Did your parents do a perfect job of raising you? Do you have tons of great supportive friends you can lean on whenever life gets hard? Have you had totally happy and pain-free relationships with no heartbreaks?

Of course not. We’re all covered in scars from head to toe from the painful path our lives have taken. You can’t expect to go through that and not have any lasting effects, such as coping mechanisms, PTSD, anxiety, depression, trust issues, etc. Even though I want to fix all my issues, I’m starting to realize some are old wounds that will never heal completely.

My scars? I have better friends than I used to, but I still fear abandonment everytime a message is left on read. I’m far more strong and fit than I used to be, but still see a fat nerd in the mirror. I’ve gotten a lot of therapy, but it still hurts that I never heard my Dad say he was proud of me. No matter how hard I work, sometimes I look in the mirror and all I see is scars.

Our lives are filled with disappointments, hard decisions, and pain that wasn’t our fault. You didn’t choose what bad things happened to you. And for the mistakes you did make, you were still doing the best you could at the time. And if a relationship or a job or a parent burned you horribly in the past, it’s normal and justified to still be afraid of fire. Your past is not your fault, but it is a part of who you are. And believe it or not, many people who went through similar things are not doing as well as you are.

We should all try to improve, for no other reason than it will make our life better tomorrow. But we have to have realistic expectations. We can’t lash out at ourselves because we still feel so broken. We can’t hate ourselves because the pain is still here, and we can’t resent all the thorns along the path that covered us in these scars. Resenting the past won’t make it go away.

I’m learning to handle these low spots better when they pop up, and that’s good because they don’t seem to ever stop. Sometimes that old pain comes rushing back and all you can do is remind yourself that the past did happen and it’s okay to still hurt sometimes. Of course it is not fair that those things happened to us. But your best life is not reached by constantly resenting things you can’t change.

Sometimes self care means “I can’t change that bad stuff that happened to me, but trying to cut these old scars out is only making things worse.”

You can focus on doing things you enjoy and being around people you like. Let’s try to get the most out of the life we have, not waste time wishing it was different. I’ve been through a lot but cutting out old scars never made things better. Please have some compassion for yourself. You’ve been through a lot too.

Further Reading: If this post resonated with you then I highly recommend Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. That book was instrumental in me learning to become aware of my emotions through mindfulness, accept them without fighting them, and then live life instead of resenting it. You can’t get where you want to go just by hating where you are. And really powerful change starts with being honest about where you are, scars and all.