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OPINION
Why You Should Not Blame an Abuser
Blaming an abuser is not the best route to healing
This is a follow-up article to one I wrote entitled “Enough of This Forgiveness Nonsense.” In it, I stated that rather than focusing on forgiveness, it is better not to blame someone in the first place. You can find the article here:
I wrote that there can be no forgiveness without blame. Two people asked questions worthy of a deeper response than the comment section allows.
Michele Maize posed this excellent one:
I do have a hard time understanding some things… like abuse. Do you just not forgive because you don’t blame them?
Janin Lyndovsky respectfully questioned whether my statement, “You have to blame someone first to feel you need to forgive them”, is true in all cases or whether it may just be pain rather than blame that precedes forgiveness.
I hope this article will address these questions, and I shall focus specifically on abuse here.
