@Bellabug
Hi Bellabug! Thank you for your post! I guess if someone has said that before, I can kind of see what they are saying. The way I like to think of things is "tabula rosa" (not sure if I spelled that correctly) but essentially it means "clean slate". We can reinvent ourselves. We can start over. We can wake up one morning and wipe the slate clean.
But it takes us to make the choice to do so and give ourselves permission. Sometimes simply us letting ourselves off of the hook, forgiving ourselves, having empathy and compassion for ourselves and really understanding that we did what we had to do in a certain place and time. We did it. That time was then and this time is now.
We know better now. And so this is the beauty of it all Sometimes we truly can be our very own harshest critics. I send you big *hugs*