough to stand up to you she was ter­ri­fied of you too and just hadnt the guts to kick you out of our lives, Mam was a good woman and I love her so much, and now she has passed on too and I miss her so much, before she went she was ter­ri­fied of meet­ing you on the oth­er­side I’m just sorry I didnt know what I know now, I could have put her mind at rest.But I know she is happy now.And I have made a promise to myself that I will never ever have fear in my life like that again. But you know what DAD!! “I FORGIVE YOU” I also for­give Mam for not being stronger, and most of all I for­give myself for let­ting you put us through that back then. I am a stronger per­son now and I am able to stand up for myself But its taken me 50 years to be stronger Thats a hell of a long time.I fogive you and I truly hope you can for­give your­self and I wish you the very best.Its time for me to move on and get on with my life and live it as I want to live it myself.So I am let­ting the past go,and I am going to live in the now. And just because I for­give you It doesn’t mean what you did was ok because it wasnt!!!! because it affected me for 48years and I am not going to let it affect me anymore.I also For­give myself for feel­ing guilty when there was no need for me to be guilty.I for­give my uncle Mickie and Dickie for abus­ing me when I was very small.Dickie I was only 3yrs old when you molested me But I for­give you. Mickie I was only 10yrs old when you molested me and I for­give you too I also for­give myself for let­ting you do this to me. And Mr Doran my school teacher I for­give you for hav­ing your hands all over me.I for­give myself If I ever hurt any­one in my life It would not be intentional.and I realise now that so many peo­ple have been through so much more than me but all these things have made us grow stronger and made us bet­ter and lov­ing peo­ple. I also for­give myself for beat­ing myself up over all this for all these years and for not lov­ing the per­son I am, and for think­ing that I was not good enough. I am finally learn­ing to love who I am and learn­ing to change the bits I dont like about myself so that I can be a bet­ter per­son and give the love I feel inside me to oth­ers freely.Everybody needs to be loved and I am no dif­fer­ent I am very much loved and I deserve to be loved the same as every­one else. When I started to write this let­ter it was the first time I ever started to feel angry, But maybe I needed that to release, Then as I got fur­ther and fur­ther the anger was com­pletly gone and I feel at peace with myself for the first time ever I finally think I have achieved let­ting go of the past so now I can move on.

Burt thank you so much!!! I have many of your pro­grammes but havnt lis­tened to them much yet, I have been search­ing for some­thing to help me to release the past and now I have found it!! I feel so happy. I did lis­ten to the lib­erty pro­gramme and I will keep lis­ten­ing to it over and over to make sure I have finally moved on.

Love to you Burt xx
and Thank you I am so grate­ful to you
and to all these fan­tas­tic peo­ple on your blog for help­ing me realise there are peo­ple out there that have been through tough times too.
Love to you all Julie.xx

Carla says

Dear Yves,

I know you think I hate you, but that is far from the truth. The truth is that I can no longer live with your lies, deceit and abuse. I truly wanted our mar­riage to work. I truly gave it my all, but you are sim­ply not capa­ble of a rela­tion­ship. Not with me, not with any­one. I know that I am not per­fect and I know that on occa­sion I must have frus­trated you, but you were angry an awful lot, more than I deserved. I was so des­per­ate for you to love me, and I tried really hard. I kept think­ing that if I could fix things, I just had to be more per­fect and fig­ure out how to please you, but it never worked, you were so angry, so full of hatred and I was always walk­ing on eggshells, never know­ing what would set you off. I real­ize now that hap­pi­ness comes from within and that it’s not some­thing that I can ever give to another if they don’t first carry love and peace in their heart. I real­ized that I don’t have enough for both of us, that it takes the work of two to make a rela­tion­ship work and that you never ever val­ued our rela­tion­ship enough to work on it. I didn’t aban­don you, it was you who left me years ago, I have sim­ply come to a point in my life where I have accepted it and am ready to move on.

Yves, I for­give you for all the times that you lied to me. I for­give you for all the affairs you had. I for­give you for the harass­ment I endured from your girl­friends, for all the times they called and then hung up when I answered, many times after mid­night. I for­give you for years of ver­bal abuse. You will prob­a­bly never know how hard that was on me. You will never know how you dam­aged my self esteem and made me unpro­duc­tive. I am only just start­ing to heal now. I for­give you for all the times you called me use­less and stu­pid. I for­give you for the times you said my breasts weren’t big enough, that I didn’t kiss like one of your lovers, that I was too fat, too skinny, didn’t make enough money. I for­give you for the phys­i­cal abuse. I for­give you for threat­en­ing to kill me. I for­give you for bang­ing my head against con­crete. I for­give you for pulling my hair so hard that I had a headache for a week. I for­give you for pulling an entire closet and shelv­ing down on top of me. I for­give you for break­ing down my door. I for­give you for the trauma you inflicted on me and the dam­age that it’s done to my health. I for­give you for the fact that I am now suf­fer­ing from post trau­matic stress syn­drome because of your abuse. I am sorry that I had to call the police. I feel hor­ri­ble that I had to get a no con­tact order in place to feel safe, and I am sorry for the stress that action has caused you. How­ever, I hope that you under­stand that I needed to take action to feel safe again, that it is not right that the per­son who vowed to love me most is the per­son whom I fear the most. I am sorry for the times that I wronged you. I am sorry for feel­ing anger at you. At the same time, you were mak­ing me become a per­son that I didn’t like or respect. You treated me with dis­re­spect and because your behav­ior was so deplorable, I could no longer respect you either. You did all these acts with­out my per­mis­sion, encour­age­ment or con­sent. Those things were not my fault and even though it is dif­fi­cult, I will get through it. I am a good per­son who is wor­thy of being treated well and deserv­ing of love. To become the per­son I once was, full of joy and hap­pi­ness, I had to cut such neg­a­tiv­ity out of my life. You were that neg­a­tiv­ity. I am sorry if cut­ting you out of my life has hurt you. I hope that one day you will under­stand that to save my own life that I had to walk away from you. I wish you the best in life. I hope that you can learn some­thing from your expe­ri­ences and some­day move on to have a ful­fill­ing life. I wish you peace and hope that some­day you can find hap­pi­ness with­out inflict­ing pain on oth­ers. Truly, I wish you well. Thank you for the lessons you have taught me. Farewell.

Carla

Caroline says

Hi Burt,

Thank you for this sug­ges­tion. I put this off for so long, and only just looked up this page again to give it a go.

Writ­ing it helped, tak­ing a weight off of my chest.

I will e-mail it to myself to remind me, so I can read it again if I start feel­ing neg­a­tive about the per­son again.

Thank you once more.

Kenny says

high Burt,happy thanks giv­ing christ­mas and almost-new-year thank you for one,all of the med­i­ta­tion u have givin us(especially the free ones!) it is true that such a small thing can cause a big impact

if u remove the small­est card on the bot­tom of the tower of cards the tower stil falls.

i have a ques­tion that one i hope u will find and read and 2 answer

well, i have been hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing vivid images in my mind,i can make a picture,a good one but i have to focus on noth­ing but that picture,and its hard for me to sus­tain it,i can cre­ate very reais­tic pic­tures but it takes a while and som­times it goes away.…can u help?

iron­i­cally i finally decided to ask u after the med­i­ta­tion where u ask ques­tions to your dif­fer­ent per­son­al­li­tys, and well i did, i was told to not think of it as many dif­fer­ent sections,but one picture,focus on one thing and just add stuff to it.but it is dif­fi­cult for me,maybe i need practice.

and is it sup­posed to fell like a con­ver­sa­tion with them because it feel s to me like me just think­ing it up in the back of my head.

by the way an exam­ple of my pic­ture prob­lems is when i was cre­at­ing the table and me sit­ting with the other five mees there one,i couldnt get them all detailed,two i was hav­ing trou­ble get­ting a pic­ture of my face..it would keep on look­ing like my cousins or a freind of mines.

thanks for all of the help,hope u con­tinue to get bet­ter and better

also sorry for ask­ing a ques­tion on this lit­tle area,i dont know where im sup­posed to ask ques­tions except here

once again thanks

Daisy Lee says

Hi Bert, my past is very full of very deep abuse issues. I have for­given most of them. I agree a small let­ter will help lift the rest of the issues of for­give­ness of oth­ers. How­ever, for­tu­nately or unfor­tu­nately, I was born with a heart that knew how to love uncon­di­tion­ally and to for­give. What I didn’t know was how to set bound­aries to stop the abuse. Your story did trig­ger me to recall one per­son that I have not for­given fully. That would be me. Me — for allow­ing. Me — for learn­ing how to have the strength to keep stand­ing back up and for­giv­ing again and again. I have for­given them. I am still angry, very angry with me. So I guess I’ll apply your advice to that. Thanks Bert. from Daisy and the Angels.

Audrey says

Thank you Burt for your blog & guidance!

Dear Dad,
Being a young father with 3 kids was chal­leng­ing and stress­ful. Although Mom worked too, you felt pres­sure to pro­vide all that you could finan­cially to ensure a good life for us. It is a lot of respon­si­bil­ity & sac­ri­fice to be a par­ent. In return you expected obe­di­ence & respect. The stress you felt was not only finan­cial, but also your rela­tion­ship with Mom. You both thought that you should stay together & hav­ing kids would strengthen your rela­tion­ship. Instead it tested your rela­tion­ship & the two of you con­stantly.
Your frus­tra­tion & anger were scary. Use of vio­lence to dis­ci­pline chil­dren is some­thing you expe­ri­enced grow­ing up. You did not know there were non-violent, more nur­tur­ing, pos­i­tive ways to dis­ci­pline us. You did not learn how to express/communicate your frus­tra­tion, dis­ap­point­ment, anger, fear, lone­li­ness or con­fu­sion. You had no one to con­fide in & nobody to give you guid­ance. I’m sorry that you went through those chal­leng­ing times. I for­give you for the way you treated me. You did your best.
I can under­stand the rea­sons why you treated me the way you did as your first born. You thought that by being strict about rules, proper behav­ior, & high expec­ta­tions in school would guide me to be more suc­cess­ful than you were. I for­give you for not know­ing how to show me love or affec­tion. You grew up in a non-affectionate house­hold. Your par­ents were of another cul­ture. The only time your par­ents touched you was when you were sick or needed a spank­ing. Hug­ging, cud­dling, hold­ing hands was only done in infancy & then no more. I under­stand that despite not hav­ing been hugged, cud­dled, or my hand held that I was loved.
I feel no hatred towards you for any­thing that hap­pened to me, I feel com­pas­sion & deep sad­ness for what you expe­ri­enced.
I bear no ill will for every­thing you did. You treated me like a boy, like there was no dif­fer­ence between me & boys. That helped me in my edu­ca­tion, ath­let­ics, & pro­fes­sional life. You didn’t know how to deal with girls. You just did your best. Sex was never men­tioned in our home, it was taboo & yet you always had play­boy & pent­house mag­a­zines. This showed me that there was a dif­fer­ence between men, women, & sexy-beautiful women. You weren’t able to show me that you & Mom had a lov­ing, respect­ful, & sex­ual rela­tion­ship because you did not have one. I inter­preted sex to be love. You didn’t love Mom like you loved these women. You were unhappy with your mar­riage & with sev­eral things in your life which lead to your neg­a­tive thoughts, words, & actions. I for­give you for that.
I see that you & Mom did not have a good mar­riage or rela­tion­ship together, but it does not mean that I have to fol­low in your foot­steps. You thought by mak­ing me focus on top grades, get­ting into a good col­lege, & hav­ing a good career would pre­pare me for adult life & indi­rectly pro­tect me from hav­ing an unhealthy rela­tion­ship with a man. You may have sub­con­sciously thought that if my baby girl is inde­pen­dent, she will not need a man to take care of her & she will be safe from this dis­con­tent­ment & unhap­pi­ness. I know you had the best inten­sions in mind. I for­give you & I love you so much.
I know that you loved us. Despite every­thing you did, you’d take us on won­der­ful trips camp­ing, to for­eign coun­tries, buy us what we wanted, & give us presents & money for hol­i­days & birth­days. You gave us good advice.
Nobody is per­fect. I hope that you have found peace within & have for­given your­self. We are liv­ing in the present & doing our best with our pre­cious lives. I love you Dad.
Yours Truly,
Audrey

Susan d'Ambrumenil says

To Susan, and all my inner selves:

Please for­give me for all the times I didn’t lis­ten to you and took what you said for granted.
Please for­give me for not shar­ing your pain when Natalie crossed over. I was very much in my own pain.
Please for­give me for not being there when you were afraid. I felt I had to cope on my own, for­get­ting that you needed to know that I was there for you.
Please for­give me for all the times you needed a hug and to be told that I love you, espe­cially when we didn’t get it from Mum and Dad. I give you a hug now and I do love you.
Please for­give me for not remem­ber­ing to tell you what great jobs you did at school or at work. You were great. You went the dis­tance and suc­ceeded every time, despite what “Oth­ers” said about you or when “they” tried to put you down. You are GREAT!
Please for­give me for tak­ing “life” so seri­ously and for­get­ting to laugh with you at myself.
You are strong; you are patient; you are com­pas­sion­ate; you are great; you are TRUTH; and above all you are LOVED.
Please for­give me for telling you that more often. I love you Susan, I love you. Thank you for always being there for me, as I will be there for you.

Angela says

Here is a quote…

Life is an adven­ture in for­give­ness ~ Nor­man Cousins

Angela says

Burt,
Thanks so much for this gift!!! I have writ­ten for­give­ness let­ters in the past, although they were not as pow­er­ful as this tech­nique.
I have started to write a let­ter twice to the same per­son using this tech­nique, and I am so sur­prised to dis­cov­ered how much I play in the respon­si­bil­ity of the sit­u­a­tion. WOW! This is an amaz­ing tool. I am thank­ful that you shared it with us on your blog.
Many bless­ing to you,
Angela

Viki says

Dear Par­ents, being a par­ents is not an easy task but i know you have a great respon­si­bil­ity to give your chil­dren a bet­ter edu­ca­tion or learn­ing to write or read so that your chil­dren would be an illetrate. We are 9 sib­lings in the fam­ily but i am the only one who fin­ished a sim­ple course in col­lege. I have 3 both­ers who are iller­ate doesnt know how to read and write… that i blame to my mother because as a mother she must be the first teacher to teach her chil­dren. I know you get mar­ried at your very young age. So i for­give you mother. I love you mom for bring­ing me life in this world. And to my father who passed away 35 years ago Yes I for­give you too. And I do pray that you are now happy in God’s Kingdom.

To my brother who is been wise… i know you are very angry with me because among in the fam­ily you never thought that i could able to talk to you straight for­ward the things you’ve done to the fam­ily. Yes you and your wife been so unfair to my borthers and sisters…you treat your­self as if you are GOD. Please learn to vow down and ask for­give­ness too. You are still my brother best­friend and i want to for­give you and wish you good health and some­day i am pray­ing to have a fam­ily reunion.

To my friend you why I hated you so much you took advan­tage on me… your love for me is for­bid­den you obsess of some­thing that is yack­kkkkkks you know that any­way. And the last time you sent me an sms you know that i can not for­give you because of the bad things you have done to me. But i want to for­give you i want to face life with a smile and I wish you the same.

To those who have accounts on me please pay debts i was already finan­cially broke. I hate lies and great pre­tender… don’t use your kids as your alli­bies not to pay your debts dont use any­one be hon­est. Life is too short and we live only once in these world. I want to for­give you all. Money is just a money it can be earned but integrity is not… respect and trust are more than Dia­mond that shines forever.

To the man I have loved. You ignored me many times. You don’t treat me spe­cial. I dont feel the love in you, you are so oppo­site to every­thing i wanted to a man. You are not sweet but you wanted me to be… I hate you but i want to for­give you. I know i am not per­fect i have so many short­com­mings in life. I want to for­give myself for every­thing the things i have failed to do and for not being good to every­one. I want to share the good­ness in this world. I want to have a for­giv­ing and a lov­ing heart. GOD BLESS US ALL!

SandyB says

Hi Burt,

I wrote a very short for­give­ness let­ter (not sent, just writ­ten) to my adult step daugh­ter to whom I have not spo­ken in 2 years. That was on the day you sent out the first email on the sub­ject, Nov. 13. Yes­ter­day, Nov. 19, I received via email an apol­ogy from her. Does this for­give­ness stuff work or what?

I have to admit, I wrote the let­ter only to clear my block­ages. I was not expect­ing nor hop­ing nor (dare I admit) want­ing to hear from her; I just wanted to get past my own issues. Oy vey, be care­ful with this — before you know it, you’ll need the next level. I was SO not ready to hear from her. Looks like I need to write another letter.

