My mom told me about the Women of Faith conference she went to a couple weeks ago and about a couple books she picked up while she was there. One that she especially talked about with me was one on forgiveness. I'm planning to read the whole book at some point, but until then, here's an excerpt I found on a blog:

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you have forgotten what happened, it doesn’t even mean you are condoning what the other party or person has done, only that, you are just letting go of toxic feelings and emotions. Forgiveness does not mean that you have to reconcile with someone who badly treated you, or live with them or even eat with them or proving that you’ve forgiven them.

This is an especially close topic to my heart, and she knows that there is one person and one event that I have had a lot of trouble forgiving and moving on. I know it's not healthy for me, but it's so hard to forgive people sometimes when you know that they were in the wrong and you will never hear the apology you need...even though it probably wouldn't change anything if you did. Forgiveness is such a HUGE deal, and in the end I have to realize that the only person I am hurting by not forgiving is myself. That person will either have to worry about that burden on themselves or they just don't even think about it anymore. I'm hurting myself as long as I hold onto this.

It's not an easy thing. And it's certainly not easy enough to just read that once and go, "Oh! I need to forgive! Done." No...it's definitely a process, but I at least need to make an effort to forgive so I don't have to go on carrying that pain.

Maybe you're wondering what event I'm talking about, and if you guessed, you'd very likely be wrong. I guess what I'm saying is, look into yourself and find that thing that you think of first when people bring up how hard it is to forgive others. Once you have that in mind, get on a path to forgive that person. For me, the hardest part was how to deal with forgiving something that I know is so wrong. But I don't have to condone what happened. I don't even have to reconcile with that person - that's my choice. What I do need to do is let go of those feelings of resentment so that I can be a more whole person.