Have you had a life-changing event happen to you that needs the Power of Forgiveness for you to move on? by Linda Bloom The Power of Forgiveness – A Former Prisoner’s Story Jeri arrived at the writing workshop with the look of someone who had paid serious dues. As the group listened to her story, they were amazed that she looked as youthful and vibrant as she did. It would be a profound understatement to say that Jeri had had a hard life. When she was in her early twenties, she got involved with a boyfriend who was a drug dealer. She experimented with drugs and found herself in way over her head. One afternoon she and her boyfriend went to the home of another dealer to purchase drugs. The two men got into an altercation that resulted in her boyfriend shooting and killing the dealer. Jeri was convicted of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Her boyfriend was found guilty of 2nd-degree murder and sentenced to seventeen years, despite the fact that he was the one who fired the fatal shot.   What choice does one have in these circumstances? Jeri told the group, “I was still in shock when I received my life sentence. Over time, the reality of the situation began to hit me; I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. I couldn’t help but hope that someone would realize that this was terribly wrong, that I didn’t deserve this, that something would happen that would allow me to go back to the life that I had known. But as the days and weeks and months passed, it became increasingly evident that no rescue was going to happen.” “I began to accept the fact that I could either continue to...

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