Welcome to betrayal trauma recovery. This is Anne. So I received a restitution letter from my ex

husband in the mail last week and I've been pondering and thinking about this. In the meantime,

my church had their semi-annual conference. So I was praying to know God's will for me and to hear

his voice and to know how I should talk about this. In conference, they talked about a drunk driver

who had killed a wife and a husband. In that story of forgiveness, they were at the courthouse and

saw the mother and father of the drunk driver and they all broke down in tears and gave each other hugs

and it was a beautiful moment of forgiveness. And that is a beautiful story and I really loved

that story. And also that doesn't happen very often in this situation because the offense

is not very clear to people. It's clear to us. It's clear to me. I'm sure it's clear to you

but to our in-laws, it's not very clear. They can't see the abuse for what it is and they can't see

the infidelity for what it is. It's not very clear to clergy. It's not clear to therapists.

The idea of forgiveness is difficult in this situation because the offense cannot be agreed upon

much of the time because the person is denying it or acting like it's our fault. That story would be

very different if the parents of the drunk driver claimed that no, your son and your daughter,

the ones that were killed, they were drunk and it's their fault that now our son is in jail.

It's their fault that our son was drinking. It's their fault that this accident happened. That

would be a very difficult situation. Now, I'm not saying that forgiveness is not also the answer

for that situation but that drunk driver was held accountable by the law and he was held accountable

by his own parents and by society. That's not happening with abusers and porn users. They're not

being held accountable. We as women, our job, I feel like, is to muster the strength from God,

to hold them accountable in the way that we can. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints so I study sometimes from the Bible and sometimes from the Book of Mormon.

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