Appar­ently, for­give­ness is contagious…

Hazel says

Hello Burt,

I was totally touch for the insights about for­give­ness that you’ve shared for us. Though I admit it might not be the first and the sec­ond for­give­ness let­ter that I made but still it touches my heart and I have no doubt about the effects of it spe­cially on me and to the per­son con­cerned. Mak­ing me aware that it could do won­ders to those involved most par­tic­u­larly when I know that the per­son con­cerned had torn me apart. I’d started writ­ing the let­ter shortly after I’d read your insights in your blog but didn’t quite fin­ish it right then until the next two days for the raw pain in me starts to come out again that I have to calm and ease myself once more. Just couldn’t imag­ine how the per­son that I’ve loved so much ha’d torn my heart apart and still so stub­born. But you’re right “For­give­ness” is the key and some­how the best way to achieve lib­er­a­tion for all the pain and resent­ment that I am hold­ing. I hope my mes­sage for him touches his heart also and that in the name of love every­thing will work out for the best.

With sin­cere gratitude,

Hazel
Toronto

Pam Furno says

Does any­one know how they would deal with this? My son and I watched our husband/father have surgery due to pain when he was placed on Per­co­cet and was hav­ing trou­ble breath­ing (asthma) and received four courses of a steroid and spent $170,000 on equip­ment for his busi­ness and then went for surgery. He had the first surgery which failed due to the high courses of steroids and his bones lit­er­ally dis­solved accord­ing to the sur­geon and he redid the surgery. He was placed on a ven­ti­la­tor and trans­ferred 1 1/2 hours away from home and we vis­ited him for seven months when he was finally
able to come home. His eight broth­ers and sis­ters never came to visit him in the Rehab and he felt aban­doned.
On July 30, 2008 he gave up the fight at home and my
son and I strug­gle just to sur­vive every day. At the
funeral his fam­ily came and I gave the eulogy
specif­i­cally speak­ing about the neces­sity of for­give­ness
because I could not pos­si­bly begin to feel there guilt (?) and emo­tions. Well, it has been four months now and we (my son and I) have not heard a word from any­one. This has been very dif­fi­cult because I am left to look into my son’s eyes and see his sor­row and frus­tra­tion.
Of course, every­thing is mir­rored; he sees my frus­tra­tion and I see his; a vicious cycle. Well, I know that we have to let this go because we ulti­mately do not con­trol the inten­tions of oth­ers. There is no good end­ing here as much as we would like one but I do
believe in for­give­ness; if we don’t have for­give­ness what do we have? Thank you again for allow­ing me air my
thoughts. God Bless. Pam

james says

Hi Dad I know it is a long time since we spoke or saw each other but I have decided to write this let­ter of for­give­ness to you and also to me, my sis­ters and broth­ers.
I forive you for all the times you were not there in my life as we were grow­ing up. I under­stand from the bot­tom of my heart that that was the only way you knew. I for­give you for the beat­ings that you gave Mum and even though she is not with us now I feel that she is suport­ing me and encour­ag­ing me to write this let­ter. I knw she is watch­ing over us as we face the rest of our lives.
I am grate­full for Mum for hav­ing the courage to leave you behind and set us on a dif­fer­ent path, even today her words are still rever­brat­ing in my head that you are my father and so we should get to know you as a per­son even though you did threten to kill her if she ased for child sup­port.
I for­give myself for act­ing like you and drink­ing most of my money as I got it, must be a genetic link that we share as it was and still is drink that keeps you from us.
I have so much more to for­give and it will take me a few let­ters to forive and put them down in writ­ing send­ing all the bad feel­ings I have had away.
For now this is the start of my journy into for­give­ness I wish you the best where ever you are and I am grate­full that you are my dad as I would not be here now but for you. thank you and God bless you. bye for now james

sanjeev kaushal says

Dear Dad,

You must have had your hands full with me as a kid. Like, remem­ber the time me and rajeev got stuck in an argu­ment over the umbrella and left it in the park and you beat me up. Or the day I got in a fight with that bully in fourth grade and broke his nose? You had to beat me in front of his parents.I knew you’d be angry. And at times like those,
But you were angry pretty often. Even at times you shouldn’t have been. Like on those nights you forced us to eat what we dis­liked most.I had to swal­low those beet­roots with water.

I just want to say that I for­give you for that.

I also remem­ber the times you refused to pay for our school trips. So I sat at home when my class­mates went to places like the beach, the the­ater, the zoo. I’d see you going off to the par­ties with your col­legues and you took rajeev along.You’d buy every body in the fam­ily what they wished for but for me you brought nothing.I was your ene­mey always like a fos­ter son whom you sought every small mis­take to punish.You hated me when you pun­ished me because i would never cry and would never say sorry to you or say that the iron chain hurt.You hated me more when for days i would not talk or reply to what you said and ignore you com­pletely as if you did not existed.You hated my guts even more when you abused mom and tried to hit her and i stopped your hands.I resented every word you spoke against me and mom and the abuses you loved to shower me with.You would lis­ten to every lie that my ene­mies talked about and spread false rumours about me and insult me in front of them.You infact rel­ished to help my ene­mies against me and put obsta­cles in my path because you were jeal­ous of my tal­ents and my qual­i­ties which i had from birth.I feel no hatred towards you, and I for­give you for that too.

In fact, I bear no ill will for every­thing you did. The times you laid your hands on us and mom.The times you told us we were worthless,it was a every­day occur­ance. The times you for­got my birth­day infact you never rem­me­bered it and never ever brought me any presents.

I for­give you.

I know that deep down you loved us. Despite every­thing you did, you’d still take us out for pic­nics some­times. You gave us good advice. Told us to be true to our­selves. I even remem­ber the kisses you gave us some­times when you were in ahappy mood.
But nobody’s per­fect. And I hope that after all we’ve been through, you’ve learned just as much as I have. I’m still here for you. Because no mat­ter what’s been said and done, you’re still my dad.

Yours Truly,

San­jeev kaushal

Mahendra K.Shah says

Respected Sri Burt Gold­manji
Thanks for the for­give & for­get ther­apy pub­lished by u on the net & in Jain­ism reli­gions it is the basic essence of life & e’1 r taught to do it daily 2 times daily called by PRATIKRAMAN & surely for the details once in a year on Paryushan Parva day.
It works in our present life & also for reach­ing MOKSHA by help­ing in future bhavas also
SO now as the chap­ter is opened let me ask for for­giv­ing me as i hv n’t yet bought any of yr devices & i think u might hv felt or hurt by it so pl for­give me & also for my inner think­ing tht allof u ppl r just to earn the money r going on pub­lish­ing some CDs or MP3 etc but now for tht think­ing of mine also i would like u to for­get us & from my side i too for­get u all if my inner feel­ings r hurt some times due to this mails
MKS Gun­tur India

Kari seppänen says

i for­give my life beginner’s…

mikael says

I for­give my self for being self cen­tered scared when my fam­ily had new vis­i­tor for fear of them steal­ing my addic­tion being cared for by my mother. I for­give my self for wor­ry­ing about what oth­ers think and try­ing to be nor­mal my whole life. I for­give my self for try­ing to be good by not hav­ing every­thing born rich with. I for­give my self for being afraid to get into power in my life. I for­give my self of being bad to girl in 7thgrade stran­gling her breath and her for­giv­ing me but i not. I for­give my self now and i choose to be good. I for­give my self for being scared lonely and mak­ing oth­ers feel ter­ri­ble as kid. I for­give my self for being born wrong and hav­ing no place in the soci­ety. I for­give my self for not choos­ing all oppor­tu­ni­ties iam given. I for­give my self feel­ing guilt to liv in my man­hat­tan dream apart­ment or rich dream life. I for­give my self for ask­ing the uni­verse for alot. I for­give my self for that i was born and dont live . i for­give my self for stran­gling my life. i for­give my self for stran­gling peo­ple around me with my low emo­tional depres­sive thoughts. i for­give my self for lying to my whole­ness. i for­give my self for never really lov­ing me. i for­give my self for not being able to be alone with my self. i for­give my self for fear­ing my self. i for­give self for not feel­ing good if iam not right. i for­give my self for not let­ting oth­ers be right about my life.

mikael says

my pur­pose is to awake renais­sance earth har­mony giv­ing souls and build with them their dream com­pa­nies, i for­give my self for way­ing and not exactly beng able to pin­point my life pour­pose, yes it is, it is here to awake renais­sance soul and build with them and for them dream com­pa­nies that flour­ish their mis­sions to bring har­mony on this planet, that is my gift, i for­give my self for not being hun­dred per­cent yet. i for­give my self for typ­ing here many times more untill i awake and live all this in my harmony

mikael says

i for­give my self for now know­ing my pur­pose and not have given my self it ear­lier in my ife to build com­pa­nies awake souls for and with renais­sance souls

mikael says

jag fölåter mig själv för att ha avund­sjuka och inte känt mig tilltäck­ligligt i mitt liv. jag fölåter mig själv för jag nu inte har oly­cka för jag nu accepterar älskar mig själv för den jag och inte har tid med avund­sjuka, jag för­låter mig för att jag ger mig själv den här gåvan, jag fölåter för jag slu­tar vara offer för dyslexi, för andras syn som hur jag borde vara som dys­lketiker och jag för­låter själv för att­jag hädanefter visar och accepterar mina svagheter inför alla som vill håna mig och älskar mig själv andå, tack

mikael says

och jag för­låter mig själv för att vara så här intelligent

mikael says

jag fölåter mig själv för allt hin­der jag ska­pat för mig själv. Jag för­låter mig själv för att jag naturligt med min talang nu väl­jer mitt liv att hädan efter bästämma min för­mö­gen­het har­moni och attra­hera all för­mö­gen­het jag i min talagn älskar ful­lända min själ med, jag attra­herar och hanterar med min naturliga talang mul­ti­m­iljoner i månaden på att göra mitt livs älsklings mis­sion
och jag för­låter mig själv för att vara så här begåvad

mikael says

i for­giv­ing my self for not hav­ing given my self joy on a daily basis for all i attract and am and for not giv­ing oth­ers the joy and bless­ing of their suc­cess. I for­give my self for believ­ing that there is not enough for me. I for­give my self for believ­ing that there is evi­dence and that is the truth that there is not enough for every one. I for­give my self for putting so many suc­cess down because of my self lim­it­ing believes. I for­give my self for not hav­ing given my self this self for­give­ness ear­lier. And iam grate­ful for my self and every ones suc­cess and i wish every one that great­est suc­cess and i for­give my self for believ­ing in this from now on into my real daily expe­ri­ence. Than You ALL BLESSINGS OF MY LIFE

mikael says

i for­give my self for feel­ing fear help­ing abused women or other areas than renais­sance souls if that enters my life path. I for­give my self for block­ing my life path. I for­give my self for now being free and choos­ing my des­tiny on what feels great in my heart, i for­give my self now feel­ing my soul with love on daily basis every day of my lie and tak­ing the blame and shame for doing untill i wake up fully. Thank You for giv­ing me this self aware­ness and love for my self. I wish you all the best in all parts of all human beings that awakes in you now. I wish this earth to be a great­full place of aware geniuses nat­u­rals mak­ing a dif­fer­ence from whithin the power of their self aware­ness. Thank You all the life and ieas that are to be found and thank you giv­ing them within. Love

mikael says

i for­give my self for hav­ing lived my life as god was in book con­trol­ling to not shine, I for­give my self for hav­ing believed this about god and i for­give self hav­ing belived that one per­son knows bet­ter my con­nec­tion to god thatn me, I for­give my self for hav­ing giv­ing my self this irre­spon­si­b­lity to feel­ing guilty to choose my own des­tiny. I for­give my self for now choos­ing my des­tiny and being free shin­ing self with all attrac­tion i can handle.Thank You Love thank guid­ance and all things that chal­lenged me to reach this part point of my life. Thank You god for being in me. I love you and i for­give my self wholly.

mikael says

i for­give my self for awak­en­ing renais­sance souls cre­at­ing enter­prises with them they can make a liv­ing on and liv­ing this life daily with a blessed fam­ily who loves me no mat­ter what and grat­i­tude for all small things in my life with all for­tunes i am nat­u­rally in har­mony with to feel have be do be my abun­dance expere­ince in my life

mikael says

i for­give my self to be my free inner voice daily and the life i have in my soul to give and receive

mikael says

i for­give my self to be my free inner voice

mikael says

i for­give my self to be my inner voice

mikael says

I FORGIVE MY SELF FOR NOT MAKING THIS RENAISSANCE SOUL ONLY AND FOR NOT FEELLING GUILTY TO HELP OTHER SOUL.
Thank You, GOD, I FORGIVE MY SELF FOR BELIEIVNG IT GOD AND LEETING GO TO GOD TO BE MY GUIDE. i for­give my self for doing this withou reli­gion or leader other than my innver voice

mikael says

Thank You I LOVE THIS

mikael says

i for­give my self for see­ing my truth as awak­en­ing in soul ans doing it into won­der­ful projects i love for earth to see . I for­give my self for hav­ing this bless­ing and liv­ing my pur­pose so fully i wanna pinch my self and see if iam real

mikael says

i for­give my self for to fully belieivn in this soul a awake risk taker thing for me. I for­give my elf for eat­ing addic­tion and hear­ing addic­tion every i choose my path. I for­give my self for choos­ing my path and feel­ing good about it. i for­give my self for now in being the leader of my life. i for­give my self for lead­ing life the way i love no mat­ter opi­o­nions. I for­give my self for being grate­ful for all this into reality

mikael says

I for­give my self for doing all this exer­cises and mak­ing my truth. I for­give my self for tak­ing all the space here..I for­give my self not hav­ing done this exer­cise daily in my life and lived this way i dream to be that i all­ready am and deny. Thank You for all my life. Thank You for all my strug­gles. Thank you for my fear to be burned at stake for what i belief. I for­give my self for being burned at stake to share my mes­sage with the world. I for­give my self to being so wake that any stake can con­trol my life. I for­give my self for believ­ing that some one else than me decides when i die. I for­give my self for inden­ti­fy­ing my soul as a weak hope­less thing and my self as my body not able to con­trol my life. I for­give my self for believ­ing that i dont deserve abu­dance and that the world is a seper­ated pour place when no evi­dence that the news have shown me this. I for­give my self for let­ting lead­ers decided my life and views. I for­give my self for cre­at­ing caner in my breast. I for­give my self not heal­ing it. I for­give my self for now writ­ing audio books from my soul and mak­ing abun­dane from it whiel its to easy and bad because oth­ers have to strug­gle to for­tune i for­give my self for doing this now. I for­give my self for being free for shar­ing my self gifts and hav­ing my bonus abun­dance. I for­give my life and the core of my sor­row of for believ­ing i am jeal­ous being me, iam jeal­ous flow­ing in my life, i am a ego if my life is briliant. I for­give my self to choose my life as brl­liance. I choose my life as nat­ural bril­liance now and i for­give all pain i cause for my fam­ily and my self for being doing hav­ing my bril­liance. I live my brl­liance now famous with­out fear all over the world on youtube an every where i feel for and i for­give my self for the fears of being hit down because of my viwes. i FORGVIE MY SELF BEING A SOUL SURRENEDER A VECHICLE OF HELPING AWAKE RENAISANSE SOULS AND DOING THEIR PROJECTS TO ACHIEVEMENT OF A DAILY BASIS. i FORGIVE MY SELF FOR HAVING THIS BLESSED LIFE. i for­give my self for putting my self in dan­ger for hav­ing this blessed life. I for­give my life for being true to my self risk­taker. Thank You.

