What a beautiful comment Morgaine, thank you. My parents were horrified by what happened to me, it was also the 50s with perfect neighborhoods and perfect houses with perfect mothers and fathers and 2.1 perfect children. You are so right, they didn't know what to say so they made mistakes. I have been blessed every day of my life to have parents and Sister who told me every single day that I am loved. They wrapped that warm blanket of love around me and never took it off. I forgave them for their words long ago.

Through years of therapy and looking deep inside I learned enough to know that Jerry was a tortured soul. I have great empathy for him, what a cruel, cruel life he had. By the time he was adopted he had lived in several foster homes. Just like Paul, his history was buried inside his soul, they never talked about it. I can see them both as little boys with their innocence being stripped from them. They both have a place in my heart. I'm very sad for them.

We have to stop letting generations get away from us. We have to decide that we have had enough, that violence only begets violence. We have to start honoring each and every child so the possibility of turning into a monster simply does not exist.

Jerry was a genius. Paul had the heart and soul of a champion. It is all of our losses that they turned into people who could take a life, literally and/or figuratively away from others. I often wonder what they both could have been, what they would have contributed to us all. I have faith they had it in them to have done great things. It is indeed all of our loss that we don't stop the madness.

Spicy, your comment has warmed me on this Thanksgiving day, thank you. As human beings we are resilient, sometimes beyond our own personal belief. Forgiveness has saved my life, both the generous forgiveness of others towards me and my willingness to forgive. It's truly the one singular thing that helped me step out from behind the shadows and enter the light once again. It's also why I love the gloaming so much, the gloaming became a safe time of day for me, a time when I could learn to trust again.

Desmond Tutu is one of my heroes. His work on the Truth and Reconciliation Committee was and is such an amazing example for all of us of what part forgiveness can play in our lives.

I know everyone can't forgive and I certainly don't mean to speak for anyone else who has been abused in any way. For me, the person I was born to be was buried until I understood the power of forgiveness, it's the one thing that set me free to return to who I was, the magic of that person who was just beyond the surface waiting.

Hearing and reading Desmond Tutu's words is a revelation for many. He is one of the most extraordinary people of our time in my opinion. He opens the door for so many to find a way out of their misery and pain.

You are indeed a warrior in this fight against the ongoing violence against women. You are an inspiration and you are so right, no one has the right to tell any woman who has survived the violence what she should or needs to do. We all find our own way on the road to 'putting it away.'

Caliberal, this was brave. It's brave to speak of forgiveness and risk being thought facile, senitmental, weak-minded or sanctimonious. Your post was refreshingly absent these elements.

I resonate with what you've written, I come from violence, and know how I feel about loving the unlovable, and get a lot of shit for it from idealogues. Most of my friends are ideologues of one sort or another, but tralala, I feel what I feel, and they can think what they think. I don't choose to forgive the murderers in my life, I came into life loving them, then they did things that made me hate them for a long time. Psychobabble gave me the forgiveness dogma, and politics push toward blame and retribution, and poetics are about the big picture and "finding the place to put it away" but through it all I just felt what I felt, without seeking resolution, much less the correct way to experience, and for over a decade have been at the place you describe.

This isn't peace or forgetting, minimizing or obliteration, horror is still there, but it has its place, and it made me what I am. Though I hesitate to call my own frame forgiveness (I'm not that stable, and can't guarantee that I won't go back to hating), I don't need to be that ambitious, really, I decided that forgiveness is a divine act and I am only human. This is how it works for me.
Still it was a complete and welcome blessing to read your narrative, to share in the story of someone who has seen the worst of humanity, and used it to stretch, enlarge and aspire.

Too many of us come from violence. When you say the horror has its place, that it isn't peace or forgetting, minimizing or obliteration that made you who you are, perhaps that at the crux of it all for us. I don't disavow the hating for a second, in fact I thrive in many ways on the hating, I don't want to lose the hating. Part of me will vanish if not for the hating. That part of me that is sick inside for every woman and young girl that will be violated today and everyday after today until our voices are so loud the choice to ignore us is no longer a choice.

Being survivors of violence doesn't guarantee us anything in this world or in this country. We are left to find our own way. It took me years to go beyond just putting one foot in front of the other, it took years to steady myself enough to walk without teetering on some invisible wire, it took years to trust myself or anyone else.

Finding forgiveness came about for purely selfish reasons. In my twenties, after my suicide attempts, I reverted back to that little girl who had to sleep with my mother because I couldn't be alone in the darkness of night. I was drowning because my life jacket had been taken away from me.

All that psychobabble and new age nonsense did nothing to calm the horror. What I came to realize is that I wanted better, I deserved better, I wanted a life free from the anguish of those hours spent in that bedroom. I wanted to still the voices in my head. I wanted within me, peace.

No one in my world could give me my life back, the life I knew I was born to live. Every day spent running from my childhood felt like a victory for the men who stole my innocence and trust through violence. I was pissed off enough to want the victorious one to be me.

Forgiveness only came about after layers and layers were peeled away, layers of distrust, layers of rage, layers of fear, layers of wondering why we are put on this earth only to be violated and abused.

There was in me a deeply held belief that if life didn't hold the possibility for better days, if life didn't offer hope then I wanted no part of it. Death didn't scare me, life did.

It was through utter selfishness that I decided forgiveness was the answer for me, forgiveness was the one thing that saved my life, literally saved my life. If I hadn't found peace through forgiveness I would have removed myself from this life.

That's why I say forgiveness was my key to life. It saved me. It still saves me when the ghosts of those childhood years creeps back in. It is also what I need to feel like I have won, that they can't have even one more day of mine, not one more day.

Yes, the horror and hate are still there. They make me vulnerable. I've learned that that vulnerability empowers me now. It makes me scream and be kickass in my resolve to stop this insane violence against women. That vulnerability is what keeps me vigilant, that vulnerabilty forces me to never forget.

The true wonder for me is that it works in so many different ways for each woman and yet the one thing we have in common is that we survived and we continue to survive. That survival is what we should see in one another, judging each other on how we survive is heartbreaking to me. We survived, isn't that reason enough to applaud one another? For me it is, the miracle of surviving each day is enough.