My mom’s sister had hat I guess would be a common la husband type figure who abused my to female cousins. I don’t think she knew but probably should have. Their dad was killed in a car accident when they were very young. Anyway, she died when the kids were in their very early 20s and she married him just before she died. There wasn’t any money but as it stood he would have gotten the house that she and her husband purchased before the kids were born. My mom came in with an attorney and guns blazing (after we told her the situation) and they shamed and legally threatened him into giving up shares of the house to the 3 kids.
They were garden growing, chicken raising, coop shopping, quaker prayer circle attending hippy dippy love everyone people and in that sphere to be told to forgive is another way of saying just let it go and the universe will realign and the energies will shift and it will magically all be better. It is all about letting people off the hook and letting things go that need to be called out and condemned. They came to their peace with their mother’s memory but aren’t about to forgive the creep she married. They are not hung up on it, but he doesn’t get off that easy.
There are a few other hippy dippy folks on that side of the family and for them forgiveness is all about conflict avoidance. Well . . . sometimes the world needs a bit of conflict. Going with the flow is how they were put in that situation to begin with. They also needed to know in no uncertain terms that he was NOT a part of the family going forward and if they chose to carry on some kind of relationship with him they would bear the burden of condoning what he had done. Direct abuse it not like just a bit of dysfunction or indirect strife based on substance abuse. It is an act against another person and in this case children. Somehow the forgiving people were glossing those facts over in their minds. No, we didn’t care if he felt left out when he wasn’t invited to my sister’s wedding
Others kind like the word “forgive” if they want to but it isn’t some magical requirement for self-actualization. I figure their God can forgive whenever they get to where their going if they go anywhere at all.