mikael says

I for­give my self for deny­ing all help­ing all sorts of soul iam inspired with guilt to only help dyslex­ics and leave them behind. I for­give my self to eas­ily make self a for­tune. I for­give self to be a giver full­filled and look with a glow­ing heart and see pain in oth­ers while i live my dream. I forgvie my self for not deny­ing my self and being free. I for­give my self for being free and chal­leng­ing my fam­ily to receive a painful life because i am free. I for­give my self no jeop­ar­dise my fam­i­lies safety because i take on the world. i for­give my self to be the very speaker my dad hates. I for­give my self for suc­ceed­ing being the speaker that nat­ural helps soul flor­ish with­out strug­gle with a nat­ural flow to wealth. I for­give my self for play­ing feel­ing that way while i design com­pa­nies with huge teams that sup­port projects for the souls i help to impact the the world and life their life path. I for­give my self for hav­ing this won­der­ful life and feel­ing so good daily with all the for­tunes in my mind and heart iam attrac­tive to an hav­ing them as real tan­gi­ble real­ity as a bunus in my life. I for­give my self for all the pain of hav­ing all this. all the guilt and anger cre­ate in oth­ers for being fre. Thank You

mikael says

i for­give my self for mak­ing my dad decide my life. i for­give my self for being a speaker help weak unawak­ened souls awake. i for­give my self for lying to my self. i for­give my self for putting my self down just to not fit my dream . I for­give my self belieiv­ing it is evil of me of mak­ing tons of money on mak­ing weak peo­ple flour­ish their soul. I for­give my self of mak­ing money eas­ily doing the thing i am born to do . I for­give my self of daily doing the thing i born to do into a strug­gle. I for­give my self for mak­ing addicted rela­tion­ships be my truth of reali friends. I for­give my self for not hav­ing the guts to cut my addicted guilt to my family

mikael says

Mom i for­give you for mak­ing events that i made my self addicted to. Dad i for­give you for not believ­ing in me your whole life as wish­ing train­ing me to be some­one iam not. I for­give you for your fears of self accep­tance and soci­ety accep­tance of hav­ing a son that is nor­mal to soci­ety. I for­give my self for not claim­ing accept­ing that i am not nor­mal in the way you want me to. For­give my self for never maybe every being able to please to view i have you have of me. I for­give my self that i will never please my mom being the way iam in the view of a smaill kid i have for you i must be. I for­give my self that i may never be loved by you mom and dad for the being i am . i for­give my self for let­ting you be my life. I for­give my self for ignor­ing my self. I for­give my elf for see­ing my self down and less valu­able that my friends who can kiss wit their mouth and do eas­ilty way of soci­ety work and suc­ceed that life. I for­give my self for the guilt of not being able to do this. I for­give all my mom friends for putting down my dreams in my view of you. I for­give my self for deny­ing my truth. I for­give my self for mak­ing all spir­i­tual lead­ers more valu­able of know­ing me than me. I for­give my self for hav­ing fear for any one. I for­give my self for paint­ing the pic­ture that elit forces con­trol my life. I for­give my sto not be an dhwole divided soul in my heart. I for­give my self for not being a tru core being energy slef that is feee alive happy joy smil­ing daily on every thing i love my self. i for­give my elf to feel guilt tlo be happy. I for­give my self to feel to be alive. I for­give my self to feel guilt smil­ing at the buss in fear of mak­ing them feel mis­ser­able and jeal­ous. i for­give my self whole for deny­ing my self daily to help oth­ers deny­ing them self feel good. i for­give my self for mak­ing self this sor­row and worry and aci­ety and rule to just be accepted.

mikael says

Dear rel­a­tives and fam­ily i for­give you for chal­leng­ing my soul wish. i for­give my self for not hav­ing stood up for my self infront of you and lived empty they wishes i thought you liked me with. I for­give my self for all the pain and sor­row i caused my self to be the one you wanted me to be in my my mind. I for­give my self for choos­ing my empty closed down small path . I for­give my self putting my self down being pushed bul­lied in mid­dle school. For­give my self for being in my own world not under­stand­ing and feel­ing the nat­ural talk­ing my fam­ily did dur­ing our din­ners. I for­give my self for ques­tion­ing the world and not fully embrac­ing its nat­ural small things daily. I for­give my self for attract­ing my self to doing a mis­sion and ignor­ing it dur­ing my whole life time in front my suc­cess achieve­ment view on my fam­ily and rel­a­tives. I for­give my self for not stick­ing out in being my self and going for my life the way i dream. I for­give my self for ignor­ing the value of me with strangers and fam­ily rel­a­tives and girls. I for­give my self for try­ing to be some­one iam not, and try­ing to be the things i know. I for­give my self for not see­ing my self as valu­able. I for­give my self for ignor­ing my his­tory value and story as gift for oth­ers inspi­ra­tion. I for­give my self for see­ing my real value as less than any one else. I for­give my self for dying inside to be addicted to my fam­ily and rel­a­tive. I for­give my self for not mak­ing my addi­ca­tions on me. I for­give my self for not say­ing hey iam me and i love me and being that grate­ful for my self infront of fam­ily and rel­a­tives. I for­gives my self for see­ing that my love value is based on what i get from my fam­ily friends and rel­a­tives. I for­give my self for not hug­ging being gratefl for every small thing i achieve. I for­give my sel ffor loos­ing that value of just being me. I for­give my self for the guilt of nat­ural attract­ing my dream life when my fam­ily and rel­a­tives dont. I for­give my self for being seen as ego­is­tic self­ish because i live my dream and chal­lenge the lim­ited self view in oth­ers fam­ily soci­ety and rel­a­tives. i for­give my self for writ­ing the easy to my suc­cess, for doing the easy tal­ents of my born abilites daily and nat­u­rally hav­ing a abun­dant life. I for­give my self for not allow­ing me to be daily while i decided my dream life. i for­give my self for not accept­ing the wealth i dream about in my soul. I for­give my self for being jeal­ous at rich peo­ple just because iam deny­ing my riches. I feel grate­ful for my life, that way i was put here the chal­lengs i have and the sor­rows i gave my self to wake up. I for­give my self for under­scor­ing my value to the elite con­troler of my life and i for­give my self for imag­in­ing that some­one can con­troll me inside when i con­trol every part of me because i belief in it. I for­give my self to belief in being no value and hav­ing no con­trol on my daily pros­per­ous life in my dream assign­ment. i for­give my self for see­ing my self less then the elite con­trol guilt in my head. i for­give my self for liv­ing my lie that i am lim­ited. i for­give my self for cre­at­ing my lim­ited life daily because of fear for being free. i for­give my self for tring being guided by elite and not doing my life. i for­give my self for believ­ing that i am dying because soci­ety thinks so. I for­give my self believ­ing my whole life iam meet and have no value. i for­give my self for belieivng that my soul is bad ter­ri­ble thing that destroys lives. i for­give my self for believ­ing that i have no power. i for­give my self for beleiv­ing that power is only bad and can only be used for daily evil. i for­give my self for not count­ing on my self. i for­give my self for count­ing my self on some out­side thing in every action i take and mak­ing them most valu­able. I for­give my self for sur­ren­der­ing to a fear based life. I for­give my self for believ­ing that every in the uni­verse is energy but iam not. I for­give my self for being manip­u­lated that the whole uni­verse is energy but iam no in it, and that i some how believed that was evi­denced and iam seper­ated from the uni­verse and that all this was the truth when no sci­ence or evi­dence proofed me this was true. i for­give my self for being so fales. so annoyed and so stup­did to see all this shit as real­ity. i for­give my self for mak­ing my self feel as a born mis­stake because of my dis­abil­ity. I for­give my self for feel­ing as a fail­ure because soci­ety say so. I for­give my self for try­ing to die just to be not me in the world. i for­give my self for deny­ing the very core of my soul daily and mak­ing every ones opin­ion more impor­tant than the core of my self. i for­give my self for set­ting my lim­its and invent­ing i have them. i for­give my self for lying about all my self suc­cess of all the things i must do to please peo­ple who even dont like the core of my soul. I for­give my self for deny­ing my self on a daily strug­gle jour­ney going round in cir­cles hav­ing no love for my self and dream­ing illui­sional dreams to fit soci­ety they way iam not. I for­give my self for all this. I for­give my self for that i now dont take charge in the life i have to give. I for­give my self now that i hate suc­ceed­ing in speak­ing mak­ing mil­lions because it is my soul flow­ing gift easy to do nat­ural life skill. I for­give my self for liv­ing the big life the big life and that i nat­u­rally attract the major lead­ers of the world spon­ta­neously in per­son very oftehn as soons as i am in flow,i for­give my self for deny­ing this gift to give. i for­give my self for freely being a mil­lion­aire bil­lion­aire doer and i fro­give my self for not allow­ing my self to fly first­class cre­at­ing com­pa­nies with my tal­ents eas­ily 5 days a week. i for­give my self for not giv­ing my self the life i feel in my heart i deserve. i for­give my self for mak­ing life and intu­tion an lil­lu­sion and mak­ing my soul somet­ing not impor­tant. Thank You this was very freeing.

Painting Liberty: Liberating One’s Self through Forgiveness | The American Monk says

[…] Uncat­e­go­rized I would like to take this oppor­tu­nity to thank every­one who has par­tic­i­pated in the For­give­ness Let­ter writ­ing excer­cise, and all of you who […]

jyothi says

hi iam jyothi…i want for­give­ness fronm my father…he is a great person..but he is very busy person..so even though i love him soo much i use to com­pare with oth­ers n i mis­un­der­stood soo much..i really lost so many things dur­ing that misunderstanding…n i might hust my sis..coz she is hurt­ing the whole family…now iam not talk­ing with her..coz she is not at all under­stand­ing the fam­ily n real affection…thats all.

Janalee says

To PAB,my for­mer hus­band & father of my two grown children:

It has been 31 years since we got mar­ried. How I loved the begin­ning of our rela­tion­ship. You taught me the ways of the world, the ways of the flesh, and the ways of a col­or­ful intel­li­gent per­son. Unfor­tu­natly, we butt heads too often because we both have strong per­son­al­ity types. I learned so much from you.

I also learned how much it hurts when some­one you love yells and snaps and says mean things. I’d never been brought up that way. I knew you were a “dry drunk” or a ACA Adult Child of an Alco­holic, but it wasn’t until my early thir­ties did I start to read about it. You were a raga­holic. I suf­fered. I am sorry that you had to grow up feel­ing an emo­tional absence from your father while your mother worked odd hours. You have many good qual­i­ties. And I am thank­ful for our two chil­dren who bring so much delight and joy and mean­ing into my life. I’m glad we have remained friends through the years and that you and your 3rd wife took me and our daugh­ter out to eat the last time you came through town.

I for­give you for only see­ing your chil­dren a few times every year when they were grow­ing up and not tak­ing full respon­si­bil­ity for your parental and finan­cial role. I think I did an out­stand­ing job con­sid­er­ing the stress I was under. I had to refi­nance my house sev­eral times just to keep up a nor­mal mid­dle class rou­tine while they were grow­ing up. I for­give you for spend­ing more money on your three step kids (who mostly turned out to be ungrate­ful and prob­lem­matic) than you did with your own chil­dren. I couldn’t help but resent your abil­ity to save for retire­ment while I had to sac­ri­fice sav­ing for my own because I put every­thing I could make into rais­ing GAB & JMB. I am prac­tis­ing the art of let­ting go. I’m not per­fect yet, but I do know you did the best you could or you would have done more. Your engi­neer mind works in rigid ways. I for­give you for squash­ing my joy­ful spirit and call­ing me names in front of my friends and coworkers.

I even for­give you for the psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse you put me through with­out so much as say­ing you were sorry. You just fin­ished yelling at me and I flinched once car­ry­ing a Christ­mas tree into our CA home & my sis­ter noticed it. She almost cried for me. My own mother, who is very reli­gious, was the one who said the words,“You are an abused wife and I wouldn’t blame you if you left him.” Gosh, did that get my atten­tion. The final straw though, was your reg­u­lar dose of yelling at me in front of the kids or shout­ing at them for typ­i­cal behav­iors from a tod­dler and a four-year old. I for­give you for caus­ing our son to pee on the car­pet because he didn’t have any other out­let for being yelled at unfairly. He even stuck up for me (at age four) once when you yelled at me for buy­ing the wrong type of ice cream. “Don’t yell at Mommy, she’s being nice…she brought home ice cream for us.” I became so depressed, I didn’t rec­go­nize my own per­son­al­ity. I for­give you for all these and a thou­sand more inci­dents in between. I for­give you for yelling at me the day we brought our baby girl out of the hos­pi­tal when you drove me home or when you said, “You’re the one who wanted kids so make GAB be quiet.” I recall breast feed­ing JMB one after­noon & you wanted some­thing done and in a loud demand­ing voice called down to me from upstairs. When I responded that I was in the mid­dle of breast­ing feed­ing, you actu­ally said, “It’s always some­thing” like I’m try­ing to avoid your request on purpose.

You have no self-awareness of how you behav­iors affect oth­ers neg­a­tively. You shout, say you’re sorry, and move on. It’s the rest of the world who have to “suck it up” and go along with your pro­gram. Your way or the high­way. I for­give you for not respect­ing my wishes and not hon­or­ing me as a per­son. I guess you just didn’t have the self-esteem to be a tol­er­ant type. I for­give myself for allow­ing this to hap­pen because I thought I had to stay in a mar­riage that was emo­tion­ally painful to endure. I for­give myself for tear­ing up the fam­ily unit because there was no affec­tion, no respect, and no hap­pi­ness for quite some time. At leastI left you when the kids were two and four, so they appre­ci­ate grow­ing up in a less rigid, more free-spirited home. They thank me for that even now that they are 23 & 20 years old.

In short, I for­give your past mis­takes because I’m sure I made many myself. Nobody is per­fect, so I’ve learned and grown and healed from it all. So, iron­i­cally, thanks for being you.
Janalee

Frankie says

Burt,
I wrote my let­ter pri­vately to my father, from whom I was estranged for the last 20 years of his life. I will prob­a­bly have to write more let­ters to him as time passes because of the stuff that keeps sur­fac­ing that I had repressed. The pain is always fresh when it hap­pens, but I have come to real­ize that I am the one who ben­e­fits by for­giv­ing him. Resent­ment and pain are too heavy a load for me to carry, and I will need to relin­quish that bur­den more than once. Hard­est of all will be the let­ter I write to myself, for­giv­ing myself for shel­ter­ing behind denial when I was too weak to do any­thing else. It was the best I could do at the time. I for­give me and love me for the courage it took to hang on.

NW says

Dear GG
Initially,I was very happy to meet you at such a seem­ingly oppor­tune moment for both of us.I soon realised that you had no respect for my pro­fes­sional or artis­tict input; you put me down and made oth­ers believe I was your secretary.My cre­ative ideas were stolen by you and I was given no credit. You lied about me to oth­ers and to me per­son­ally. I was poorly paid and worked long hours. You took all the credit for my ideas. You humil­i­ated me and made my life miserable.I decided to leave and you offered my job to your friend. You left the job offer let­ter in the pho­to­copier for me to find and I could see the improved ben­e­fits for your friend.You took your friend out to din­ner at an expen­sive restau­rant to cel­e­brate, then billed the din­ner to a client account.Your friend was so incom­pe­tent that within a few weeks your busi­ness was nearly destroyed and you begged me to return.I thought that we would have a new rela­tion­ship from this point onwards, but it was not to be. Sev­eral clients fired you and you tried to blame me. You then tried to give my job to your sec­re­tary and wanted me to do her cler­i­cal work.You told me the clients hated me and I had to leave the office each time there was a meeting.You were devi­ous and cal­cu­lat­ing and then hired a new book­keeper at some extor­tion­ate rate whilst telling me you could not afford to pay me. I waited two or three months for pay­ment whilst you were pay­ing this other per­son three times my salary.I was informed by email by this per­son, that as from two months ago, I would not be paid and that this was a direc­tive from you. Sadly, you did not care to tell me this in per­son and I left imme­di­ately. We never spoke again. You have been dishonest,cowardly manip­u­lat­ing and frankly stu­pid!! The next per­son you replaced me with was incom­pe­tent and had to be dis­missed after a few weeks.I am so sad about the turn of events. I do love you and miss you and for­give you for you know not what what you do.I choose to remem­ber the good times we had, the laugh­ter, adven­ture, travel and fun.I wish you every suc­cess for the future and am really so sorry it ended this way.
Much Love
NW

margarita says

Thank you to all you won­der­ful peo­ple who have the love and the courage to for­give even in your pain. I love you.

Mar­garita

rajan68 says

I ask all human beings and liv­ing things whom i have ver­bally or men­tally swore and abused them to for­give me, par­tic­u­larly my par­ents, grand­par­ent who are no more. I also ask my kids to for­give me if i have not shown affec­tion to you which i have tried my level best.
I resolve to avoid these in future.

rajan68 says

I ask par­tic­u­larly to my wife to for­give me. Being born with­out sis­ters or broth­ers and sent to a board­ing school i became lonely and love to be alone. Hence this induced in me sex lust and crav­ings which finally ended in my hav­ing homo-sex with 3 guys ini­tially and then after our mar­riage went to 2 pros­ti­tutes and homo-sex also with 5 guys and now 40 years my life gone and being pun­ished by supreme who­ever it is to suf­fer from wry neck and cer­vi­cal spondylitis.

