“Lookin’ backwards. Might be the only way to move forward.”

We are surrounded each day by messages encouraging us to move forward. If you plugged “quotes about moving forward” into a Google search I have no doubt you would get thousands of options that would pop up. All encouraging you to move forward, to not waste time, to leave the past in the past, to seize the day, etc. I’m sure most of them have some pretty/inspiring background behind them as well to really inspire you to move forward. For some reason the designers of quote images really think that watercolor backgrounds are the way to motivate us. There seems to be a collective fear of looking backwards as if in doing so one will be stuck there forever. Destined to live their life in the past and the land of what was.

I myself have avoided looking back at the past, especially the last 3 years because who the heck wants to go back and take a trip down memory lane through the most difficult years of their life. Yeah, it sounds about as enjoyable as watching flies hit a K-Mart sign. But, recently my tune has changed a bit. I agree with the lyrics of the always wise Taylor Allison Swift mentioned above.. I’m not sure one can move forward without looking back.

I was in the shower yesterday thinking about this very topic.. I do some of my very best thinking in the shower. And as I was thinking and showering I started to think about driving. Now, when driving we often have to look back in our rearview mirror to see what the cars behind us are doing, which is often a scary thing to see and many times I regret looking. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. We also look back when we are going to change lanes to avoid running our car into someone else’s. We have to look back in order to move forward..

I think life is the same way. I think sometimes we have to look in the rearview mirror of our life for several reasons. One, to see how far we’ve come. For instance, 3 years ago today I was enrolled in the Madonna Post Covid Program receiving therapy services that included learning how to put appointments on a calendar and put together simple puzzles that made me want to curse. 3 years ago today I could have never written a blog post because I couldn’t look at a screen long enough to do so and I couldn’t have formulated the words to write anything that would have made any coherent sense at all. Looking back in the rearview mirror allows me to see how far I’ve come and the progress I have made as a result of my work, but also because of the amazing village of doctors, therapists, friends, emails, etc that I have been surrounded by.

Two, we have to look back to move forward because I don’t think we can truly move forward if we haven’t dealt with our baggage from the past. If you’re avoiding looking in the rearview mirror of your life, but are still carrying all the baggage of that life with you, have you really moved forward? I’m asking myself this question to because I am definitely still carrying the baggage around from the last 3 years and know I haven’t truly moved forward. There are days myself and my baggage are still stuck at the cemetery in front of the gravestone labeled “Sara’s Old Life.” Myself and my baggage don’t visit that gravestone as much as we used to, but we definitely still pop in every one and awhile. And when we do I am sure I look like one of those people at the airport who has a tiny luggage cart stacked as high as one possibly can with all their baggage.

Her Majesty of Feelings is helping me work on setting the baggage from the life that was down and not carrying it around with me… It’s a slow process because like any person who goes to therapy I resist doing things that are hard and uncomfortable. I would rather my therapy sessions be spent on topics I enjoy talking about such as how other people are to blame for my reactions, responses, feelings, etc. lol. I frequently think to myself when we delve into areas I don’t want to talk about “Is this what I pay her for” and unfortunately for me, it is exactly what I pay her for.

Finally, I think we have to look back in the rearview mirror of life to move forward because the rearview mirror shows us who we have been and we get to decide if that’s who we want to continue to be. We get to decide if that’s the person we want to move forward as or if there’s some things we’d like to leave in the past such as, old thought patterns, old narratives, old grudges, etc. The rearview mirror holds lessons for us that can help guide the way forward and maybe make the path a little less bumpy.

So, I would encourage you to ignore those inspiring quotes encouraging you to move forward and to avoid looking in the rearview mirror of your life. You don’t have to stay looking into the rearview mirror for hours or days at a time, but a quick look back every once in a while might actually help you move forward.