I think I am slowly learning real courage, so I won’t take that away, though.
But it feels to me like forgiveness is healing the wounds that person caused you. It is about removing the trigger which causes you pain every time you reference that wound. This is the primary process.
You can choose to include that person again, or not, but you can use the word “forgive” either way.
I suppose in other contexts it might also mean “I understand why you did that, why you said that, why you felt that way, and having performed that act of understanding I am no longer angry”. It is perhaps that too.
And I think sometimes what goes under this word is acts of mercy for people who really don’t deserve it, people who hurt you and never apologized, but who you, as a mostly psychologically normal person, do not get pleasure from hurting or wounding in return.
Stabbing the people who stabbed you might feel good in imagination, but I think every time anyone performs a willful act of cruelty, they hurt themselves again.
Life is not fair. Living in such a way that you feel resentment every time some idiot does what idiots do, is to cast your fate to the winds and tides. This is not intelligent.
Letting things go is about releasing yourself from them, so that you can live in freedom. Moralism, a strong need to judge others, is a cage. Now, sometimes the innocent need to be protected, sometimes standards are needed, but this should be a dispassionate evaluation, not something stemming from a need to control, a need to confine and subordinate.