“When you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” Tom Stoppard, British playwright

This quote came from Bethenny Frankel’s book, A Place of Yes. Many people get stuck in their lives because they’re carrying around baggage from childhood. Everyone has some type of mental garbage from childhood. Yes, some childhoods are much, much worse than others. No matter what happened and how you feel about what happened, you are now an adult. As an adult, you can decide who you want to be. No one else gets to tell you who you are and what you should do with your life.

Here’s an example of what not letting go of childhood looks like. A guy I knew in the past completely lacked ambition and he was a bit socially awkward. He also had terrible anger issues. He also had loads of talent and, when you got to know him, he was a pretty fun guy. He could do anything he wanted but he was stuck living the same life that he had been living since he was a teenager. When I asked him what was going on, he said that as a child both of his parents were abusive and when he wasn’t being abused, he was basically ignored. He was allowed to run wild and do whatever he wanted to do. He went on to say that as a result of this, he was “never given the tools” to function normally in world.

The guy didn’t have a disability and he actually had some advantages that people would love to have. He could easily have gotten the “tools” he needed on his own in his adult life. He refused to do it because in his mind, he was still living his childhood life.

The point of this is to accept whatever happened to you, accept that your parents are what they are, and keep moving forward. Read the quote again. It’s about maturity,