We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it

I remember a certain feeling I used to get in AA meetings. It was a feeling of clarity, of cleanliness, of freedom from the swamp of shame. I felt, at certain times in those basement rooms on my little fold out chair, that the past did not define me, that the future lay before me like an open road, a promise. I felt, not only, that I could change deeply and thoroughly and become someone I felt good about, but also that it was possible to be seen and understood, to be welcomed back into the fold of humanity, to be freed from the shackles of the stories of the person I used to be.