Mistakes hurt.  It is so much easier to punish myself than to accept that I’ve done something without thinking – or with a lot of thinking, for that matter – that caused pain.  Self-punishment is the knot at the core of my stomach, the slender electric razor-wire that sizzles around my heart when I remember “it.”

Forgiving myself is the toughest survival skill I am having to learn.  Forgiveness may be where butterflies come from.