You were made in My image. Love is the only true. If your heart aches, you, in your heart, are not being true. Sometimes you fight your love. It is not a lie that you love. The lie is that you do not.

Your heart will open again. The plum of your heart is filled to bursting with love. Anything else you spy in your heart is a thief in the night.

And so now forgive what ails you. Forgiveness means that you withdraw your armaments. Disarm yourself. Return to innocence.

You are not to guard yourself. Nor are you to mourn.

As each day starts anew, so must you. Forgiveness is leaving the past behind. That is all it is. It certainly is not accumulating the past and carrying it in front of you like a shield.

You have kept grudge long enough, and now it is time for you to let it go. Unless you keep a grudge to you, it is only an incident. Keeping it even for five minutes is too long.

No matter how noble your cause and how ignoble another's wrong, a grudge is not something to carry with you. Let it go. Give it up. Spit it out. Spit out the stone from the plum of your heart.

Removing yourself from grudge — it is yours, you own it, you made it — that is forgiveness. Giving up pain, that is forgiveness. It is yourself you must forgive, you understand. Forgive yourself for holding hurt to you. You must forgive yourself for holding the thought that you were misused. Even if you were, you must let go of thoughts that do not serve. Unforgiveness does not serve you or anyone. Did you think it did?

The greater mistake is to hold anyone's mistake before you. The torch of unforgiveness burns your heart, for does not your heart sear itself with unforgiveness? Forgiveness is simply letting go of that which never properly was yours.

The hard steel of unforgiveness is like catching yourself in the act of stealing. It dawns on you what you are doing, and your hand drops the stolen goods, and you save yourself from becoming a robber. The same way, unforgiveness is not yours to keep. If you feel unforgiveness, drop it like a hot potato simply because it does not belong to you and it causes pain. Remove the iron rods of unforgiveness from your heart, and you are free of them. Free of unforgiveness, you are free.

You can let an offender go. You do not charge yourself or anyone else for your hurts. Do not exact payment.

If you were abandoned as a child, do not relive it today. If you feel abandoned, you are abandoning yourself. That is a high price to pay for an old image. Any price you pay is too high.

So give old images away. You are simply letting go of the past in all its guises. You no longer reiterate the past. Any hurt you feel today — it is from the past.

Forgiveness is not something you say. Remove the heartache you have clasped to you, and you have forgiven. Give up all the reasons and explanations you held that made forgiveness necessary. Start leaning in the direction of loving yourself again.

Unforgiveness is its own pain, and it is always self-inflicted. Always. There is no exception.

Even if you were brutalized, stop hitting yourself now. You can stop being the accuser. Is the role of accuser the one you want to play?

Let go of anything less than love. You can do it.