It takes something really powerful to make you leave Hawai’i (or you know, running out of money). I found myself called back to England by my heart, but not for long. It wasn’t yet time to settle, it was time to explore another country I’d once fallen in love with, Croatia and to see if I could find a home, a place to rest and write.

I didn’t have any idea quite how much more I had to learn, to understand and this journey was going to show me, above all things, the power of forgiveness.

What is forgiveness? Perhaps it’s like the sunrise and the sunset, something we’ve seen and known for a long time, before there was language to explain it, before there was science to explain it. Even when we got it wrong, when we believed the sun moved around the earth, (which was an easy assumption to make), the sun rose and set without interruption, without correcting our misguided beliefs.

So I think forgiveness exists; it rises and falls, even when we ignore it, just as we all share unconditional love we’re sometimes blind to.

I think we need forgiveness to survive. Without forgiving ourselves for our mistakes, our missteps, we’d never move forward, we’d just sit down and rot in the road. Indeed some people do. And how can we forgive ourselves if we can’t forgive others who have hurt us so much less than we’ve hurt ourselves?

Let go, let go, let go, it’s as simple as that and we can forgive even in the midst of the worst abuse; we can use forgiveness to end the cycle of abuse, “abuse begets abuse”, to let go of the need to punish, to be right and, so importantly, the need to keep suffering because of the past.

From the Amazon Best Selling author of "Japan Is Very Wonderful," the "Camino de la Luna" series and the Pearl Escapes mini-guides.

The third in this series (or fifth including the self help manual "free Feeling Real Emotions Everyday" and prequel "Japan Is Very Wonderful") "Camino de la Luna – Forgiveness" continues the journey.