The first Sunday in August is “International Forgiveness Day” this year 4 people will be honored at a ceremony Sunday night. What is International Forgiveness Day? The founder Bob Plath says “forgiveness is good for your soul – and a sure-fire path to physical health”. He has been sponsoring the event in Marin County, California for the past 11 years.
Forgiveness is not as easy as it sounds and can be especially difficult for troubled teens and their parents. Forgiveness is the path to recovery, it is through forgiveness that we let go of grief and fear to allow ourselves to be free of the angers and resentments. This is not about, right and wrong, but healing the soul and learning to love, be loved and having a good life. Many of our teens are angry about past events they may have experience and have deep scars. For the real healing to take place there must be forgiveness and they need to learn how. I often wonder if my teen will ever forgive me for sending him to a residential treatment program or a boarding school as an intervention. Will he ever forgive me? I guess that is the chance I am taking. He has told us we have taken his teen years away; but I see it as we are giving him a future.
Forgiveness for some has taken years. Here is a glimpse at the four people that will be honored at this year’s celebration. They are honored as heroes and champions of forgiveness, nonviolence and peace.
- Eva Kor, 74, of Terre Haute, Ind., who was taken at age 10 from her home in Eastern Romania to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where she and her twin sister were subject to a year of medical experiments at the hands of the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. In 1995, at Auschwitz, she read aloud a document forgiving Mengele and his assistants. “For the first time, I felt completely free.”
- Julie Chimes, 53, of Granada, Spain, who was attacked by a mentally ill, knife-wielding woman in Chimes’ London home in 1986 and – despite grievous injuries – forgave her assailant, saying, “no one was to blame.” Today, Chimes runs retreats and workshops in Europe designed to help others find the courage to forgive.
- Attorney Nadia Bishop of Oakland, California, 39, whose father, Maurice Bishop, the former prime minister of Grenada, was killed in a 1983 coup. After 24 years of anger, she visited 10 men convicted of her father’s slaying and publicly announced her forgiveness. She told her countrymen that only through forgiveness can Grenada move forward.
- Jaimee Karroll, 54, of El Cerrito, Caliifornia. It took her 21 years to forgive the three men who kidnapped and repeatedly raped her when she was 9. For two decades, she suppressed the experience, expressing it in combativeness, high-risk behavior, heavy drinking, and attempted suicide. She now uses her experience to counsel violent offenders at San Quentin State Prison, helping them understand the impact of their crimes and to bring about reconciliation between inmates and survivors.
“Without forgiveness, there is no future.”
by Bishop Desmond Tutu
Content for this post is from the Marin IJ Four women honored as ‘heroes of forgiveness’
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These are amazing stories. I had no idea there was a forgiveness day. What a great idea.