I’ve spent many years and therapy dollars trying to let go of past traumas, work through the issues and iron out the wrongs, in the hope that one day the slate will be wiped clean, and finally I can live the life I’ve dreamed of.

A life free from troubled experiences, past hurts and things that have gone wrong. But I’m not sure that we ever get to this place, and recently I’ve been trying something different. Rather than trying to let go of my past and erase it from my mind, I’ve been looking at it this way—we own our stories and live our truth using the tough times to make us a better person. Or, as Buddhists put it, watching the lotus grow from the mud—without the mud there can be no lotus.

We hear a lot these days about letting go. There are things we should let go of, because they stop us moving forward—but we don’t say that about our physical scars, when in fact, those scars are there as a reminder that we are stronger than whatever tried to harm us. We survived. And does letting go really allow us to move on anyway?

Does that mean it goes away—that we airbrush it from our life, and everything becomes perfect? It doesn’t change that it happened or that it’s been a part of our life. Are we really just sweeping it under the carpet or stacking it in the basement, left there to rot until the smell becomes unbearable? What is the best way of dealing with our past?

When I look at my own past, there are things I’m not proud of—drugs, violence, betrayals. There are relationships that have broken my heart and people I lost who I thought I could never live without. Equally, there have been relationships I’ve ruined, leaving a trail of destruction in my wake and the inevitable guilt that follows. I spent many years in the closet, scared to be true to myself and what I felt. Growing up in a community that made me feel that the way I felt was wrong, left me feeling lonely and unwanted—it also led to years of me suppressing my authenticity and trying to fit another mold.

When I look at my past and all the experiences that still (at times) threaten to haunt my future, I’m torn. I have two minds about what to do with this stuff. Do I try to let it go, and pretend it never happened? Will I ever be able to get this stuff out of my head and leave it behind—and if I did, would I be true to myself and authentic?

Or—do I embrace it as something that has happened? Something that I can’t change and is in my past—something I’ve moved on from but not forgotten, because it is from there that I’ve gotten to here.

It’s like a stain on the coffee table—you can’t remove it, it will always be there—but you can make it look beautiful, with a plant or a bit of polish. A doily perhaps?

Our experiences shape us, and they make us who we are.

Some of my biggest lessons have come from the darkest parts of my life. If I had the chance to go back and erase them, would I? It would mean less hurt, less pain—a chance to right the wrongs and not have to go through the tough times. But it would also mean that I wouldn’t be who I am today. It would mean that I wouldn’t know the things I do now, have the wisdom I’ve shared with others and do the things I do differently now, as a result.

I look at it like a tattoo—we sometimes have tattoos we regret, but instead of getting them removed and pretending we were never that person who got their ex’s name tattooed in a heart on our arm, we can revisit the tattooist and have it made into something more beautiful. Something more relevant to our journey, so that now when we look at it, we know we’ve learned and grown. We’ve not erased it from our life, we’ve made it beautiful, and it’s now a symbol that acknowledges where we’ve come from but also where we’re travelling to.

I believe in living our truth, and to do this, we have to own our stories. Nobody is perfect—we’ve all made mistakes, and it’s those mistakes that have shaped us into the people we are today. Be proud of that. Rather than letting it go, we’ve made it beautiful, and it is by doing this that we evolve and move forward to become the people we’re capable of being.

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Author: Jess Stuart

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Unsplash/Stephanie Krist