Marcy says

Once upon a time there was a king and a queen. They lived in a far off place and thought they were very happy — until one day a vis­i­tor from the past appeared at the cas­tle door. The vis­i­tor asked to see the king and was ush­ered through the vast hall­ways to his library. The king hap­pened to be alone that day as his queen had gone hunt­ing, and as soon as the oak door to his library opened and he saw who the vis­i­tor was, he fell into his chair as though struck with a blow. ‘So, you are pleased to see me’, said the vis­i­tor. ‘It has been many years and I am pleased to see I haven’t changed as much as I thought — although you, it seems, have aged con­sid­er­ably.’ The king, who had been silent through­out this speech, slowly raised him­self to his full height. ‘I know well who you are,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t mat­ter how many years had passed or how long your beard had grown — I would know you still.’ He paused and passed a hand over his brow. ‘You are my neme­sis. The only one who knows the dark secret that lies deep in my dark­est dun­geons. You have come to exact revenge for the wrong done to you in your youth…when we both were young.’ The king said these last words with a dying fall and waited for reply. After a few moments the vis­i­tor took down his hood and showed him­self for the first time. ‘It is true. It is I, your brother whom you for­sook in his hour of need. I have returned to see what has become of you and to ask of you one thing that it is within your pow­ers to grant.’ ‘If only I was igno­rant of your request, then I would not hes­i­tate to accede. I know though that you want me to release our sis­ter held beneath this cas­tle from her child­hood days to this. You wish for me to rein­state her to her right­ful place as coun­selor to myself and my wife. For her judge­ment to hold sway over the pow­er­ful and for her being to serve as a reminder that they too are but fal­li­ble beings prone to whim.’ The vis­i­tor drew closer to the king and looked deeply into his eyes, ’ you are my brother’, he said qui­etly, ‘I have always looked up to you as my supe­rior. Not because you are clev­erer than I, nor because you are blessed by your posi­tion of birth. No, I look up to you because you are a bet­ter man than I.’ The king was taken aback by these words and returned the know­ing gaze of the other. He looked to see if he had heard cor­rectly and if his brother was sin­cere in his dec­la­ra­tion. What he saw in the azure eyes was noth­ing more or less than con­tri­tion and in that see­ing his heart melted and he took his brother to him with tear­ful grat­i­tude.
Since that day the cas­tle in the for­est has been a joy­ful place. The king and queen no longer think that they are happy in their lives and their knowl­edge is shared by the king’s brother and sis­ter. The four royal and blessed com­rades keep coun­sel for each other and many evenings are spent by the cas­tle fires in happy talk and fes­tive danc­ing.
There remains only one tale to tell and that is the story of the beau­ti­ful queen who remained faith­ful and devoted to her king for the rest of her happy days.

Maria Bastas says

I wrote a really long let­ter of for­give­ness mainly to the men in my life and myself. Start­ing from my father to my ex part­ners and then onto myself. I don t know if it got sub­mit­ted or was erro­neously deleted. That is a shame but I did actu­ally write it and that was indeed cleans­ing for me. To allow me to move onto to bet­ter and greater expe­ri­ences, espe­cially in my desire to unite with a lov­ing male part­ner whom I trust and com­mit to.

Maria Bastas says

n

nidhal says

Dear Par­ent,
I knew that time u have the rihgt 4 evry­thing and to be anger. and u were ungry for some stuation.But i wana say for­give me.
Mom, u r angry for see­ing me hav­ing my friends.And that time i feel no hate toward u.
I for­give u for that too.
I rem­ber when the pri­vate school and how u tried soo hard for that.i wanna thank u and for­give u for done this to me.
Mom & dad i also rem­ber when u argu for some rea­sons that i ddnt under­stand that time. I feel no hated towards you, and I for­give you bothe for that too

dad,I for­give you for and i wana thank u for evry­thind and i realy missed u.
mom,I hope that after all we’ve been through, you’ve learned just as much as I have. I’m still here to help u and take care of u. Because no mat­ter what’s been said and done, you’re still my MOM and i love u.
Notice: dear Burt (keep it confidential

Yours Truly,

nid­hal

anithakiron says

Dear­Burt gold­man,
I am really moved by your fre­quent advises to peo­ple of var­i­ous backgrounds.I want to try this tip of for­give­ness letter.I thank you you sin­cerely for show­ing me a way to get cleared of mis­takes in mu past life either by me or peo­ple close to my life.
sin­cerely ,
A.Anithakiron

Marcy says

Some days I feel as though i need to for­give every­one for things they did or didn’t do — but only in the last few years. Before that I didn’t. Except for a few maybe. Now though I feel that lots of peo­ple have done me wrong in those years — when I needed under­stand­ing. It seems now that everything’s almost back to nor­mal, that they didn’t do me wrong really. They just didn’t know how I felt. Even though I thought I had expressed to them exactly what the prob­lem was and how I felt about it, they some­how couldn’t under­stand the depth and breadth of what I was feel­ing and so couldn’t com­fort me or tell me it was OK because it would all be alright in the end. Wow — how I needed them to tell me that.
They made up for it though. Even though at the time they didn’t make up for it, later they did. They over made up for it if you see what I mean — in a good way.
I just get days when I for­get the mak­ing up bit and remem­ber the bad bit — today’s a bit like that. But I have to say that day’s like today aren’t so bad as they used to be. they just make me a bit down and grumpy to every­one or I tell my son to hurry up and do his home work when I wouldn’t nor­mally. Then it’s me who needs for­giv­ing! I try to explain it to him — sorry for being a bit grumpy today. I might even make an excuse, like I’m feel­ing a bit ill.

Tracey Adams says

Wow, that got long. So sorry about that! Feel free to remove it for length, I won’t be offended.

Tracey Adams says

A for­give­ness let­ter on a com­plex issue:

To all of you that this concerns:

All those years ago, I made a deci­sion that I deeply regret. I made it with the best of inten­tions, and I believed and accepted state­ments that didn’t ring true to me. I allowed my low self-esteem to get me into the posi­tion where the wrong deci­sion was easy– even though it was the hard­est thing I have ever done, or that I think any human can do.

To those who told me how won­der­ful adop­tion is, and how much bet­ter off my son would be with­out me, I for­give you. I know now that you “knew not what you did.” I know now that you really believed what you told me. You really were con­vinced that it would be best for my son to grow up with­out his mother, and for me to lose my son forever.

To those who used Chris­tian­ity to twist and dis­tort the truth, so that I would feel ashamed if I wanted to keep the child that God had sent to me… I for­give you.

To those of you who told me that chil­dren of sin­gle moth­ers are sta­tis­ti­cally more likely to go to prison than those raised in two-parent homes; yet who never told me that adopted per­sons are sta­tis­ti­cally more likely to go to prison than are chil­dren raised by their own (even sin­gle) moth­ers… I for­give you.

You didn’t know­ingly lie to me, after all. You were given a lie by the child traf­fick­ing (adop­tion) indus­try, who makes 1.8 bil­lion dol­lars a year sell­ing chil­dren. How could you have known that you were being just as exploited as I and my son were?

To the child traf­fick­ing indus­try who prof­its off of the agony of moth­ers who lose their chil­dren, and the deep, ago­niz­ing pain and hurt adoptees feel as they grow up sep­a­rated from their roots… I for­give you. You have lost your way, and your lust for money has over­come your com­pas­sion, a great loss for you.

To the mother I first chose to raise my son in my stead, I for­give you for dump­ing him back into my arms out of your own fear, leav­ing me to floun­der as I tried to recover from this action. I know that you had waited so long for the chance, and now feared ter­ri­bly the results if it didn’t work out, if I should have changed my mind after you fell in love. In some ways, my own loss helps me under­stand your decision.

To Gl, I for­give you for promis­ing to assist me in rais­ing your grand­son– my son, and then bring­ing about a sit­u­a­tion where I feared leav­ing him with you, so felt I couldn’t look for work until I could find a way to get him safe care as I did so.

To Ga, I for­give you for refus­ing to give me the money E was send­ing to me, that would have enabled me to keep my son. I for­give you for think­ing you knew what was best for every­one, and for telling your­self that this per­son you didn’t even know wasn’t fit to be a mother. I for­give you for never both­er­ing to know me, or to even ask what was going on. I for­give you for putting your­self in a posi­tion of power and author­ity in order to accom­plish your goal of forc­ing every­one to the solu­tion you had deemed best.

To E, I for­give you for leav­ing us, and not both­er­ing to ensure that the per­son who was your only con­nec­tion to us was trust­wor­thy and was really doing what you asked. I for­give you for only call­ing them, and never call­ing me. I for­give you for only ask­ing me to keep my son and make a life with you because your mother told you that you should, and with only dis­like for me in your heart.

I for­give myself for the choice to help some­one which got me kicked out of the place I had found to live. I for­give myself for not find­ing a bet­ter solu­tion than going with Cr to GA and thus find­ing myself in a com­pound from which I could not escape.

I for­give you, A and L, for tak­ing my son under false pre­tenses and going forth with an adop­tion that you knew was wrong and being done under duress. I for­give you for think­ing that you were bet­ter for my son than I was, and I for­give you for your inabil­ity to real­ize that I was a per­son– a MOTHER who was los­ing her deeply beloved CHILD. I for­give you for ignor­ing the count­less times I said I didn’t want to give him up and tak­ing him any­way. I for­give you for car­ing only about your own desire to adopt a boy child, and not about me or my son.

I for­give myself for walk­ing away on the final, last, fate­ful day when I saw him for the last time; rather than grab­bing him and escap­ing with him, tak­ing us both to free­dom. I for­give myself for not know­ing that he would obvi­ously be best off with his mother. I for­give myself for believ­ing the lies, and for not hav­ing the strength to stand up to all the oppo­si­tion. I for­give myself for fear­ing the cor­rupt courts and the police who sup­ported this farce of a “vol­u­nary” adoption.

I for­give every­one who con­tin­ues, to this day, to look me in the face and tell me that adop­tion is won­der­ful, good, and nec­es­sary. I for­give their will­ful igno­rance. I for­give them for not know­ing the soul-devouring AGONY of loss and grief and ter­rific, unspeak­able pain that moth­ers who have lost their chil­dren to adop­tion feel. I for­give them for hav­ing no clue how deeply painful adop­tion is for every­one except adop­tive par­ents and the child traf­fick­ing industry.

I for­give them for believ­ing what they are told about adop­tion instead of actu­ally lis­ten­ing to those who have expe­ri­enced it and live every day with the ter­ri­ble scars. I for­give all the adoptees who toe the party line and say how won­der­ful it is, how grate­ful they are to have been taken from their moth­ers through coer­cion and extor­tion of said mothers.

I for­give those who actively seek ways to coerce “reluc­tant” moth­ers into giv­ing up their chil­dren. I for­give them for using these moth­ers’ love against them, as a tool to get them to give their chil­dren up. I know that these peo­ple hon­estly believe that being raised by wealthy peo­ple is more impor­tant, and bet­ter, than being raised by a poor fam­ily… your own fam­ily. They’ve been lying so long that they’ve con­vinced even themselves.

I for­give myself for believ­ing the lies. I for­give myself for the many years that I sto­icly repeated the lies, then went home and wept at every hol­i­day, every birth­day, and every thought of the pre­cious son I lost. I for­give myself for 15 long, ago­niz­ing, soul-destroying years of sep­a­ra­tion from the most beau­ti­ful thing that had hap­pened to me.

I for­give myself for so many years of tears, of loss, of feel­ing less-than the adopters. I for­give myself for believ­ing the same lies as every­one else. I for­give myself for not know­ing bet­ter. For not doing bet­ter. For lis­ten­ing to oth­ers over my own heart, which begged and begged me to keep the son I so dearly loved and would make even this ulti­mate sac­ri­fice for.

I for­give myself for let­ting them take advan­tage of my naivety. I for­give myself for let­ting my past dic­tate to me that I should let my son go “for his own good.” I for­give myself for not seeign what a won­der­ful mother I really am and was.

I for­give myself for screw­ing up so badly, I for­give myself for the pain that was so hor­ri­ble I tried repeat­edly to die to escape it. I for­give myself for these years of tor­tur­ing myself with mem­o­ries of what I have lost and will never, ever have again.

I for­give myself for believ­ing the adopters’ lies. I for­give myself for choos­ing liars and preda­tors. If I had known their true nature, I would never have cho­sen them, I know that now. I for­give myself for not know­ing better.

I for­give myself for so com­pletely believ­ing a reli­gion that so thor­oughly destroyed my self-esteem that I was so vul­ner­a­ble to this attack. I for­give my par­ents for rais­ing me as Chris­t­ian so that I could be so eas­ily exploited. I for­give myself for believ­ing in a god that thought I was bro­ken and who wanted to pun­ish me. I for­give myself for accept­ing the coer­cion used upon me through the Solomon & baby story to get me to give up my son if I REALLY loved him and was a REAL mother.

I for­give myself for not real­iz­ing that, just as I had hurt all my life because of my own adop­tion and the loss of my own fam­ily and motehr… so would my son also hurt from the loss. I for­give myself for all the things I didn’t know then, that I do know now… and I choose to stop telling myself that I should have known. I didn’t know, and so I did my very best, out of gen­uine love.

I for­give the lonely, des­per­ate, vul­ner­a­ble 21 year old girl that I was. As I look back on her, sit­ting there at the foot of a war mon­u­ment, want­ing more than any­thing in the world to die and stop the pain… instead of anger, instead of recrim­i­na­tions… I choose to send her love and the deep­est com­pas­sion. I choose to embrace her and let her cry her tears and pain out. I choose, instead of telling her that she should have been stronger, to tell her that she is so strong and won­der­ful for hav­ing done her best, and for try­ing so very, very hard to do the right thing.

And I wish for many young moth­ers to know the truth. I wish for my son to know how much he is loved. I wish for his adopters to come to under­stand, in a gen­tle way, how high the price of their hap­pi­ness was, and thus to appre­ci­ate it far more deeply. I wish for them to use that knowl­edge to help my son. I wish for them to use it to help their other adopted child.

May aware­ness spread. May the adop­tion indus­try become about chil­dren who NEED homes, instead of about homes who want chil­dren. May adop­tion become a truly altru­is­tic indus­try, and prof­it­ing from it die away for­ever. May fam­i­lies be together, even the sin­gle mother fam­i­lies. May chil­dren know their moth­ers, may they be held by them in the dark­ness of night when they cry, instead of a stranger. May moth­ers be allowed to keep their beloved chil­dren, aided in the endeavor, for­given for per­haps not being pre­pared before they got pregnant.

May fam­i­lies every­where be united, may chil­dren who gen­uinely need homes find par­ents who gen­uinely desire a child, in the most sym­bi­otic way. May adop­tive par­ents be more truly and prop­erly taught about the joys– and tragedies– of adop­tion. May there be more under­stand­ing and aware­ness on everyone’s part towards one another.

May those who gen­uinely wish to help chil­dren find a way that doesn’t inad­ver­tently bring deep pain to moth­ers and chil­dren who are best off together. May truth and hon­esty pre­vail. May under­stand­ing and aware­ness spread to all peo­ple about both sides of the real­ity of adop­tion, so that the under­ly­ing social pres­sure is gone from any­one con­sid­er­ing this loss.

May doors be opened, may win­dows be cleared. May we bless and pro­tect the sanc­tity of families.

Sin­cerely,
Me

Ligia Julia says

I for­give every one who hurt me inten­tion­aly and not inten­tion­aly. I also for­give myself if I ever hurt any one, as i have no inten­tion to hurt anuone. i rather give love that hurt.
Somone sand to me this beau­ti­ful words of wis­dom:
“Do Not Give Up!!!!!

One day I decided to quit.…..
I quit my job, my rela­tion­ship, my spirituality.…I wanted to quit my life.…
I went to the woods to have last talk to GOD.
“God”, I asked “can you give one rea­son not to quit?“
His answer sur­prised me.…
“Look around”, He said. “Do you see the fern and the bam­boo?“
“Yes, I replied.
“Wen I planted the fern and the bam­boo seeds, I took very good care of them.
I gave them light. I gave them water.
The fern quickly grew from the earth. Its bril­liant green cover the floor.
Yet noth­ing came from the bam­boo.
In the sec­ond year the fern grew more vibrant and plen­ti­ful.
And again, noth­ing came from the bam­boo. He said.
In year three there was still noth­ing from the bam­boo seed.
But I would not quit.
In year four, again, there was noth­ing from the bam­boo seed.
I would not quit. He said. Then in the fifth year a tiny sprout emerged from the earth. Com­pared to the fern it was seem­ingly small and insignif­i­cant… but just sixth months later the bam­boo rose to over 1 meter tall. It had spend the five years grow­ing roots.
Those roots made it strong and gave it what it needed to sur­vive.
“I would not give any of my cre­ations a chal­lenge it could not handle“He said.
He asked me,“Did you know, my child, that all the time you have been strug­gling, you have actu­ally been grow­ing roots to sur­vive.“
” I would not quit on the bam­boo. I will never quit on you.“
“Do not com­pare your­self to oth­ers”, He said.
“The bam­boo had a dif­fer­ent pur­pose than the fern. Yet they both make the for­est beau­ti­ful“
“Your time will come” God said to me. “You will rise high”.
How high should I rise? I asked Him. “How high the bam­boo rise?” He asked in return.
As high as it can? I ques­tioned. “Yes”. He said, “Give me glory by ris­ing as high as you can.“
I left the for­est and came back home.
I hope that we see that God never give up on us.
Never, Never, Never give up!!!.
Do not tell the Lord how big the prob­lem is, tell the prob­lem how Great the Lord is!!.…
Heav­ens door open this morn­ing, God asked me… My CHILD…

what can I do for you?” and I said,

“Daddy please pro­tect and bless the one read­ing this message”.

