Wow- forgiveness... thats a tough one... and Ive come to deeply respect how personal it is. In my opinion, no one and I mean no one has any authority or right to to define forgiveness for anyone else! Full stop. For me, Im at a place in life where forgiveness means I want (as much as possible) to stop feeling the anger, pain, and the deep, deep pain from the injustice of it all. Forgiveness for me is completely and entirely for me. It has nothing to do with the other person/situation- it does NOT let them off the hook or grant any level of acceptance of what happened or what they did. Its about me doing what I can to let go of pain. It is difficult to describe because I do not think forgiveness is a "one and done" thing-- I can be triggered, people can resurface, etc... forgiveness is an on-going process I keep having to repeat. And again- it has nothing to do with the other person. I don't need to have them in my life or to say anything to them. Its not about being a "good person." Its only about freeing myself from some pain if I can. Somewhere in my mix of forgiveness is letting go of the need for justice, for fairness. There is no fairness and no justice. I can at least work on letting go of the pain of that part.
And to be honest, I do not forgive a lot- at least in the traditional definition of "forgive." I think sometimes its important to not forgive for me- I can not forgive and still work on letting go of the anger around what happened. If that makes sense.