A good friend and mentor of mine said to me a couple of years ago: "The past doesn't have to define you." at the time I kind of blocked it out because I wasn't ready to accept it. She said it again recently and I finally got it in my heart, not just intellectually. "The past doesn't have to define you." There's a Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco record called "The Past Doesn't Go Anywhere." This too is true. You have to deal with the past... make peace with it, clean up your side of the street, forgive, whatever the case may be, but it doesn't have to define you. The present. Right now. This is what defines a person. Sure the past figures in, but we have a choice right now about what to do with the effects of the past. Here I am... Right here right now what am I doing?

Monday, May 21st 2007