Practicing Forgiveness A Path Toward Healing

Our relationships enrich our lives. Strong bonds with family, friends, and colleagues make our lives full and vibrant, but they can also be a source of distress or even trauma. Few relationships are perfect, and we often find ourselves let down by even the people we count on most; learning to navigate the challenges is vital to protecting our health and wellbeing.

In this book the author presents a model for forgiveness that addresses how we either repair relationships when someone has harmed us, or how we move forward when relationships are beyond repair. Repairing a relationship is not always practical. The model presented in this book can be helpful to promote self-healing and to either re-establish relationships with others or move forward when reconciliation is harmful or not possible.

Practicing Forgiveness draws on the perspectives of counseling professionals from across the country to explore contextual and cultural aspects of forgiveness with stories, humor, clinical examples, research, and empirical findings, while also considering the influence of environment and religion. The forgiveness process is a universal one, and this book serves as a resource to anyone wishing to gain insight into their own personal journey.

Chapter 1. Harmful Messages and Pressures to Forgive
Chapter 2. Forgiveness and Culture: Beliefs and Conflicts
Chapter 3. The Forgiveness Reconciliation Model: An Overview
Chapter 4. Collaborative Exploration
Chapter 5. The Role of Reconciliation
Chapter 6. Change and Remorse
Chapter 7. Choosing the Outcome
Chapter 8. The Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory
Chapter 9. Does This Work?

Appendices
A. The Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory
B. Technical Information on the Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory

References