Caryl Harvey featured in ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Forgiveness Fix’
In 1995, Caryl Harvey and her family had their lives changed forever. Her son, Chad, was fatally shot, and Harvey found herself filled with something she’d never felt before: cold hate. Even as time passed and she began to function again, the hate refused to leave.
“It took me years to get to the point where I could come to forgiveness,” Harvey said. And even then, it was only possible by reevaluting what forgiveness truly is.
As she wrote in “Thrown Away,” she came to understand that “forgiveness doesn’t mean throwing your arms around the person who hurt you and telling them what they did is all right.”
Through forgiveness, she is now able to think back joyously on Chad’s life without it being overshadowed by the hate she’d thought would never go away.
“Thrown Away,” and 100 other short stories fill the pages of “Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Forgiveness Fix.” These personal, revealing stories lay out steps for how to analyze a situation, come to grips with what happened and then use the power of forgiveness to move forward.
As Chicken Soup for the Soul’s editor in chief Amy Newmark wrote in the introduction to the book, “Basically, if you stay angry you create more anger, and you carry it with you. Imagine walking around with that little bit of anger inside you at all times. Isn’t it obvious that bit of anger would color all your experiences?”
Giving each other the benefit of the doubt is a key theme in the book. So many disputes can be avoided when we don’t expect each other to be perfect, and when we don’t hold onto the past. The stories in this collection go deep inside the lives of people who came back from everyday disputes, disappointing family relationships and terrible transgressions — abuse, deliberate malfeasance and even murder. The authors describe how they were able to put even the worst experiences behind them so they could climb out of their dark holes and stride forward unencumbered on the road to a bright future.
“Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Forgiveness Fix” will soon be available locally at Inklings and More Bookstore.