While it’s true you’re haunted by your past, it’s truer that you’ve traveled spectacularly far away from it. You swam across a wide and wild sea and you made it all the way to the other side. That it feels different here on this shore than you thought it would does not negate the enormity of the distance you traversed and the strength it took you to do it.

It’s no wonder you thought you’d feel that other, purer way. That reel is playing in a lot of our heads, planted there by a jumble of sources, both mercenary and benevolent, none of which are very much help. We want to believe that on the other side of whatever crap we had to swim away from there’s a crap-free beach where we can lounge in the sun at last. Free and at peace. If anyone deserves that liberation, it’s you, honey bun.

But we can’t erase our lives. We can’t change what our mothers or fathers or step parents were like or what demons or gods ruled them or when they died or how. We can only change who we are in relation to them. We can revise how we narrate those stories of our lives.