God smiled and answered .. request granted .….….….

God Bless you all, and pro­tect you in the name of Jesus Christ!!
Amen.”

Carolyn says

The most painful love affair I had in my life, with my bro­ken heart, taught me the fol­low­ing: “You have to own it, to see/hear/think it”… We came from some­what dif­fer­ent back­grounds — very much the same fam­ily — but very dif­fer­ent child­hoods. I’m an only, and was never spoiled — I had to “work” for my “dreams” — he was the “baby” and extra­or­di­nar­ily spoiled!!! I’ve since learned that every­one comes into your life to teach you who YOU are… I for­give myself, I for­give him — I still, and always will love him (hate is love turned on itself!)

K.A. Thomas says

For­giv­ness from a Faith­full Husband

I have been mar­ried for the last 14 years. I had been strug­gling to live with dig­nity and integrity. I had been work­ing all through the years from the dawn to late at 10 PM doing my reg­u­lar jobs and part time jobs and insur­ance agen­cies. I am blessed with two beloved sons now they are aged 13 and 12 years. I loved my wife beyond every­thing but neglected her in words that was not delib­er­ate. Dur­ing this strug­gle I also took care to upgrade my aca­d­e­mic qualifications.

But when I found that my wife was hav­ing extra mar­tial affairs I almost dev­as­tated and lost all lust for life. She indi­rectly remorsed for her unfaith­ful atti­tude but still she is not con­fess­ing that she was unfaith­ful. Since I am a man of integrity and hon­esty I pre­fer to live upon prin­ci­ples and a firm believer in God.

On 11 the of this month she left me for this rea­son but divorce is a least chance, I do hope we will reunit very soon.

By God grace now I sleep with my eleder son one side and younger son other side and above all the mighty God tak­ing care of us all through­out the day and night. I often broke down infront my sons when I send them to school in the morn­ing but our mighty God strength­ens me and I do hope God will not do any­thing wrong to a pure hearted man who lives for a purpose.

I wake up at 4 00 O clock in the morn­ing pre­pare break­fast, lunch and snack for my sons and leave that on the table for them to eat when they come from school. I see that God has pur­pose out of this.

I for­give my wife through this let­ter and resolve what­ever hap­pens to me I will leave them to God for judge­ment. I now some vested inter­ested due to jeal­ousy deliv­er­ately tried to destab­lise a good family.

I thanks Mr. Burt Gold­man for this web­site to give me a chance to open my heart.

I thank all the peo­ple who read my for­give­ness let­ter and advice them to be strict,vigilant and be hon­est in you fam­ily life as only once we make a fam­ily and it should with­out any black spot.

With all the best and regards to the read­ers and Mr. Burt Gold­man team.
K. A. Thomas
India

Michelle says

TO ANYBODY I EVER HURT IN THIS OR PREVIOUS LIVES,

PLEASE FORGIVE ME AND I WILL TREAT ANYBODY THAT CROSSES MY WAY WITH KINDNESS AND RESPECT.

Michelle says

DEAR LUCKY,

PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR ABANDONNING YOU BUT I HAD TOO MANY THINGS GOING ON INTO MY LIFE TO TAKE CARE OF A CAT AT THAT TIME. I THINK ABOUT YOU MANY TIMES AND I REALLY FEEL BAD FOR ABANDONNING YOU. THANK YOU FOR BEING THE WONDERFUL CAT YOU WERE. I LOVE YOU.

Michelle says

DEAR URIEL AND YAEL,

PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR NOT HAVING BEEN ALWAYS A PERFECT MOM FOR YOU. YOU ARE MY DEAREST TREASURES AND I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING INTO MY LIFE AND I LOVE YOU UNCONDITIONALLY.

Michelle says

DEAR MICHELLE,
THANK YOU FOR BEING THIS STRONG AND WONDERFUL BEING I HAVE BEEN IGNORING FOR SO MANY YEARS…FORGIVE ME FOR NOT BEING AWARE I WAS LIVING WITH SUCH A WISE AND LOVING PERSON. I AM STARTING TO LOVE AND TO ACCEPT YOU JUST LIKE YOU ARE. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Michelle says

DEAR PATRICK,

PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR NOT TAKING CARE OF YOU WHEN YOU WERE SICK AND FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING YOU. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU DID FOR ME. I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.

Michelle says

DEAR FREDERIQUE,

I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING THAT YOU DID FOR ME. I WANT YOU TO FORGIVE ME FOR ANYTHING I EVER DID AGAINST YOU IN THIS LIFE OR PREVIOUS LIVES. I LOVE YOU.
YOUR SISTER

Michelle says

DEAR RAFI,

THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU, PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

Michelle says

DEAR MOM,

I KNOW THAT I HAVE NOT ALWAYS BEEN THE DAUGHTER THAT YOU WANTED ME TO BE BUT I AM WRITING YOU THIS LETTER TO TELL YOU THAT I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.
I WOULD LIKE YOU TO FORGIVE ME FOR TELLING DAD THE SECRET ABOUT MY SISTER NOT BEING HIS CHILD, BUT THIS SECRET THAT I WAS KEEPING INSIDE OF ME SINCE THE AGE OF 14 HAS REALLY HURTING ME.
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HURT AT THE WAY YOU SHOWED LOVE TO MY SISTER BUT ALWAYS PUTTING ME DOWN AND REJECTING ME BUT I FORGIVE YOU AND I UNDERSTAND IT WAS JUST A WAY TO PROTECT HER AND TO HIDE YOUR GUILT FEELING. I ALSO FORGIVE YOU FOR NOT OPENING THE DOOR OF YOUR HOUSE WHEN I CAME BACK FROM ISRAEL AND THAT YOU KNEW I HAD NO PLACE TO GO. IT REALLY MADE ME A STRONGER AND MORE COMPASSIONATE PERSON. IT ALSO TAUGHT ME NOT TO TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED. IT ALSO GAVE ME AN AMOUNT OF FAITH THAT NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE HAVE.I HAVE THE PROOF THAT WHATEVER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, EVERYTHING IS FOR THE GOOD, AND THAT GOD WILL ALWAYS BE WITH ME. I ALSO WANT TO THANK YOU FOR THE WAY YOU HELPED ME WHEN MY CHILDREN WERE GROWING UP. I KNOW HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THOSE KIDS. I ONLY WANT TO ASK YOU TO PLEASE ANSWER THE PHONE AND ACCEPT TO SEE ME. IT’S BEEN ALMOST TWO YEARS I DID NOT SEE YOU AND I WOULD LIKE TO HUG YOU, TO ASK FORGIVENESS FROM YOU BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY I MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG IN A PREVIOUS LIFE. I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU THAT I LOVE YOU.

Lillian says

Dear Burt

My for­give­ness let­ter is writ­ten to myself. For me it is always so easy to for­give another but more dif­fi­cult to for­give myself. Right now I vow to for­give myself for past trans­gres­sions. I also vow to love myself since I believe that God is within.

Thanks for all you do Burt. You are a God Send to Man kind

Lil­lian — San Jac­into CA

loni says

Dear fam­ily; I have have put it upon myself to write to you all this day in hope that by for­giv­ing you I in turn will also feel for­give­ness for myself. Not only from me,. But from you also. Mom and Dad.. For­give me for not being able to trust you enough to tell you things I should have. Such as… Being molested by Grandad for two years. I was only seven when this started. You seemed to hold Grandad in such High esteem, I could not break your hearts. I put you first. And although, Dad my heart ached to tell youI was so afraid of you. Espe­cially when you drank. I remem­ber you say­ing, That girls were not as good as boys. I most of the time felt this way. Even up to adulthood.I know that you raised me to be sub­servient to men. And I do under­stand the ways in which you were raised. For­give me for hav­ing lit­tle faith. But you would have sent me away. I felt guilty enough. Mom; For­give me for not trust­ing you with this and other issues that plagued my life. I could not trust you with alot of my secrets.Because you would tell others.Or go on a yelling ram­page and scare every­one. For­give me mom. I now realise that you were this due to the pres­sure on your brain from you anuryisms. When you became so ill from them and accured brain dam­age I had lost my mom for­ever. Then Dad; when you stroked,I had lost you too. I looked after you both until you passed on. For­give me for some days I had lit­tle patience for you. Try­ing to work and raise my kids. Tak­ing you to ther­a­pies, doc­tors and look­ing after your lives for eigh­teen years at times would take its toles on me and my fam­ily. Now my sis­ter and three broth­ers. For­give me for not want­ing to involve myself in your lives after our par­ents moved on. Sister;forgive me me for not being ther for you when you devel­oped can­cer. I for­give you for not being there for me thru mom and dads ill­nesses although I would have appre­ci­ated time off once in a while. For­give my self­ish­ness. I realise you had your own issues with our par­ents also. Broth­ers. For­give me for chang­ing as you say I did from sweet to cranky. I had a large weight on my shoul­ders with no help because every­one thought that I was the eas­i­est to dump it on. For­give my naive­ness. I for­give you for treat­ing mom, dad and myself like we didnt mat­ter most days.Now; Aunts and Uncles, For­give me for not pay­ing respects to you at fam­ily func­tions. Or not keep­ing up with you thru the years. I have been angry with you all for not help­ing your brother or sister;[my par­ents], at their dif­fi­cult times. I could have used a few kind words after they left.Even today. Now myself. Loni; I am one of the most respon­si­ble peo­ple I know. Although life has been more sour than sweet I have always man­aged to get thru it at the end of the day with a kind word or ges­ture to some­one in need. I for­give myself for the years of guilt.For feel­ing as tho I were never good enough. For feel­ing bad and dirty.For not say­ing things I should have. For not chang­ing what I could have. For being some­one for every­one else and not for myself. I for­give me.Nuff-said

Tricia says

I for­give, the men who sex­u­ally abused me and real­ized the aware­ness that is brought into my life. I for­give my ex-husband for not under­stand­ing how to cope with his issues and real­ize this forced me to once again address my fears and trust issues. I for­give but I am also in grat­i­tude for I am stronger and more com­pas­sion­ate, because of all these events that have hap­pen in my life. Thank you Burt for giv­ing me a place to express myself.

margarita says

Yes, for­give­ness is the foun­da­tion for every­thing we came to be in this world. For me there is one power in me that helps me to soften all the hurts and it can pen­e­trate throough all the lay­ers that I and we for­get about over the years. When I look up and see the One who took all our hurts and although he was fright­ened accepted them but then did not become a ‘vic­tim’. He said “Father for­give them they do not know what they are doing”. He opened his arms and sur­ren­dered them all to the One who is the Source of Love and in that moment he was able to pass on that power to each of us. So when I need to for­give I call on the name of the Source (called Father by some), the Son and the Breath or the Spirit to enable me to for­give and let go because usu­ally ‘they do not know what they are doing’ and often nei­ther do I.So in this moment let us all pause and receive that gen­er­ous power even if it takes time to soften our hurts and flow through us to touch those liv­ing or dead and our­selves too who may need our for­give­ness. Burt, thank you for remind­ing us of this. You are a bright gem.

Mar­garita

Kathy says

Dear Burt,
I know this is a good idea but don’t know how to get there. Lived in ter­ror all my life and when I let that guard down I am engulfed in anger and rage. I would have sworn to you that I am not angry until last week­end. I started leter to my brother because I am the least angry with him. I am not sure I can sur­vive the anger with my par­ents, ex-husband, or self. I have big holes in my mem­ory. Diag­nosed Major Depres­sion and PTSD. Meds help me func­tion day to day. Ther­apy help­ing too.
Sin­cerely,
Kathy

Alwy says

Hello, Burt
I once read a poem in among many of my father memos. the poem is in my african lan­guage (Swahili — very com­mon here). the mes­sage is that the strongest of the strong heart is the per­son who for­gives, for the heart is harder than dia­mond or any stone. My father past away when i was eight years, and he (my father) had chil­dren from his pre­vi­ous mar­rige who are essen­tially our elder broth­ers and sis­ters. When we (I and my real broth­ers) were grow­ing up, my mother used to tell us that our half broth­ers and sis­ters have taken all that our father left. They have forged things like Will, title deeds and so on. Later in my life i came to learn what my mama was say­ing were just lies or to put it in a respect­ful way she was just imag­in­ing things. My mama is still alive with all her five sences are in good work­ing order.
Am a afraid to con­front her and tell her she mis­led us as kids by feed­ing us wrong infor­ma­tion, caus­ing a drift between us and our half elder broth­ers and sis­ters, mak­ing us grow­ing up with anger and think about noth­ing in life but seek­ing ven­gence. I am afraid that i will annoy her, embarace her, cre­ate a drift, deve­l­ope a sence of mis­trust or she may feel belit­tled, but i have always want to tell, how i have wasted my life because of her teaching.My Life passed by unno­ticed. The only thing in my mind and the only life i was liv­ing in was a dis­tant future, .ie i have fin­ished my stud­ies and i am out there seek­ing ven­gance and recover what is right­fully mine and my sib­ling.
Mr. Burt I love my mama so much and i am afraid to write her a let­ter of forgiving.She may feel revealed, put her in an awk­wad pos­tion and unpleas­ant feel­ings. She is all i got. I always think i should just keep quite and let her live the rest of her life peace­fully with all the sup­port i can give to make her life most com­fort­able and worth liv­ing. May be this way (by sup­port­ing her life needs) would be the best way of writ­ting my for­giv­ing let­ter to my mama.

Kathy says

Dear Burt,

Radha says

to a…
You may have had a tough time work­ing with me. you did a lot to see me through…
But
Do you see that I also had my set of con­straints and ordeals and I always tried my best to never let down the peo­ple with me?
Still…some words said thought­lessly have been exchanged… No I wouldnt go into the his­tory of this and that and who started what…
“You are cry­ing for what you did“
what did I do? To always pray and do and say things that no one should be hurt and in the process carry a lot of load myself?
Today, I want to shed all that load. and to do that, I for­give those harsh words…
Peo­ple are always good I believe… there are unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tions at times. Let us hope there are no more and we have nice good times ahead.
With best wishes
R

Patricia A.C. Eppenbrock says

“For­give­ness Let­ter to Myself”

My Dear­est Patricia,

I for­give you for hold­ing on to the belief that you were some­how respon­s­able for your own aban­don­ment at the age of two. For the belief that you were not meant to recieve love even after a beau­ti­ful fam­ily brought you in to their lives, gave you a name and unselfishly opened their home and hearts to you.
I for­give you for hav­ing the capac­ity to see the good in oth­ers but not your­self. For car­ing and giv­ing your love, patience and strengths to those who deserve it but not to your­self.
I for­give you for the bat­tles that you felt you had to fight alone.
I for­give you for the fear that has caused you to build a wall so strong so high that even the tini­est shard of light won’t dare to shine through.
I for­give you for glanc­ing at your reflec­tion then turn­ing away refus­ing to see.
But most of all Patri­cia, I for­give you for Deny­ing your own inner truth.

LOVE,
Patricia

jaaz says

this goes to bar­bara, my bio­log­i­cal mother
i for­give you for the things you did to me. even though i thought those things had ham­pered my growth i now real­ize that had it not been for all of those ter­ri­ble things i would not be the per­son i am today, and for that i send you thanks. i also real­ize that even though i for­give you i do not have to be with you. by let­ting you go and all the things i thought i had missed out on, i am able to live my life in peace, love and com­pas­sion. these things i learned because of my expe­ri­ences with you. i wish you well.

