Sometimes something bad happens between members of a family and/or very close friends, and the reaction to this bad thing is basically withdrawal and subsequent avoidance. This not talking or not engaging the other leaves both parties injured and also with a frozen connection, a frozen image, and a frozen story. This frozen presence may recede into the background but it will haunt both parties. The two parties need help to find a way out of this. Reconciliation involves a slow process of helping each party to see the injury - to bring it forward and put it out on the table and accept its presence without defense. Why would someone agree to do this? Because both parties are haunted by the injury, whether consciously or unconsciously (unconsciously by means of "forgetting" but this forgetting means losing part of your history which is a kind of tear or hole in the fabric of your identity).
A therapist can help the two parties navigate these kind of meetings by helping to contain and work with the feelings and defensiveness such an attempt requires. I think this quote speaks to part of the reconciliation process.
"Forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame--and pain--in a relationship...It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness...But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive."
