For 30 years I mentored angry inmates in medium and maximum-security prisons. Much of the focus was on forgiveness. Many of them had been raised in abusive families and repeated the pattern in their own lives and relationships. Needless to say they were full of resentment for all the people they blamed for putting them in the environment they found themselves. There are two keys to forgiveness. First, to forgive does not mean to condone or minimize the behavior that caused the hurt. There are consequences for the abuse that one heaps up on another. The act of forgiveness does not sanitize it, and it does not mean that the injured party has reconciled with the guilty one. Second, and perhaps most important, is that forgiving is something that you do for yourself. It releases you from the power that the person who has injured you has over you. Resentment is a cancer that eats at your soul. To fail to forgive is like burning your own house down because you are mad at your neighbor. You may never, indeed your probably will never, reconcile with your abuser, but you will be free from the tentacles of their control.