There have been many times in my life when I’ve wondered if I was doing things the right way.
That question has come up for me in more ways than I can count.
As a mother, I have wondered if I wasI being too strict… or too permissive.
What I learned goes back to something my mother told me many years ago—something that has stayed with me ever since:
“If you do the best you can with the information you have at the time, that is all anyone can do.”
I’ve always tried to do the right thing, even when I wasn’t sure what the right thing was.
All I could do was look at the situation, consider what I knew at the time, and make the best decision I could.
Did I make mistakes along the way? Of course I did. That’s part of being human.
There were times I wished things had turned out differently. I spent years going back over those moments, thinking about what I could have done better—even though the outcome never changed.
Somewhere along the way, I equated doing my best with doing things perfectly.
And when things didn’t turn out the way I hoped, I held onto that as regret.
It took me a long time to understand something I hadn’t seen before.
“I can’t judge what I did forty years ago by who I am today.”
I am not perfect. I never was, and I never will be.
But I did the best I knew how to do at the time—and that has to be enough.
Through My Eyes, Gently 