Thomas A. Hilton, Jr. says

I believe that our early child­hood expe­ri­ences live with us through adult­hood and you’ve just showed me a pow­er­ful exam­ple. You’ve also showed me the way to can­cel out those neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences from work­ing in our future. I’m teach­ing young par­ents the pow­ers of pos­i­tive encour­age­ment words and expe­ri­ences in our chil­dren can do won­ders. I’ll pass this infor­ma­tion onto every­one in my face­book and through my non-profit orga­ni­za­tion http://www.praisingyourchidl.com

Thanks,
Thomas A. Hilton, Jr.

Gina says

I did the “let your mom and dad shrink to fit into your heart” com­pas­sion med­i­ta­tion when I was 13. That was all the for­give­ness I ever had to prac­tice for under­stand­ing. If you lis­ten to your par­ents or who­ever you feel the need to for­give per­sons con­cerns and com­plaints, and truly expe­ri­ence their valid­ity points, you are relieved from cre­at­ing their rela­tion­ships and go on to build yours.

http://www.emofree.com for more issues and true healing

best tap while you read your own for­give­ness letter.

Bobby Brown says

I brought this into my life, I must before becom­ing phys­i­cal thought that look­ing like my father will be good, but that didn’t go well with mom. I know mom you just took your anger on me, I for­give you, I will for­get beign kicked out when I was 10 years old and being com­pared to my brother and being told I wasn’t as good look­ing as he is, he is good look­ing, he still is. So, I for­give them the regrets on my suc­cess, and that I didn’t set­tle for less. Now, that I am very ill, and they left me alone, and I don’t see them because I can’t help them, I do miss them. I am not of help to them; they could help me even with just a kind word, but it’s all ok. I will come out of this, some­way, some­how, my health will come back to me. I for­give the girls who say they loved me when they just wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent that love from me. I love you all, and I wish them the best, above all I hope you never have to go through what I have been through. I for­give myself for set­ting all these past things in motion. Cheers.

Susan says

Hi Burt

You’re right: I didn’t write a for­give­ness let­ter after your first email. Thanks for the sec­ond one though! It pushed me to do it.

I’ve just writ­ten one to my mum, which I won’t send, but guess will ‘clear’ me and make me feel bet­ter. I shall now write one to my ex-husband and also one to my dad, who died a few years ago. I won’t send those either, but feel that it will be worth doing.

Thanks again!
Susan

Tammy says

This let­ter is to all my par­ents,
This let­ter is not to hurt any one but too help me to release me from myself..I for­give you bio mom for leav­ing my dad when I was just a baby and my brother and sis­ter too. you hurt me then by lock­ing us in a small clost­set and leav­ing for the day to be with your lovers but I for­give you for that too. As soon as you lefted us behind our dad started to drink very heavy and he would leave us alone on week­ends at a time, come­ing home to just tear up the place and beat a kid or two, but I for­give you dad I do. I know you where lefted with alot with three kids to raise on your own. I also for­give all them birth­days you never said happy birth­day or gave any gifts. I also for give you for not com­ing to any of my school plays and I had to miss.
I for­give you for all the chris­mas I had no gifts. I for­give for all the times I had to miss out on ‚like cup­cakes and Val­in­tine cards and gift exchanges,halloween night, pretty much every thing all the other kids got to do. I for­give you and I love you too. I for­give you for kick­ing me down the stairs mak­ing me pee myself as I went down them all because I was doing my home work when you called me to do the lau­rndry and I did not come down fast enough. I for give you for mak­ing me pick a wheep­ing wil­low twig to beat me with when I left a cup outside.I had welts for weeks but I for­give you I do.
I for­give you for the time you beat my sis­ter so bad you riped out the phone cord out of the wall and wraped it around her neck til she was blue ‚I cryed for you to stop but I was afaid of what you might do. So I ran away at 10years old that night you beat my sis­ter blue. I for­give you I do. It was win­ter and my toes where com­ming though my shoes but I walked and walked to I came to this house, Lights where out and I went in though the back door I was frozen and afaid and did’nt know what to do, so I went in no one was home. just a sec­ond went by and lights where com­ing down the dri­ve­way. I sank within myself and went down this dark room that had a door that I went in but was full of water as I went down the steps.. I could not see and water was com­ming up my leggs so I back up to get­ting scared out of my mind when I backed up into the own­ers. lets just say that this night was a eye open­ing time of my life. They wanted to know where I can from and all this sfuff. So I broke down cry­ing to them about all that was going on. They kept me that night and I’ll never for get that they where the nicist I had every meet so warm and lov­ing I remem­ber wish­ing they where my par­ents. But that all came to and end when they took me to this place my father had to come and get me. I can remem­ber him telling them I had prob­lems. I needed to go back with you funny thing is I wanted to because I loved him.I five­g­ive you for that. But things did not change they only got worse when you broght my brother in the house by his hair kick­ing and pounch­ing him like he was a man.I was really afaid of you and I went under my bed. Next day my brother was gone I thought he was dead.I was to afaid of you to ask where he was. a year later I found out he was in a fos­ter home. I thought how lucky he was . I for­give you for that. Later at 11 he came back for a visit but he had let­ter from our bio mom. I wanted to know this mom so bad so when he left his old room I went in look­ing for those let­ters there was a num­ber with her # on it. I just had to call, but i can remem­ber being so a faird if dad was to wake up and find me or get the phone bill I would get it. But I called any­way. she hang up on me the fist time so I called again, she talked to me and instint love grow with in me for her. but I don’t think the same for her. She did get us Kids right away but kicked my sis­ter out at six­teen on her own. I for five her for that. At 12 she told me she did not love me as much as her two youngest ones, I was crushed but I for­give you for that too.I was 13 when she put me in fos­ter care cause she could’nt deal with me. I for­give you for that. I for­give my fos­ter par­ent for when I got raped in the night by one of her other forster kids I had got­ten pag­nent and I beleave her to have put some­thing in my tis­sue that made me abort the baby .She rased goats and had stuff to abort them if she needed to. I for­give her for this. I was a mess from that point on and I for­give myself for all that I had aloud to con­sume me. I for­give myself for not let­ting go of the past that had hurt me. I for­give myself for not lov­ing me back then. I do love me know and I set my old self free. For I for­give all that had hurt me,including me. Thanks Burt I needed this to come out There is so much more but I already feel 100% bet­ter, Thanks,Tammy

Leila says

Dear Arie, I’m sure mind-bobleness is at the heart of it.

Elaine says

I have for­given and writ­ten for­given let­ters to those who have hurt me in the past. I am sick and tired of forgv­ing peo­ple. I say this because even with my own mother whom have hurted me treme­dously as a child grow­ing up until my adult life, my sib­blngs and friends has got­ten my for­give­ness and all those who have hurted me n my life­time. In my opin­ion they have taken my for­give­ness for weak­ness and they decided to do the same things over and over again and I will for­give them over and over again. My ques­tion is at what point does some­one stop for­giv­ing the things that they have for­given in the past that keeps on repeat­ing itself. I reached the point where I have walked away from everyone.

Becky says

I wrote a Let­ter of For­give­ness to myself begin­ning of this year for all the things that I have done wrong in the past. I burnt that let­ter after read­ing and I no longer carry the guilt now.

Aris Notis says

I think most peo­ple — me one of them — don’t know which per­son to start with? There are prob­a­b­ley many per­sons we would bet­ter for­give them now. But there are in a mess in our minds. Start­ing first with our­selves? Start­ing with some­one else? This is the fist bar­rier to forgiveness.

Strength says

For­give­ness let­ter to my husband :

Dear Fred:

We are at that point in our marriage.I am leav­ing with the chil­dren on Friday.Going back to our motherland.It is with great sad­ness that I wrote this let­ter today.I have many fears about the future and how it’s going to pan out. But know­ing me and my pos­i­tive atti­tude, I will make it work for the chil­dren and myself.
When you had the affair in 2005, I for­gave you and we worked together on our marriage.It was impor­tant to stay together because I could not hurt our son and could not bear the thought of a bro­ken mar­riage.
I allowed my mother into our lives.You found her love and pres­ence over­bear­ing and I am sorry.I can­not ask her to stay away because of the death of my brother and you know that.
You had an affair again in Novem­ber last year.You lied and cheated over and over again. If I was respon­si­ble in any way for the break in our mar­riage , I am truly sorry.But I hon­estly feel like I gave it every­thing I had and I am com­pletely tied of try­ing.
I for­gave you in Decem­ber last year and we tried again.Well, so I thought. But I found out again in April this year that you con­tin­ued your rela­tion­ship with this other per­son and me. I find it really really hard to believe that you blame my mother for this.You came home so drunk one night and ver­bally abused my parents.They were alone in the house sleeping.You hurt them. You hurt me, soooo many times.You hurt the children.You hurt our lives together. You hurt yourself.

I for­give you, I for­give you, I for­give you.

But my great­est pain is that you and my daugh­ter do not get on. Yes, she did things to deli­brately annoy you. You got so angry with her. From the time she was 4 years old you shouted at here.I did not see this when she was young.I only saw her mis­chief. Until recently I did not have the courage to tell you when you were out of place. Well I’m telling you know, chil­dren have to grow up in a happy, free envi­ron­ment. Where they can laugh and talk as loudly as they want to.It does not mat­ter if she sits with her feet on the set­tee, or if she did not wash her cup,or if she bangs her room door or if she puts the fan on when she is hot or the heater when she is cold or if she raises her voice to you now that she is a teenager and that she does not talk to you and I know that she does not respect you.
But it does mat­ter that you do not talk to her other then tell her what to do or what she is doing wrong.It does mat­ter when you refer to my child and say that ‘she is being bitchy’ . It mat­ters a great deal.We are the par­ents, we are the adults.I am search­ing deep within me and I am sin­cerely say­ing this to you.

I for­give you.

I wish you a life blessed with hap­pi­ness , joy , abun­dance.
We go in peace.
Live your life DAD!
God bless you.

Amy says

I wish I could for­give you — and I did the last time you humil­i­ated me but I can’t this time. The best thing for me to do is feel bad that you can’t see what is real and what is not and let you go on with your life with­out me. I don’t need your kind of thought process in my life. I for­give you but I also set you free. You blame your nasty words on your med­ica­tion and I think that your med­ica­tion is just “legal” drugs and that you are a drug addict. Even in your late 60’s you are a woman on drugs and you accept no respon­si­bil­ity for your actions. I’m done with you and, Burt, I did noth­ing to her and in fact had a good time with her both times and then after she calls and blasts me for some­thing I did not do — so I think she is men­tally off and on drugs. I don’t need that in my life — she is my long time (14 years) boy friend’s mom. And I loved her because she was just that. But I don’t any­more. I will live peace­fully with­out her.

Linda says

As some­one that had a nar­cis­sis­tic and manip­u­la­tive mother, and a ver­bally abu­sive ex hus­band, I would like to com­ment on the issue of “for­give­ness”. My mother had an affair with her sis­ters hus­band which also pro­duced a child. She lied to my father to her four chil­dren, and abused us in many ways. (One exam­ple is that she saved her money for “trips” to see her sis­ter and her “lover”, but we went with­out neces­si­ties like den­tal care and proper cloth­ing). She farmed her kids to whomever would take them, and that put me in the hos­pi­tal once with a bad dog bite. She also missed my high school and col­lege grad­u­a­tions because she was vis­it­ing her “lover” and her sis­ter. My dad was always there for me though.….and even though she bad mouthed him to any­one that would listen…he always loved me and treated me with respect.
Now she is old…and when I was on the run from an abu­sive ex hus­band, she insisted I come visit her, even though she lives in the oppo­site direc­tion I was going, and of course I knew my ex hus­band would fig­ure out that my mother’s house would be the first place I would go.
So because I wouldn’t risk my life by going to see her, she called me crazy, told me I should have myself com­mit­ted and cut me out of her will.
I shook my head and told myself I was bet­ter off with­out her, and feel no remorse, nor any need to for­give. She is my enemy now, and I do not for­give ene­mies, for I will never allow myself to be put in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion by some­one like that again. To for­give some­one for abuse of that nature is allow­ing that behav­ior to per­pet­u­ate and con­tinue from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. The abuser thinks its “ok”, no con­se­quences. Bet­ter to cut them off, which sends a clear message.…I will never tol­er­ate that kind of behav­ior, and nei­ther should any­one else. Ask any bat­tered woman who had gone back to her abu­sive ex hus­band time after time. We “for­give” them, which gives them per­mis­sion to start all over again. My ex hus­band is now also my enemy. I am very wary of my ene­mies. We should leave abu­sive sit­u­a­tions, and never turned back. Chil­dren abused by adults that know bet­ter, have no oblig­a­tion to for­give, and should go on liv­ing their lives as adults with­out using the “abuse” as an excuse to con­tinue per­pet­u­at­ing that kind of behav­ior. They should “live”, as if every day was Christ­mas. Be happy and joy­ful, with­out mak­ing excuses.
I am very happy with my life now, and I didn’t have to for­give any­one to feel that way.

Debbie says

Hi Burt,
I just read about the for­give­ness let­ter and find it truly fas­ci­nat­ing, espe­cially since I just talked to some­one about why I have suf­fered with anx­i­ety attacks for the past 20 years. Since the day my Dad remar­ried and dis­owned me. She said I have held unto that hurt all this time. I wrote a let­ter to him telling him how I felt when I was get­ting mar­ried 13 years ago and he said the only rea­son I wrote it was to save my face at my wed­ding. I was really try­ing to show him how hurt I was and hop­ing he would see that and be in my life again. 4 years ago he told me to my face at my grandmother’s 90th Bday party that he hated me and wanted noth­ing to do with me. That was very trau­matic for me to deal with and my anx­i­ety attacks increased after that. I have had 2 reiki treat­ments from my brother’s girl­friend who said my heart chakra was blocked and it was from the hurt of my Dad. I was just told a few days ago to look at my Dad’s pic­ture and tell him every­thing that I feel and let it all out which I did but I am def­i­nitely going to write the let­ter of for­give­ness to him.
Thank you Burt for every­thing you do to help peo­ple, I feel I will now be able to finally enjoy life and be anx­i­ety free!!!

Deb­bie

suri says

Thanks for a truly effec­tive tool, Burt. For any pin­ing love­bird look­ing for a model, here’s my (unde­liv­ered) for­give­ness letter:

Dear Anne,

I was as dif­fi­cult a hus­band as any woman could deal with, full of my own anx­i­eties from a rough child­hood and dri­ven by inse­cu­ri­ties to never-ending ambi­tion. I accom­plished amaz­ing things in our years together but was never sat­is­fied, always push­ing myself — and you — to achieve more and more and more.

Strangely enough, this rest­less­ness and relent­less drive extended to the spir­i­tual side of things too: church and med­i­ta­tion and quiet times were also under­mined by this need to some­how bet­ter it all.

It’s only now that I can see how this must have been hell on you, bur­dened as you are with the intense shy­ness and painful inse­cu­rity that’s been a crazy strug­gle for you all your life.

So I for­give you for all the things you did that hurt me and made me feel humil­i­ated. Stuck as I was in my own self-absorbed state I couldn’t per­ceive that these acts must have brought you even more suf­fer­ing in guilt and remorse bea­cause you are at heart a sim­ple and hon­est person.

More impor­tantly (I think), I for­give myself for every­thing I did. Both for induc­ing your behav­iour and in retal­i­at­ing to it later with mind­less acts of my own.

I won’t give you this let­ter to read — too much bad blood has passed between us for either one to sim­ply make or accept a state­ment on its face value. But I feel lighter in spirit just from the speak­ing out from my heart to acknowl­edge this prob­lem that has hung over my head and cast a shadow over both our souls almost forever.

But despite not read­ing this let­ter, my belief is that you will see the major change that I already feel within me, and I’m equally con­fi­dent that your behav­iour too will reflect this in the way you act in our rela­tion­ship from now on. Like prayer has proven, we can com­mu­ni­cate as much with our thoughts as we do with our words and actions.

I for­give you, I for­give myself, and I think this might be a best def­i­n­i­tion of the word love that we have found so far.

Suri.

