Dr. Thomas Moore Confronts Issues around Forgiving - in His New Novel, Upland Road

Sun Valley, CA, July 25, 2006 --(PR.com)-- Lil pours herself another drink. "I don't want to be at work, at home, anywhere. My mind is numb. I've forgiven my rapist. I don't hate him. I could kill him, or myself, as easily as not."

Forgiveness is the only known antidote to resentment, and it can be digested like a medication, and often there is further delayed benefits. Forgiving has no damaging side effects, and it comes free.

Lil clenches her fist, walks toward me, closer, eyeball, to eyeball, softening eyes. "Listen to me Dylan. You and I had a real chance at making something work. Damn! Even if I was to admit to the world, on national television, my obsession with self-destruction, what good would that do? You talked about a cure once ... learning to forgive our abusers, not for their sake, but for our benefit. You were too far out for me. I lost it, but I have always loved you."

"Me? I just want to know why it happened. Why you tried to kill our baby Natalie, why you have a compulsion to screw strange men?"

"So how does one acquire forgiveness?" Dr. Moore poses the question that our hell bent society doesn't want to hear ...

With 50% of people in today's society affected by abuse - how do we live with them - we cannot see their disability so they hide it and become more dysfunctional.

Adults who were abused as children INVARIABLY have difficulty in relationships because they can be too compliant, lacking sufficient boundaries to be effective in their relationships ... they will seek to meet all the needs of their partner without daring to ask for their own needs to be met.

There is a high probability that, if you and I are not such victims, then we will get into a relationship with such a victim. How do we deal with this reality? How do we deal with people who have not forgiven perpetrators of hurtful words or behaviors? How do we deal with people who were unfortunate partners of such victims and who have inherited bitterness as a result? How do we relate with damaged people?

DR. THOMAS MOORE EXPLORES INTENSE TRAUMA:

It doesn't happen all the time but this time Lil got to see the place called Limbo; There where aborted souls reside seeking rebirth. She awakes from the nightmare and just has to tell Dylan, her love, that she had aborted his child on her parents' request.

Then she moves in with wealthy Sydney, as her parents wish. After years of torments of recurrent nightmares on Limbo and a child she has never seen, the nightmares slowly give way to reality: What can she do? Natalie, the child of her dreams is already reborn and exists too close to her. And now Natalie is demanding attention.

Forgiveness feels like a refreshing plunge after a hot sauna. Later it might feel like the reality shift that is required to transform from atheist to priest, from lover to friend. This hard won progress often has an unnecessary shadow of regret ... "But, you carry a wrong around with you for years and years, and then one day you look around and find you've put it down somewhere and didn't even notice."

DR. MOORE's book UPLAND ROAD is now being released!

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