Dr. Debbie Silber is back on today's episode. I started my conversation with her last week,

so if you did not hear that, listen to that first and then join us here.

I study the Bible, I'm Christian, and if you don't or you're

agnostic, all the listeners out there just keep listening. I'm not going to give

a religious lecture or anything, but just for my own personal experience, it really struck me that in so many scriptures about forgiveness, it's actually about debt talking about like you're forgiving someone of their debt.

And it's really true of abusers.

They really do owe you a lot, right?

They owe you justice.

They owe you not just an apology, but a living amends because of the damage that they've done for years and years

They could owe you financially they could owe you in relation to other relationships with family members or children.

And that's part of what hurts is that they owe you this great debt

and they are not paying it back. And the more you try to get them to pay it back, the more control they have over you. They actually love that, right? Because they're like cool she is still

attached to me she still want something for me and so they can hold it over your head and I find

it interesting that clergy generally sees forgiveness as a way to like reconcile forgive and then you can talk and you can have peace.

And I've started seeing forgiveness as a way to actually move farther away from the person.

Because once you forgive them of that debt and say, okay, I know you do owe me all this.

And as a woman of faith, I just for myself, I think, well, I could try to get it from you and you are not healthy and not safe.

Or I can turn to God who will give me what I need and he loves me and he wants to give it to me and he's

not going to hold anything over my head. Turning away from the person who is literally indebted to me and releasing that debt and saying,

okay, you might not pay it.

I'm going to turn to God and hope that he pays it and from my Christian perspective from my savior.

Now other people can think of it in different ways, but I just thought that was a really interesting idea that forgiveness can actually move you farther away from abuse and farther

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