SENTINEL WATCH November 19, 2007 Issue

TO FORGIVE ONESELF

ANNETTE BRIDGES

PERSISTENT MEMORIES of injustice can make forgiving seem unimaginable, if not impossible. Yet at the same time, those memories can impede individual progress. For me the need has more often been in learning to forgive myself rather than others.

The commemorations of last April's shootings at Virginia Tech reminded me of how I've had to confront past events and learn to forgive myself. The following comment by Alexandra Asseily, founder of "The Forgiveness Garden" in Beirut, Lebanon, caught my attention: "When the memory controls us, we are then puppets of the past." The quote was included in a recent Christian Science Monitor article that discussed "The Power of Forgiveness," a PBS documentary given a special screening at Virginia Tech, where students and faculty continue to recover ("At Virginia Tech, a film asks, 'Can we forgive?'," Amy Green, September 21, 2007).

Individuals who experience the kind of trauma those students experienced often struggle with guilt—not simply for having survived, but for actions they didn't take. They often believe that in some way they were responsible for, or contributed to, endangering others.