Dragging the past up...?

I've been working quite a bit recently on mental health awareness and working with the charity CALM. It seems though every time I work on these things, it stirs up old emotions. I'm just wondering whether this is healthy?

I'm always one for self-analysis and trying to figure out whether what I am doing is 'right' or not but sometimes I do think too much!

What has happened in the past, I can not change but I do acknowledge it has completely shaped me as a person and my future.

I started reading through the material I wrote after Dean passed away recently, this is because I did have the idea of potentially writing a book (although I doubt anyone would want to read my gloomy story) and it really made me sad.

I was reading things that I don't remember writing. It wasn't so much the parts I wrote about directly after Dean died, I remember those things as my clearest memories. I remember everything that happened on that day, I remember the funeral clearly and I remember the corners court so well.

It's all the things afterwards like people I dated since and how I felt about them. I have been in two relationships since Dean died and I honestly don't understand how I wrote some of the things I did about how amazing these people were or how much they seemed to be so caring about what I've been through, as they really wasn't.

I think once again, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I want to continue with the work I'm doing with CALM and raising the awareness of mental health and the fact that there is help out there. But equally it actually really hurts when I think about what I've been through.

I know I failed Dean. I should have seen the signs. I shouldn't have argued with him so much and I should have done the things he wanted me to but sadly I had a final burst of stubbornness (which coincidentally is one of the things that has kept me sane since).

I can't change the past but I know I can shape the future.

I know that someone I date in the future, may not be able to relate to what I've been through but I truly hope that they can accept that I was fully committed to someone before them, but I hope they are strong enough to accept this.

I need to realise that this is a part of me and it is ok for me to be upset occasionally when I think about Dean. It's ok to miss him but that doesn't take anything away from anyone else I am romantically interested in.

Sometimes I'm my own worse enemy. There was no manual for how to deal with becoming a widow at 25, so I have made my own rules and have adapted whichever was possible. I forget sometimes how strong I've been.

Maybe sometimes you need to look at the past, to truly move forward...

I saw this on Pinterest and it's made me consider whether actually maybe I've always been the person I am today?