Thank you for reading and sharing thoughtful comments, Richard. When I talk about regret, I mostly mean things I didn’t do and wish I had, as well as things I did do and wish I hadn't. When it comes to things other people have done to me that I had no say in (that potentially caused trauma), the regret is not mine to have or not have. It is the other person’s (in my example my mother’s, in your example your father’s). I’m reading a lot of “either or” statements in your response, and my take is that this leads to black and white thinking. I do think it’s necessary to decide if the pain caused is bigger than the lessons learned or vice versa. It’s both and whichever one is bigger can change from day to day sometimes. When you say what you resist, persists, it sounds like you’re missing my point. I’m not saying to resist the regrets we have or the painful traumas we carry. I say we need to acknowledge the pain we have caused others and others have caused us in addition to being grateful for the things we’ve learned. That is speaking the hard complex truth about our lives and to me, the only way forward.