Book Review of “Trauma and Forgiveness: Consequences and Communities” by C. Fred Alford. The review was written by Brandie Reeder Williams.
Having grown up in what is affectionately known as the “bible belt” of rural North Carolina, the virtue of “forgiveness,” was always a taken-for-granted concept, one cloaked in the easy black-and-white morality of “right and wrong.” My orientation to, and understanding of forgiveness, was espoused through both myth (“forgive others or God will not forgive you in heaven,”) but also through folklore and narrative; through cautionary tales told about people who just “couldn’t forgive…got sick, and died.” Forgiveness then, was in every situation both a moral obligation and beneficial to one’s own “healing,” physically and emotionally. Continue reading