“every dark cranny of the past” (Chapter 6, Big Book)
I used to be very upset about my childhood. I thought I had a terrible childhood. The truth was that there were individual unpleasant incidents but that, at most moments of most days, most things were OK. The narrative I had built was a fabrication, like taking a few stars in a sky full of them, drawing lines between them, and calling it a constellation. The stars are there, but the constellation is a figment. I had made a world out of the dark crannies then dragged it round after me like a curse.
Developing gratitude for all that was either neutral or good right-sizes the past.