Dad murdered mom when I was 15, so I have some experience here. I haven't seen him since I testified against him.
But... I don't let that define my life. I miss mom, and I always will, but I made peace with it and have moved on. You can't just spend your life sobbing into a pillow or grinding my teeth in rage, at some point you have to go back to just living again.
This is a lot easier said than done. I say this from first hand experience. I've been screwed a few times so far and generally managed to make my piece with most of those experiences except the abuse and apathy from my parents
Right. Just as some people who were abused by their parents will never be 100% physically well as adults, some will never be 100% mentally well. (And of course in neither case is that something they should be blamed for).
That's not at all what GP said. They said "accept". For example, that could mean accepting that your father was a piece of shit and sloughing him off, out of your life. At some point, one has to stop letting the damages of the past continue to damage ones self.
I would agree with you. The most important person I hurt when holding a grudge is myself.
Much better to do my best to forgive, maybe forget, and move on with my life (with or without that person).
Forgiveness is all about detachment. Forgiveness is not only good for the forgiven, it is good for you, too. If you let hate fester in you, it will incline you toward wrath. Hate the sin and not the sinner. Love and pray for your enemy.
Now, that doesn't mean you should just act as if nothing happened. Actions have consequences, and those consequences should be determined by the gravity of the actions.
"Abuse" is a vague term and often people mean very different things by it. Some people call their father throwing a fit of anger or cussing their kids out about something every now and then "abuse". And then other people use the same term to refer to really diabolical stuff, like child-buggering. With the less serious and more understandable stuff, you should also take into consideration what your father was going through at the time, and how that might have influenced his actions and his judgment. When I got older and began to understand what my father has had to deal with (including me lol), it really made me not care at all about some of the rough-ups we had. So I mean whether or not you should want to patch up the relationship with your father should really be determined by the character of the abuse, the extent of it, the circumstances, et cetera. This should also determine what exactly "patching up" that relationship means - like what kinds of boundaries you set, and so on.
