Bravery of Brianna Ghey’s mother that is an example to all of us - Christa Ackroyd

I thought of that quote immediately this week because the power of forgiveness has been on everyone’s lips. And it made me question whether I have truly forgiven. I hope I have because I know I must. As we all must. For our own peace of mind.

The trigger for my thoughts was initially a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, when he berated modern day society for its harsh condemnation. He was actually talking about social media when he declared “the absence of forgiveness on our world, our country is absolutely appalling”. What he was asking was should we pay for ever for mistakes made on social media posts if we genuinely have repented and learnt from them?

A fair enough principle you might think until you come to consider the vile consequences of so much online content which has led to young people taking their own lives or, as we have heard this week, warping and changing young people to the point where knowledge becomes obsession and obsession becomes murder.

The case of Brianna Ghey has horrified a nation. I can’t stop thinking about her, her family and those evil monsters who taunted, tortured and killed her. The transgender teenager who had a large following on social media, was also it would seem a rather lonely and innocent human being, even though her strength to live her new life must have been enormous.

And it was undoubtedly because of that new life, because of her online presence and her difference that led two warped and despicable youngsters to lure her with the pretence of friendship and carry out their sadistic pre-meditated attack which ended her life in the most awful way.

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That her mother has reached out to her killers’ parents and said she will meet with them because she needs them to know she doesn’t blame them is an incredible act. That, in launching her campaign for tighter controls on what young people can find and be influenced by on their phones, she also says she doesn’t blame the actual killers is unbelievable.

I can’t quite get my head around the power of that message, a message that resonated with me beyond anything I have heard in a long time. But this woman is a special and brave human being. Just as her daughter was.

So what or rather who do I still need to forgive or rather, as Brianna’s mum put it, refuse to blame?

What happened didn’t threaten my life, but it certainly changed it. And the brutal truth I constantly have to remind myself of is that it was almost certainly not my birth mother’s choice to give me away.

But even though in my heart of hearts I know or at least hope that to be true, it doesn’t stop the hurt, doesn’t end the questions and almost certainly has led me in life to overcompensate that niggling feeling of rejection which I suppose if I am being totally honest but has always driven me to strive, even over strive, to be the best I can be.

Rather than be considered second best, I have fought to find a place in life and to be a voice for others who may feel abandoned by society. I know it is illogical just as I know my wonderful childhood from being a tiny baby at just ten days old when I was adopted is largely what made me who I am, a naturally confident hard working woman not afraid to tread her own path. But I also know that sense of rejection is equally what spurred me on.

I am intelligent enough to know that back then being pregnant, unmarried and 20 years old my birth mother probably had little or no choice. Although if you want to understand my obsession for women’s rights it comes from the fact that I also know that my birth mother was told if it was a boy she could keep her baby, if it was a girl she had to give her up for adoption. And that hurts. As it must have hurt her.

I never found my birth mother. It felt too disloyal while my father was alive. It was something he would never talk about. In fact it was only when he died that I learned of the name on my original birth certificate that my birth mother had chosen. I was in my late thirties.

My mother and I were having a conversation which neither of us had felt possible until my father died and for the first time I supposed I expressed my anger that I had been given away. My mother was wise and she wasn’t shocked. Together we opened my original birth certificate which I had always refused to do and discussed the name I had been given ten days before I had been called Christa.

The name Vivienne was to me beautiful and it showed that my birth mother had given me a name to be proud of even though she knew she would give me up and it would almost certainly be altered. In an instant my thoughts for her changed.

But even then I didn’t try to find her in case I was reading too much into that choice. When my mother died I did, only to discover she too had passed many years before aged just 50. She had never had another child. That choice to tell her in person that I didn’t blame her, that the name she had chosen for me spoke volumes about her feelings for me, was taken away. But it did give me a sense of calm that had been lacking for much of my life.

So who did write that quote about holding onto bitterness before it damages you more deeply than you ever can imagine. The one my father told me of and which through life I have constantly had to remind myself of. The man’s name was Rubin Carter.

Rubin was an American boxer who once fought for a world title. In 1966 he was arrested, charged and imprisoned for a triple murder he didn’t commit.

He spent almost 20 years in prison protesting his innocence because he was and upon his release he was obviously asked about how he felt at losing the best years of his life in jail. It was then that he uttered that momentous quote which has served me well down the years whenever I have felt like shouting, it’s not fair.

Nothing most of us have or will ever go through is anything like the parents of Brianna Ghey. What her brave mother in saying not only does she not blame the parents of the killers but she has to try and not hate the two evil teenagers that took her away from her, is life changing and true humanity.

I totally understand why she refuses to forgive her daughter’s killers I would not be able to either. But hate them ? I would. But then Esther Ghey is an incredible woman. “I don’t carry hate for either of them,” she says. “Because hate is such a harmful emotion to the person that’s holding that.”

A true life lesson from a woman whose message and whose daughter I will never forget .