When you look back at your family of origin, a family you grew up in, what do you think of?

For many of us, we see happy memories, but yet there is baggage for all of us, maybe even some trauma.

And we want you to know that no matter how dark things might have been as you grew up, there's still hope for you. I'm John Fuller along

with Dr Danny Werther. He runs our parenting and youth department here at

Focus on the Family and let's go ahead and open up this segment with Jim Daly as he talked with Elizabeth

Oates she had a powerful story of learning how to move on from a painful past.

Another important feature is forgiveness and we didn't, we haven't touched on that.

That's huge.

How to forgive people that hurt you, especially your family.

Right.

Yeah, if you don't forgive, you are just leaving that splinter in there.

How does a person truly know they've forgiven someone?

I get that question all the time, did I forgive my stepdad for walking out the day of my mom's funeral and I'll say yeah I think I have I don't think about it

I'm not resentful toward it so I think that's evidence of forgiveness.

How would you answer that question?

How have you forgiven your father, your mother, your grandparents?

Yeah, I would say forgiveness, kind of like you said, like you don't feel anger or bitterness or resentment toward that person.

You've let it go. I think someone told me once if you can move to a place of empathy for that person then you know you've forgiven them.

And I think also if you can look... that person, then you know you've forgiven them.

And I think also if you can look at the situation

from the person's point of view,

dive into their history, try to understand

...