Aline says

Dear Burt,
I had issues with my sis­ters upon my Moth­ers pass­ing and found it very dif­fi­cult to for­give them for the way they treated me and the uncar­ing man­ner they treated my Mother. Six months after her pass­ing my hus­band died of a heart attack 20 min­utes after arriv­ing at the hos­pi­tal with no warn­ing. I got no emo­tional, finan­cial or any other sup­port from these two in that time. It has been over 3 years and just last week one sis­ter wanted to know if we could have a sis­ter rela­tion­ship again. I have for­given her from the past issues and answered her let­ter by telling her that we could have a rela­tion­ship but under very dif­fer­enct cir­cum­stances than pre­vi­ously. I refuse to be crit­i­cized about my life, I refuse to par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions about other peo­ple, or any of the other neg­a­tive activ­i­ties that enter­tain her. She has not responded to my let­ter so I am mov­ing for­ward know­ing that I can­not change other peo­ple and how they live their lives. The only thing I can con­trol is who I spend my time with. The for­give­ness part came about a year ago when I real­ized this. I wrote a long let­ter for­giv­ing them both for all the slights and hurts they have put upon me over the years and real­ize they only act out of igno­rance and jeal­ousy. But with for­give­ness I no longer worry about their opin­ions because they are so wrong. With the free­dom of for­give­ness and mov­ing on to cre­ate a life for myself I have also found much self worth. I think for­give­ness has allowed me to cut the ties that hurt.

Chris says

I must for­give my self for allow­ing my 25 year mar­riage to end this year. I for­give myself for enabling oth­ers to not live up to their own poten­tial. I too, must for­give oth­ers for tak­ing advan­tage of a giv­ing spirit. And now, I start my life over, or from a new begin­ning. I am respon­si­ble for myself. And I choose to let oth­ers take their own respon­si­bil­ity. I do not wish to enable any­one to be less of what they deserve. I choose to for­give! Thank You!

Arie says

Dear Burt

I,I myself,I beg you for forgivness.It was on the day when I felt to be over­loaded by every­thing what I had yet to do and in a moment of ill-considered deci­sion to cut off all links with every­body and with every­thing to be alone and to choose the only one main thinG to do.In
this moment I jumped to clik on the Un-subscribe info.Thank you for your les­son of for­giv­ness and for your mind-bobleness. Arie

Leila says

It seems to me that most peo­ple have had a child­hood marred in some way — abu­sive par­ents, sib­ling favouritism, mis­un­der­stood per­son­al­ity etc. and retain some scars from it. We feel that what hap­pened to us in child­hood some­how dam­ages us as adults and so it seems obvi­ous that the not-perfect way our par­ents brought us up must have given us prob­lems in our adult lives that we would not oth­er­wise have had. For this rea­son par­ents are a first choice in blame and for­give­ness. It is for me though my cur­rent rela­tion­ship with my par­ents (or any­one for that mat­ter) that seems to fos­ter blame or for­give­ness. If the other per­son is look­ing to under­stand my feel­ings about some­thing that I am not happy about in the rela­tion­ship (past or present — maybe the past always informs the present), and I am equally open to under­stand­ing their per­spec­tive on it, then the pos­si­bil­ity for for­give­ness is never-ending. If, though, the other per­son refuses to acknowl­edge my feel­ings about the past because of their own fear of explor­ing what hap­pened, then there is less chance for for­give­ness to occur and more chance that we will blame them for leav­ing us stuck with these unre­solved, or unre­solv­ing, feelings.

Kenneth says

Dear Sir
It has been hard for me to express myself in wit­ing. As a child, I wrote a let­ter that was some­how mis­un­der­stood and my father harshly dis­ci­plined me. Since that time I have resigned, to, verbably in the pres­ence of another to dis­cuss what­ever con­cerns I have.

For­giv­ing for me is not hard, it is know­ing if the per­sons involved accepts or under­stand the empact of their actions as I have learned too. I hate being weighted down with guilt, deal­ing with uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions because of the inabil­ity of oth­ers to forgive.

Thanks for shar­ing this les­son as some of my fam­ily mem­ber have had the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten and are now apply­ing infor­ma­tion received. I am try­ing to write again to see if I can express what I feel to my mother since my father has tran­si­tioned. She remem­bers the inci­dent and was hurt at my reac­tions to it. There­fore, I’ll sit down and try to write a let­ter of for­give­ness to her in my father’s stead.

Thanks for being there.
Kenneth

Kenneth says

Dear Sir
It has been hard for me to express myself in wit­ing. As a child, I worte a let­ted that was some­how mis­un­der­stood and my father harshly dis­ci­plined me. Since that time I have resigned, to, verbably in the pres­ence of another to dis­cuss what­ever con­cerns I have.

For­giv­ing for me is not hard, it is know­ing if the per­sons involved accepts or under­stand the empact of their actions as I have learned too. I hate being weighted down with guilt, deal­ing with uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions because of the inabil­ity of oth­ers to forgive.

Thanks for shar­ing this les­son as some of my fam­ily mem­ber have had the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten and are now apply­ing infor­ma­tion received. I am try­ing to write again to see if I can express what I feel to my mother since my father has tran­si­tioned. She remem­bers the inci­dent and was hurt at my reac­tions to it. There­fore, I’ll sit down and try ti write a let­ter of for­give­ness to her in my father’s stead.

Thanks for being there.
Kenneth

rahul says

To all whom I per­son­ally mis­un­der­stood, I did hurt, I want to ask for for­give­ness & for­give them all.May god bless all.

rahul

rahul says

to all whom i per­son­ally mis­un­der­stood, i did hurt, com­mit­ted a offence, iwould like to ask for for­give­ness & for­give them all

rahul

Dorothy says

Hi Burt,

What a won­der­ful post­ing of the for­give­ness let­ter. I have since writ­ten two let­ters, one to my mother who had great dif­fi­culty bring­ing up my sis­ter and I as a sin­gle par­ent as she left my father, and one to my sis­ter. I have printed them out from the com­puter and will not send them but will rip them up as I think they are sen­si­tive and would not like to hurt my sister’s feel­ings. You see, my mother is dead but I have writ­ten telling her that I would for­give her for any­thing she did because I love her more than life itself and that I look for­ward to being with her one day in the future.

Dorothy, Cyprus

Jenny says

Hi every­one,

Many years ago I wrote such a let­ter to my dad. I was preg­nant with my first child at the time and felt my life needed some tidy­ing up before becom­ing a par­ent myself. It wasn’t actu­ally a for­give­ness let­ter as such. I just wrote to him telling him how much he had hurt me as a child by how he had behaved towards me, how noth­ing was ever good enough and how I had bent over back­wards to be per­fect enough to deserve his love (there was never any abuse in our rela­tion­ship, but not feel­ing loved and good enough is a painful enough expe­ri­ence!) I gave the let­ter to him and it took him exactly 2 years to open and read it and then another to talk to me about it. But the won­der­ful thing for me was that the bur­den instantly lifted when I gave the let­ter to him. It didn’t mat­ter whether he read it or not, just hav­ing said it made me free, plus I felt I’d handed it over to him. When he finally had read it he said he never knew he had hurt me, he hadn’t intended to and he was
sorry. This was prob­a­bly the biggest emo­tional heal­ing I ever expe­ri­enced in my life.

Karen says

To all those who have badly hurt me,i for­give you all.And the hard­est of all,i for­give myself for hurt­ing oth­ers, because i was hurt.

Vesna says

For­give­ness let­ter to a doc­tor respon­si­ble for the death of my hus­band
Dear dr.R.
Four years ago I lost my hus­band due to your negligence.You admit­ted him to hos­pi­tal for a lung can­cer oper­a­tion than sud­denly decided to go ski­ing for a cou­ple of weeks!!! All this time he stayed in hos­pi­tal with­out any treat­ment result­ing in his dete­ri­o­rat­ing of lung capac­ity. You came back from your trip beau­ti­fully tanned while my hus­band got more sick and pale.Than you decided you could not oper­ate on him because his con­di­tion wors­ened (heart grow weaker in the mean­time ).I per­ceived you as a hang­man who dealt a deadly blow to both our lives.Five months and hor­ri­ble num­ber of chemo and radi­a­tion treat­ments later he died.I was com­pletely broken.My body still alive but spirit dead.It took a great effort for my chil­dren (friends and my psy­chi­a­trist too) to bring me back to life.I remem­ber that the very first feel­ing (after months of total numb­ness) was deep hatred towards you.I wished you to brake your legs, your hands, your neck…and it lasted a long time.
Last year I heard, quite by chance, that you got seri­ously ill.I must admit that I felt grat­i­fied at the moment.But than some­thing changed in me! I remem­bered the hor­ror me and my chil­dren went through when my hus­band was ill.At first I started feel­ing sorry for your family,than I pitied you and unbe­liev­able thing hap­pened I started to feel guilty!Since than I went through many changes, have done a lot of read­ing on spir­i­tu­al­ity, and now I feel strong enough to for­give you for killing the man I loved very much, and to for­give myself for hat­ing you.I do not know if my hatred had any­thing to do with your ill­ness , but if that was the case surely my whole­hearted for­give­ness will prob­a­bly make you better.I sin­cerely wish you to get healthy again, and do you work bet­ter, save someone’s life.
Vesna

Connie says

What do you do when some­one won’t let you fortgive???

Jerry says

Burt,we have a cus­tom before our high hol­i­days to go to every­one we know and ask for for­give­ness for any­thing we might have done wrong, and we for­give any­one who asks.

The prob­lems here are:
1) We can­not for­give peo­ple for things they’ve done if they, them­selves, are not remorse­ful. We can­not for­give bin Laden, for exam­ple, because he plans to cause more pain.
2) In my case, I can­not think of any­one in my life who needs for­giv­ing. If any­thing I hope they will for­give me.

Solu­tion: Maybe our great­est adver­sary is our­selves. And today, I will endeavor to for­give myself for things I’ve done to harm my own life, and write a let­ter to that effect. But I won’t pub­lish it here. I’ll let you know how it works.

kris says

dear sajjid
we had the best of rela­tion­ship any­body cud envy, i doted over u fr no. of years..all was good till i felt and kept serv­ing u with every request, rea­son­able or un-resonable, there were no ques­tions asked.. just did it, duno, there was some mag­netic car­ishma and i did it much too will­ingly, kept my fam­ily as 2nd pri­or­ity, u meant every­thing to me, like GOD..
i do not blame u for sud­denly becom­ing sticky over issues which were rightly said and con­versed with u, there was no way i cud stoop low fr yr sake and hence i let the rela­tion­ship go! real­iz­ing that u too are human and all are sub­ject to err..
i for­give you.. fr all the HURT and embar­rass­ment that was passed to me.. i let u free fr all my feel­ings fr you.. i let go off, with all my heart and i wish u would be happy always and never turn around to look for me..
god­b­less you and yr family–

Zach Kong says

Won­der­ful post!

I always know that to for­give is to release your­self from hatred all other neg­a­tive emo­tions that accom­pany it. How­ever, it is really eas­ier said than done.

After read­ing this post about writ­ing a for­give­ness let­ter, I believe this can really helps one in relin­quish­ing the need to always blame and hate others.

I always like to write and I feel that some­times when you write things down, you will be able to put things in their own place and see the sit­u­a­tion in dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. This is espe­cially impor­tant when one real­ize that grab­bing hold of only 1 per­spec­tive of issue will bring more harm than good.

Per­son­ally I feel that writ­ing helps to bring a issue under dif­fer­ent light and you will be able to see things differently.

Thus, if one feels uncom­fort­able about approach­ing some­one to for­give, writ­ing a let­ter really helps. Even if one don’t send the let­ter to the respec­tive per­son, the sim­ple act of writ­ing can be quite lib­er­at­ing as well, isn’t it?

Once again, thanks for the great post. I’ll surely keep that in mind for the many years to come.

Burt Goldman says

Atti­tude can pretty much be summed up with the axiom ‘What you believe to be, is.’ But I would add to that, ‘for you.’ In other words, every one is right; for them. What­ever their beliefs. If they believe, what­ever they believe, it’s right; for them, not nec­es­sar­ily for you. Their beliefs may con­flict with yours; after all there are bil­lions of peo­ple who believe the oppo­site of other bil­lions of peo­ple. Are bil­lions of peo­ple wrong? Or are they only wrong when you com­pare them with what you believe?

When you are for­giv­ing some­one it is gen­er­ally for some slight that you believe has been done, usu­ally to you. But if that per­son truly believes he/she is right, then they are; from their point of view, and if, from your per­spec­tive, you believe that you are right, then you are both right. Who wins in this case is the one who wishes to con­tinue the rela­tion­ship on a com­fort­able level. Very often the three words ‘I was wrong’ said at the right moment can pro­duce mir­a­cles. But what, you might say, if I wasn’t wrong? Ah, then you must decide on whether the rela­tion­ship was wor­thy of the bond in the first place.

The for­give­ness let­ter takes all this into con­sid­er­a­tion. But if you feel awk­ward about send­ing it, don’t. The heal­ing is in the writ­ing not the sending.

Now take the case of Hazel, three or four com­ments above this one, a bro­ken wrist qual­i­fies as phys­i­cal abuse. For­giv­ing an abu­sive spouse is a far dif­fer­ent mat­ter than for­giv­ing some­one for a slight they feel because of some­thing done or said. Phys­i­cal abuse is really in a class by itself. Once can be for­given if the par­ties want the rela­tion­ship to con­tinue. Hazel you ask: ‘Should I write a for­give­ness let­ter even if I don’t for­give him?’

Before you do that take a sheet of paper and write ten things that you appre­ci­ate about him. By the time you get to the tenth line; you will have the answer to the question.

Once again: The heal­ing is in the writ­ing, not in the sending.

I hope these few words help.

Burt Gold­man

K.A. Thomas says

Dear Burt

For­give­ness with­out expecata­tion is a good rem­edy for all human con­flicts. Even if for­give with­out any expec­ta­tion from the other side through­out our life will reward us in heaven if not on this earth.

With best wishes and do hope all will prac­tice forgivness.

K.A. Thomas

marios says

I have read most of the tes­ti­mo­ni­ans BURT AND I AGREE THAT each and every one of us should do it every time they feel GUILD .often we do that ver­bally befor com­mu­nion ‚going to a PRIEST .THIS ofcourse is most effec­tive now that i can think off. GOOD WORK BURT .

Andy (UK) says

Hazel,
the idea is that for­giv­ing your hus­band pro­vides release and there­fore (emo­tional) heal­ing for you. It DOES work.

Per­haps it is soon for you to for­give him for that, I would sug­gest that feel­ing that way you try for­giv­ing him for some­thing almost insignif­i­cant instead, there must be some­thing, per­haps he kept you wait­ing 5 min­utes when you were dat­ing? For­give him for some­thing of that order to start.

If you can do that then shortly you will realise even the wrist is ‘insignif­i­cant’ in the large picture.

For­give me for being unable to offer more than Tea and Sympathy.

For­giv­ing oth­ers really helps I used to swear at dri­vers who cut me up now I have learnt to say I for­give you no mat­ter what rude­ness or dan­ger­ous care­less­ness they throw at me, and it really does feel good.

Some­times too good because it tends to make me think I am nearly the per­fect dri­ver so I have to avoid that belief lest I become as bad as them!

Bill says

There are many forms of this. I was orig­i­nally taught this was a “Jour­ney out of shame let­ter”. It really is that! It tar­gets emo­tions around shame and blasts the heck out of them.

Great weapon in the war on peace­ful emo­tions if I don’t say so my self.

Keep it up. Now we need one that tar­gets reminders, the ones that build neg­a­tive emotions.

Ya know, your play­ing a game of foot­ball. Then your win­ning. The oppo­nent all of a sud­den scores and for the life of you, your momen­tum is lost. You try every­thing and you can only man­i­fest neg­a­tives because you’ve lost the trust you had.

Help that and I’m sure this can make pos­i­tiv­ity EXPLODE

Hazel says

I’m cur­rently in the process of try­ing to for­give my hus­band for rup­tur­ing my wrist joint in anger. I am in con­stant pain and doc­tors say it will most prob­a­bly be life long. I want to for­give my hus­band, I realise he made a bad choice, in anger, he made a mis­take. He’s get­ting help and I feel con­fi­dent he won’t hurt me again. But how can I for­give him when I’m in con­stant pain? Should I write a for­give­ness let­ter even if I don’t for­give him? Is that the idea? I will feel like it is a lie. Advice would be very much appre­ci­ated. Espe­cially from you, Burt. Thank you.

Jo says

Hi Burt,

I learnt years ago dur­ing some very heavy coun­selling ses­sions about let­ter writ­ing. It was explained to me to get things out of your head you need an avenue for the feel­ings to flow and by writ­ing these words the feel­ings flow down your arm into your hand and out through the pen. I wrote my let­ter to my mother who had passed away.

