Recently I was asked, “What does forgiveness have to do with accountability?” Too many times in our lives we get confused between taking accountability for our lives and forgiving people vs forgiving people and not taking accountability for our lives. To truly forgive means to move past or move beyond the issue or event that we have either created or has been created by others. To take accountability means that we may or may not have been the creator but we are choosing to act rather than be acted upon. I have been asked many times if forgiving people means I have to let them back into my life? Or the opposite; if they have forgiven me, why are things not as they were? This feeling may be a result of others setting and keeping boundaries. We may interpret these boundaries as a person’s lack of forgiveness. It is important to remember that just because we are letting it go or forgiving doesn’t mean that what happened was ok, it just means we are no longer being held back by it. It is critical to maintain, enforce and set boundaries in order to keep ourselves safe. This may come in the form of limiting exposure to those that are unhealthy, limiting our conversations to topics that do not lead to unhealthy discussions and / or removing ourselves from the environments which these events have occurred in. It is our responsibility to keep ourselves safe and take action with accountability in order to move forward.