Perhaps it's possible to forgive in one grand swoop, but I didn't experience it that way. I did it in bits and pieces. You forgive what you can, when you can. To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we can go on.
To love means to give. When you love you seem to go outwards, flow out in order to help, to serve. But as you cannot breathe out without breathing in, so you cannot love without receiving. Love is an out-breathing and an in-breathing. It is a light that burns deep within: as warmth, a certainty, an inner knowing.