It’s not about being willing to return the relationship to what it had been before the harm, and it’s not even about returning to any kind of relationship. Once again, that would be reconciliation, a whole other ball of wax. This mechila is also not about offering absolution, atonement, to the penitent—only God can do that. But just as we ask the perpetrator to actually see the hurt person in front of them, we also ask the victim to try to recognize the hard, sincere repentance work that has been done, and to allow it to mean enough to settle accounts.
