This is the non-fiction piece from "Living, Loving, Laughing, and Occasional Murder."

Behind Chapter 8: Forgiveness.  For many of us, our past mistakes haunt us. We learned how to be embarrassed, how to feel endless shame, how to beat ourselves up for falling below our own standards of behavior. What we didn't learn is what we need to know most. It's simple--not necessarily easy, given the way we were brought up, but simple. The past is our teacher. We can learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We can't change the past, no matter how much we might like to do so, and if we are obsessed with past errors, we are missing the opportunity to live in this moment. What we can do is forgive ourselves for our past mistakes, take the lesson and don't make the same mistake again. We are human. We all make mistakes and if we learn to accept them as instruments of learning, then we can also learn to let them go without punishing ourselves forever--holding ourselves to a nebulous standard that no one can meet all the time. We were taught what it means to be bad growing up. We were punished when we screwed up. The people we cared about us were disappointed in us for our mistakes and misjudgments, so we took the lesson and became disappointed in ourselves. Then we carried that forward to all of our subsequent mistakes and misjudgments. But no one ever taught us that we need not remain tied to that whipping post--that we can learn and let go!!! Give yourself grace--you deserve whatever your mistakes.