Forgiveness is a challenging endeavor in human experience and in clinical work. Is it an important and/or legitimate analytic concept? Long the province of theologians and philosophers, forgiveness has had little theoretical place in the psychoanalytic lexicon. This paper considers the analytic place of forgiveness through a treatment that was shadowed by two lost mothers – the patient’s and analyst’s - in the consulting room. The patient’s question, “must we forgive to heal?” will be examined in this story of healing for both him and his analyst.