Regards

Manuela says

I agree; I Knew already this tech­nique and I Know it works!
I’ve been try­ing to con­tact you to give you my new e-mail; I hope this time you get my mes­sage. Here it goes again, my new e-mail is: mrisquescosta@gmail.com (and NOT duartemcosta@netcabo.pt)
Best wishes,

Manuela

Ewa says

Hi Burt,
it is very impor­tant to do the process of For­give­ness very fre­quently (and deeply) and I am happy you write about the sub­ject,
Ewa

Mason says

This blog is very pow­er­ful and mov­ing, Burt. I have done this with a twist as well. In my let­ter I included for­giv­ing myself for impos­ing my neg­a­tive responses to my fathers anger and hate. I remem­ber the last day I saw him alive in the hos­pi­tal. Just before I left I said, “I love you dad”. He remained silent as I walked away for the last time. I then turned and told him, “Ya know what dad, we will never see each other again, here, and you can’t even say I love you”. His answer was, “I never did”. Those words, though intended to hurt, didn’t. That is because I for­gave him for unimag­in­able hate and anger he imposed on me. I sub­mit that if any­one chooses to not write a for­give­ness, is to deny your­self of a pro­foundly pow­er­ful vehi­cle to peace.
You remain in my prayers.
Masonn

Debbie McClaughry says

Good After­noon Burt,

I want to tell you that I have already writ­ten my let­ter of for­give­ness to my ex-husband. It did make me feel bet­ter, and I know that it made him feel bet­ter too. It also brought much needed clo­sure for me.

Thanks for writ­ting to me.

Deb­bie

Nuuky says

Burt,

You have given a spir­i­tual jewel with the For­give­ness Letter.What a beu­ti­ful spirit you are!

Sherry,
Give it a try and if it seems that it doesn´t work the first time,try again and again till you can ver­ify for your­self that it works for you too.

I would sug­gest to you, if you allow me, to lis­ten to Burt´s Daisy Pond.Find out who you really are…I mean,not the char­ac­ter you are play­ing in this great the­atre of life,so to speak,but who you really are.

You are a such a great being,it´s up to you to believe it now and to dis­cover in your­self all your great qual­i­ties as well as those of your par­ents.
Try to focus on the things you like about them instead of the opposite.

Burt has many audios and CDs that will help you find your true self.

Cheers

Carli Bauzá says

Great post and advice, Burt.
I had a con­ver­sa­tion with my father some years ago that resem­bled this let­ter, and our rela­tion­ship sky­rock­eted instantly and has never again been neg­a­tive since.

I’d also like to pitch in for Sherry.
You say that your par­ents think low of you, which of course can bother you. I think that if you cre­ate a higher belief about your­self than the one your par­ents have and repeat it to your­self sev­eral times a day with your eyes closed it will begin to change the way you see your­self and your rela­tion­ship to your par­ents, how­ever long it takes.

Check if you have any guilt in you, for what­ever issue, and search for its root; how it got “installed” ini­tially. It’s likely that you may have some, given your abu­sive par­ents. I’ve had to deal with this myself. Con­sider whether it is still worth it to hold on to it, if there is any. Guilt is just rehash­ing in the present, con­sciously or uncon­sciously, some­thing we per­ceive as a past mis­take or wrong­do­ing. It is one of the most dam­ag­ing things we can do to our­selves, as guilt cre­ates beliefs about us not being wor­thy of that which makes us happy.

Also, write a new let­ter to your par­ents, whether you show it to them or not, and observe your thoughts “from out­side” as to whether you truly mean the for­give­ness you are writ­ing about. This may shed light on pos­si­ble hid­den resent­ment that is not being deeply for­given. Whether you give them the let­ter later is not as impor­tant as actu­ally writ­ing it, as it is this process that gets you through the emo­tions and mem­o­ries, which is what actu­ally releases the neg­a­tive energy on the subject.

Lastly, I would rec­om­mend you let any neg­a­tive remark from them (or any­one else) to sim­ply slide by. These remarks usu­ally have no truth in them, and instead reflect the speaker’s lack of tol­er­ance toward the way some­body else behaves. You can even say some­thing like “you know what, you’re right! Thanks for want­ing the best for me. I’m sorry to have caused you this stress”, and then go on your way; don’t stay to argue. Have the courage to try this, as I think it will work. When they see that their neg­a­tive remarks have no effect on you, they will stop eventually.

I hope this helps.

Stay con­scious,
Carlito.

Faye says

I would like to reply to Sherry’s com­ment that the for­give­ness let­ter didn’t work for her espe­cially regards her par­ents, Sherry write your own per­sonal leter to your­self to for­give your­self — see if that lit­tle bit helps.
For­give­ness is com­plete, it is for­giv­ing oth­ers but also for­giv­ing your­self for being pained, crushed or mis­treated by oth­ers.
With kind­ness, Faye

vengal rao says

well i am from a very poor fam­ily .… but my father who is a great man he blessed my brother ‚sis­ters ‚n me with good edu­ca­tion .. yes i a n elder brother n three elder sis­ters n iam the youngest .…… as the mem­o­ries v all use to live in sin­gle room 5mtrby 3mts … my ues to feed us in one plate v all ues to sit in a line n my mom sits in da cen­ter n feeds us all with her own hands … n then the left overs… for my dad n my mom ..my father is a daily labourer , he is build­ing painter.. well in his life expe­ri­ence he has learnt wat the world is all abt .. n every day he gives us val­ues of life how to b good n strong to face the world … he says edu­ca­tion is da great­est weapon.…. there were incedants where he worked in great rich people’s house as a painter.… so he obserbe how there kids r ter­ated wat there kids r doing n learnt wat not to do .……well he is not an edu­cated mih self but he has gained a lot of gr8 knowl­edge by observ­ing peo­ples life .…

well now my brother is wroking in a MNC [uti­na­tional com­pany ]he done his mas­ters in Bio.tech. my two of my sis­ters r prac­tic­ing medicen.. n my eldest sis­ter ia a lech­turer in a col­lege .… n omes my part .…well iam pur­cu­ing degree. archi­tec­ture in a national insti­tute of tech­nol­ogy.……
but i think iam not play­ing my part prop­erly.….
well since my school daies ive been just an avarage stu­dent in stud­ies but very good in sports n extra cer­ic­u­lar activ­i­ties..[ all sports like football,basketball,hockey,athletics,painting, mar­tial arts n a lot of paint­ing com­pi­tions i hav won many prises in all thes activ­i­ties n even indoor games like chess,caroms.…..]
i hav won many medels in all the sports n paint­ings at a naional level n dis­trict lev­els.…
n on the oter side not much on the stud­ies .….
but my sis­ters n my brother r a schlors in there schools n col­leges my sis­ters they score col­lege first n sec­ond ranks right from the first year to the pass­ing out year.. my eldest sis­ter rep­re­sented her uni­vercity from andhra pradesh in national parade in Dehli .….my brother is a house cap­tain in his school ..n in coll he scored good rank ..well he had taksn repon­si­bil­ity in his col­lege daies by help­ing my father .…
for your sur­prise my father is still paint­ing houses.… n now liv­ing in a two room house..in the same slums .…
well my father has joinrd us all i n dif­fer­ent hos­tels right from the child­hood v all com home for the fes­tivels well in India v hav many fes­tivels to cel­brete our lifes … n my mom still feeds us with her own hands but only for my brother my younger sis­ter among the three sis­ters and me ..
well te ther two sis­ter hav found there love of there life n blessed with beau­ti­fulln won­der­full kids.

well i com­ing from such a back­ground i feel like i am not doing right in life by not studing hard !! well even now i am just an avarage stu­dent .. n in this rat race­world i should get good score to get in to good com­pany n earn good money !!
ive wast­ing all my time doing nting n get­ting atracted to the hor­ri­ble things in life like girls, alchol,drugs,and bad frind ship.…
well iv been liv­ing in such an atmos­phere far awy from home liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent state of the con­try..
in a national insti­tute of tchnology..wher rich peo­ple who can spend RS:500 per day .….
n iam get­ting to stay withthem..nnn.…not able to do wat iam sup­pose to do “study prop­erly“
well i ve been tring to earn money but every thing went on vain i waas not able to con­tinue for a month and v wont get the salary if v dont work for a com­plete month …
ive been doing all the crazy thing in here n i think some day ill go mad …
i am totally con­fused ..i am not know­ing wat to do … every time i close my eyes it splashes in my eyes ..the money ..my home..,my mom and dad .. the area i live ..my frinds…my ambi­tions.., n sud­denly iam falling from a clif.. i am not able breath…
and i can not tell wat my sit­u­a­tion to my par­ents or any one .. cos i am not doing any thing so great to share … all the things dat iam doing brings shsme o my self … but i am help less
all i want to is lots of money to study in this col­lage .. well i ve tried to work som places but they wont full time work­ers ..but i got attend my classes too i am not able man­age both..
so force­fully i am staing with these rich kids n get­ting spoiled ..its not there fault… welll if i stay with them they help me finan­cialy dur­ing exams ..well ill sit and write there notes!!!
i canot leave ther frind ship .…
i dont want my par­ents to worry abt me i even get to talk in my frinds phone with par­ents…
well the word “frind­ship” … i hav a very deep respect for it .. but i am not ale to get the qual­ity of frind­ship my heart schring for..
well iam totally crazy abt the cazy pieces of paper called“money“
i am ready to any thing to money ..
some time i get all kind of crzy ideas to earn easy money..
feels like steel­ing things.… brake the law.….
n many more … belive me ive even tried to b a gigalo.…
i dont know what but somet­ing in my back­bone is stop­ing me .. n ssays it not right !!!
i just need some strength to face my own face oh god …
i just need ur bless­ings oh god.…
bless my par­ents and the one wo needs ur bloss­ings oh god
bless every­one with good health ‚wealth ‚hap­py­ness in there heart n sole,good education,good money, n good strength to faceany thing in there like oh god .….
plz bless every one oh god…

Kim says

The for­give­ness let­ter seems like a remark­able way to unload bit­ter feel­ings and lift away the past that eats away at our minds. A valu­able way to make peace with our­selves and allow for­give­ness to be rec­og­nized through our will in want­ing a change. A change to rid old haunt­ing memories.

Susan d'Ambrumenil says

Hi Burt:

I fell ill with the symp­toms of Rheuma­toid Arthri­tis sev­eral years ago and I looked up the mean­ing of this painful dis-ease in Louise Hay’s “Heal Your Body” and found that RA is “sup­pressed anger”. Bells went off. I sud­denly real­ized that I was indeed very angry at ever­thing and every­one in my life.

My mother had passed away sev­eral years prior and I knew that if I wrote a let­ter to her explain­ing why I was so angry at her for all the things that I felt she had ommit­ted shar­ing with me like hugs, love, sup­port when things were not going well, I could change the ener­get­ics of the dis-ease.

So I did. It turned out to be a very long let­ter. I sat with it for sev­eral months, edited it sev­eral times and then when I went back to Eng­land the fol­low­ing year, I was able to visit her grave. Despite the uneasi­ness of my father, I per­formed a “burn­ing bowl” cer­e­mony at her grave. I lit a can­dle, and in an abolone shell, I burned the let­ter, say­ing; “I for­give you, I love you, and I thank you for this experience”

The result of this expe­ri­ence was one of extreme relief. I felt so much lighter and more at peace than I had in a long time. Oh! yes, It was even more won­der­ful because I also got the impres­sion that the let­ter was accepted by my mother as one of relief for her also.

Thank you for remind­ing me of this prac­tice. It is a won­der­ful way to remove blocks from one’s life.

DeniseC says

Sherry, you need never send the let­ter to your par­ents. Keep try­ing. It may get bet­ter each time. I grew up with one very abu­sive par­ent and one emo­tion­ally distant/un-nurturing par­ent. It’s taken time, some­times baby steps, but each time I tried to for­give them, I did a lit­tle more, until I now have. And it is free­ing. I suf­fered from major depres­sion (diag­nosed with Post Trau­matic Stress Dis­or­der, from my child­hood with those par­ents) which drug ther­a­pies and tra­di­tional behav­ioral and psy­chother­a­pies didn’t help. I am no longer depressed and did it with­out drugs. For­give­ness is a HUGE part of that recov­ery. So keep try­ing. I have faith in you.

Mira says

Darcy,you are a poem!I did my for­give­ness in my alpha level and I worked hard for months,so I feel free now and,also, I have much love for everyones.But,I know a peo­ple who wrote for­giv­ing letters.Shery,when you write,you put your energie in it.So,try again,and again.…Put the real fil­ings of love.Before start,close your eyes,relax,feel love from your soul,and write.I would like that every­body could be like I am.Or Burt,or H.Silva was.

Nola says

My son had a some­what dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with my mother, because he felt that she did not really accept him as he was. When she was dying of can­cer, I went out to see her for one last Christ­mas. He was not able to come with me, but he wrote her a let­ter. When I got there, she was too weak to read the let­ter for her­self, so she asked me to read it to her. The let­ter acknowl­edged that the two of them had not always seen eye to eye, but that he loved her, and knew she loved him. In par­tic­u­lar, my son was not of an aca­d­e­mic bent, which she greatly prized. I think it must have really moti­vated her, because before she passed, she wrote let­ters to each of her grand­chil­dren, telling them how much she loved them,and giv­ing them one last piece of advice. In my son’s let­ter, she wrote that what­ever he decided to do with his life, she was sure he would do it well, and that she was proud of him. It was just what he needed to hear–that she had accepted him for who he was, and knew that it didn’t mat­ter how he intended to make his liv­ing. For­give­ness let­ters can indeed be very powerful.

Sherry says

I tried doing this. It didn’t really work for me. Espe­cially with my par­ents who are still here and still abu­sive. They think so low of me. How am I sup­posed to rise above that? Darcy, love the poem!

yogidodie says

great advice from all-we cant be vic­tims, we have to be
the change

georgia says

Hi Burt,
Thank you for post­ing the For­give­ness let­ter. I know
this works. Also a let­ter writ­ten to a per­son that
has passed on and one did not have a chance to say
goo-bye is a good why to help with the grief. I knew
of a 10 year girl, that she did not get to say good–
bye to her grand­mother because she(grandmother) died
in the hos­pi­tal. And, you know that chil­dren are not
allowed in the hos­pi­tal. I sug­gested to her to write
a lov­ing let­ter to her Grand­mother thank­ing her for
all the joys she had share with her and let­ting her
know how much she loved and missed her. I told her
to put the let­ter in a drawer and review it a cou­ple
of times and when she was ready to say good-bye to her
grand­mother she could put the let­ter in a bal­loon and
release it or go to the cemen­tary and bury it by her
grandmother’s grave. This really helped her. I feel
that writ­ing let­ters for dif­fer­ent occas­sions is good for
the soul. They do not have to be sent to the person.

patrick larkin says

Please i beg you all to fol­low Burts advice and wtite this let­ter. It can be an open let­ter to any­body whom you may feel you have wronged in the past Did you make a pass at your best friends wife? Per­haps you gam­bled away money that was badly needed at home. What­ever may be inside you prick­ing away at you now is the time to say sorry and mean it Write it out and read it back to your­self Then if you wish burn it After that just wait for the peace to come over you Best of luck Paddy

Darcy Venables says

The magic world
By Darcy Venables

What hap­pened to the magic world
That place we used to go
That place where we could always hide
And no one else would know

Where is that magic world we had
As chil­dren we could stay
That magic place that was so kind
And so safe for us to play

That magic world that held no pain
And hate could not come in
Just fan­tasy and make-believe
And games we’d always win

I have to find that magic world
I’m going back today
This other place is so unkind
I’m going back to stay

This magic world I’ve left behind
This place I’m look­ing for
God, if you would be so kind
Please help me find the door

Scott says

This is an excel­lent exer­cise and will no doubt lead to many peo­ple feel­ing less guilt and sad­ness. It is, how­ever, impor­tant to note that the let­ter may not always be received by the sub­ject with the same good will intended by the author. In some cases, the rela­tion­ship may be harmed by such blunt hon­esty. There­fore, Burt, I think it is crit­i­cal to make the point that the let­ter need not ever be deliv­ered to be effec­tive. It can be kept for later reminder or destroyed in some type of cer­e­mo­nial event — such as burn­ing, pointed out by Kristyne.

Kristyne says

I have done this in my own life with a lit­tle dif­fer­ent twist. I wrote one let­ter to my par­ents, one to peo­ple from my past that I needed to (friends, lovers and oth­ers that I per­cieved as hav­ing wronged me or been wronged by me), and one to myself, for the times I had not been able to for­give myself for ‘neg­a­tive self talk’, etc. I wrote them in pen­cil because it is car­bon, one of the ele­ments we are largely made of,and when I was through I burned them. The acts first bring­ing them into to phys­i­cal realm from the ethers of my past then return­ing them puri­fied by fire to the spirit realm to be released. The weight being lifted is very true and the process well worth the thought and time it took to do it. Namaste.

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