There is a concept that should be thought about, it is free and anyone can find it within them to use it. The idea is forgiveness. An organisation working in the fields of conflict resolution, reconciliation and victim support has been providing exhibitions and speakers around the world, developing an idea of forgiveness.

Founded by Marina Cantacuzino, this small organisation aims to open up a dialogue about forgiveness and promote understanding through awareness, education and inspiration. There are currently 65 stories on the website that provide unique, personal stories of individuals overcoming adversity to come to a place of forgiveness.

Now forgiveness may not come easily and one has to be in the right frame of mind to even attempt to forgive, but the act of forgiveness has helped many people to overcome extreme circumstances and situations. Prime met up with Rosalyn Boyce who can be found on the website – a survivor of an attack inside her own home – who was eager to share her idea of forgiveness. She is presently a life coach and counsellor.

Rosalyn was brutally attacked in her home by a complete stranger who had broken in and raped her. Luckily for Rosalyn, the perpetrator was tracked down and convicted, receiving three life sentences for serial rape. It that may seem that in this case, justice was served. However, no matter what prison sentence the man received, it has in no way enabled Rosalyn to move on in her life. According to Rosalyn, society is not really set up to deal with random situations like the one she found herself in. Life generally has a set of rules to follow if something traumatic happens. For example, if someone dies, then there is a set of procedures that everyone will follow to ensure that sanity is maintained.

However, Rosalyn felt that “what happened to me – being attack, being raped in my own home, by a complete stranger, a complete random attack. In that situation, obviously my first reaction is to go into complete shock. After a couple of days I started to look around for someone to help me. I went to GP’s, I looked for counselling, I looked to the police and to my family. I was looking around me going hang on a minute, what do I do now. It took me a couple of months and I was prescribed tranquilizers before I suddenly had the realisation, it was a bit of a light bulb moment. I thought hang on a minute, I’ve got to do this one for myself because there was no precedence for this.”

It was suggested to Rosalyn that she would have to forgive, in order to be able to move forward with her life. The only problem with forgiving was that Rosalyn felt “very stuck, horribly stuck at that point as the perpetrator of the crime has never shown any remorse for it and I know in my heart, as do his other previous victims that if he is let out of prison, he will do it again. So how do you forgive that, and I got really furious, it was all on me and I’ve got to forgive him or I won’t survive. I really struggled with that for a very long time. And then I started to look at forgiveness. I started to look at other people’s different versions of forgiveness and I began to understand that it is a much bigger subject then I have ever even considered.”

Forgiveness is one of those words that we may hear all of the time without really understanding the meaning on the word. There is the act of forgiving; state of being forgiven; or the willingness to forgive. Thereby allowing individuals the opportunity to experience a solution that works best for them.

Once Rosalyn got a workable notion of what forgiveness meant to her, she was able to break from the perceived ties to the crime. Rosalyn believes that forgiveness does not have to be fixed. This can allow a flexible approach to develop which meant that one-day she could forgive and the next she would hate all over again. Eventually, this process allowed her to forgive more days than she hated and the freedom she experienced made her work harder on forgiveness. The crucial part for Rosalyn was the idea that she could forgive herself for being a victim in the crime but she did not have to forgive the perpetrator for the crimes that he had committed.

One of the great philosophies in forgiveness is the possibility for a victim to forgive an offender without having any relation with the offender. This enables the victim to free his or her self from the internal connection that they have with the offender, which breeds feelings of hate and anger.

Marina Cantacuzino, a former journalist who has set up the Forgiveness Project believes that forgiveness works through the lives and experiences of real people. Marina started to collect stories from around the world in the lead up to the Iraq War, due to all of the violence and anger that she saw through the media. Marina felt that there should be another way of dealing with violence without the use of force. Marina managed to get her initial idea funded and held an exhibition in the OXO gallery in London 2004, which was a huge success.

In this way, the Forgiveness Project was born and many people came to her with stories of their own experiences in forgiveness. Marina commented “It was a huge success, overwhelming and it seemed to tap into this deep public feeling that there is an alternative to violence other than meeting it with more violence. People do believe that ‘an eye for an eye leaves the whole country blind’. The whole thing was hugely complex, in fact I said at our fifth year anniversary celebration last night, the forgiveness project is on the one hand a beautifully simple organisation and on the other hand, immensely complex.”

The Forgiveness Project has managed to present a number of different understandings of forgiveness without claiming to teach anyone what forgiveness actually means.

And why can’t everyone just learn to forgive?

When pressed for a definitive answer, Marina provides this analysis “someone who has a world view that life is grey, that’s not black and white, I think can be more forgiving. People that have a very set sort of values, right and wrong, black and white, I think they find it much harder to forgive.”

So the general ideas that forgiveness is about condonement, excuses or a sign of weakness, do not hold up when faced with real life situations. Many people have learned the power of forgiveness and are moving forward with their lives without being trapped in a vicious circle of pain. Forgiveness provides a release from the grip and tie with the perpetrator so that one can amend the ending of the story.

Marina challenges the other school of thought on forgiveness, which suggests that forgiveness should only be given if the perpetrator repents their sins. She suggests, “some people actually say that forgiveness is entirely dependant on repentance like some sort of social contract but that’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about having someone there that you bestow forgiveness on and they’re only worthy of it if they then show remorse. Now that leaves the whole question, what happens when someone is dead and what happens if someone can not show remorse? Some people are so damaged; it is like an illness – they have no empathy. Does that mean there can’t be forgiveness, I don’t think so personally. And my feeling is that forgiveness is difficult, it is costly, it’s painful, it’s a long process, it’s a journey not a destination but it is transformative.”

So this transformative process has been giving normal people the chance to overcome some of the most traumatic experiences known.

What kind of society do we live in which does not equip individuals with the tools to overcome adversity? Rosalyn feels that “our society needs somebody to blame and we are not terribly good at taking full responsibility for our own actions.  There is a lot of negativity around our society. For me, I firmly believe in self reliance and that is my choice, also to forgive is my choice, it’s my personal choice to forgive.”

Bud Welch’s daughter was killed in the Oklahoma bombing. His story is a very good example as after a year when his daughter died, he lost his marriage, his home, and his job through drinking. He used to go to the bomb site everyday and look out onto the wilderness for his daughter. He thought one day that he had got to do something different, at that point it led to forgiveness but it was actually to stop hating, initially. He was killing himself and he could see the destruction. Some people can see that, that is why some people say that forgiveness is the best form of revenge because in a way, the way he was going down hill, the people who blew up the building, had an extra victim in him.

I had a very interesting case recently with an old friend, her husband had an affair. After the affair, he still wanted to be with her and loved her, showing huge remorse and apology but she can not forgive him, absolutely can not forgive him. She keeps going on about her moral values and says that she has a very strong set of principles, so strong that this has devastated her. This is one good example as her children are traumatised; the whole thing has just become a massive disaster. Now someone else dealing with that who might have the view of the world is grey probably would have dealt with the whole thing, so there would be less pain. You never know until you are tested but I do know that life is complex and until you are tested, you will see how forgiving you are.