Got Bounce? is Pauletta Washington's educational series on the UN Development Programme's Crisis Prevention and Recovery. Got Bounce? helps people of all ages to build the skills necessary for recovery from any crisis.

Develop a capacity to forgive.

Forgiveness is useful. Forgiveness stops the cycle of discrimination, resentment and vengeance. Forgiveness can lead those who've been treated unjustly and unfairly toward recovery of self-respect and peace.

Forgiveness is a commitment to a process of change. Move away from your role as victim and release the control and power the offending person and situation have had in your life. As you let go of grudges, you'll no longer define your life by how you've been hurt. You might even find compassion and understanding.

Forgiveness doesn't mean that you deny the other person's responsibility for hurting you, and it doesn't minimize or justify the wrong. Forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge.

You can forgive the person without excusing the act. The act that hurt or offended you might always remain a part of your life, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on you and help you focus on other, positive parts of your life.

 



To seek to be loved and to give love is to be human.

Every single one of us will experience some form of social rejection in our lives. We might not get invited to a party, we might not get a certain job that we wanted, we might get “dumped”.

Rejection is painful but it does NOT have to be soul destroying. Resilience is one of the key characteristics that give agency to the wounded soul to bounce back.

Research into the effects of rejection indicates that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury. Social rejection can influence emotion, cognition and even physical health.

Resilience to recover from disappointment, loss, rejection requires practiced learning to dare to love, to live again, to thrive.