There is a version of forgiveness that gets handed to adult children like a prescription: forgive your parent, move on, keep the peace. It sounds clean. It rarely is, because the version being prescribed usually bundles in a set of requirements that forgiveness itself never actually contained.
The confusion is not a character flaw. It comes from the way the word gets used, as if forgiving someone and reconciling with them were the same act, as if letting go of anger meant agreeing that nothing happened, as if peace inside you required peace between you. None of those equations are true. Pulling them apart is where the real work begins.
