Meet me hereSpeak my nameI am not your enemyI am your teacherI may even be your friendLet us tell our truth together, you and IMy name is anger: I say you have been wrongedMy name is shame: my story is your hidden painMy name is fear: my story is vulnerabilityMy name is resentment: I say things should have been differentMy name is griefMy name is depressionMy name is heartacheMy name is anxietyI have many namesAnd many lessonsI am not your enemyI am your teacher

When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.

When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.

When we stay stuck in the unhappy story of what we have done we deny ourselves the gift of transformation. Learning from our past is not the same as being held hostage by the things we have done. At some stage we must let go of the past and begin again.

A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others. Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future. A victim had nothing to give and no choice to make. A hero has the strength and ability to be generous and forgiving and the power and freedom that come from being able to make the choice of forgiveness.

It is important to tell your story. It is equally important not to get trapped in your story. It is not what happened to us that matters but how what happened hurt us.

Forgiveness is the only way to heal ourselves and to be free from the past. Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness, that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberator.

When you set out to change the world, the job seems insurmountable, but each of us can do his or her small part to effect change. We change the world when we choose to create a world of forgiveness in our own hearts and minds.

Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.