Drat, now I want strawberries!

The biggest lesson I've learned is to figure out what I can control and what I have absolutely no control over. And to understand the differences and not blame myself/beat myself up for things I don't have control over. For me this lesson didn't come easy, it was after a long time of blaming myself for someone else's bad decisions, thinking that I deserved it and that I was somehow responsible. It took a long time to learn that no, I didn't choose to have that happen, and that it was okay to put the blame where it belonged and to be angry about what happened.

The next step was learning that what I *did* control was me, and how much I let what was done to me affect my life and my enjoyment of it. I could choose to remain the injured victim and blame all of my shortcomings on what had been done to me in the past, or I could move on and become stronger for it. I chose to move on.