Forgive and forget

Often I say do no harm. I write this for my peace of mind, and for all survivors of incest, rape, or any other type of trauma. My disclaimer is that I’ve never been raped or a victim of incest, but I’ve been a victim who has foiled several attempts and it’s time to let it go.

First, Paul Dunbar's We Wear the mask:

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while we wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

Second, we are told, especially women, to forgive and forget:

This theme seems aimed at the “victim”. The victim recovery is based on his or her forgiveness of the transgressor. It seems easy enough for the victim, but what about the transgressor asking for forgiveness. Shouldn’t he or she ask the victim for forgiveness? If not, isn’t the transgressor getting off too easy? This theme seems to relieve the transgressor from begging for mercy.

Reading Trauma and Recovery during this month, (thanks to G-itch), I think about this theme and just don’t like letting the perpetrator off the hook. Still, I know, it does no good to hold onto the act of betrayal. The memory of the act is burned forever in your head, as you rehearse over and over, how differently could I have ordered my steps to have prevented the moment.


Forget. You want retaliation at most or revenge. Maybe just an acknowledgement of the unkind deed would do. Or a platform to tell the story to a wider audience, as you stand up and testify while pointing a finger directly at the perp, as the headlights beam down upon the predator that is among us. And every listening ear agrees in the affirmative, that yes the victim was done wrong. To not speak out loud, silence the harm, and bonds the victim into joining the gleefulness of the manipulator in planning for the next victim.


The victim, is released from her isolation with the perpetrator and is readmitted back fully into the larger world from which she has been alienated, suggest the author of Trauma and Recovery. What was planned, and hatched in secrecy to destroy has been revealed, the perpetrator identified and other victims sighing in one breathe. If not than it is still my quiet way of putting to bed my anger by telling instead of forgiving and forgetting.

After recently watching a short video about a victim and a perpetrator from a Nazi concentration camp, it is apparent that the victim is the one who seeks forgetting, as the prep has already forgot. The Nazi victim confronts the perpetrator with different memories of the horrible experience and each time the perpetrator discounts the victim memory with a simply phrase, “I can’t remember”. The victim gives the perpetrator chance after chance to recall with vivid details, but still the perpetrator refuses to help with a, “I can’t remember”.

Even if the perpetrator did forget, could he at least acknowledge the victim memory as real, with a statement, like if this is true, please forgive me instead of I can’t remember? I think not, because the perpetrator is a predator, so I say simply I forgive you, I forgive, I forgive and God help me to forget.

and this poem by Marianne Williamson to survivors:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darknessThat most frightens us.
We ask ourselves Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small Does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking So that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, As children do. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others.

Now no more fear.