It's best to look forward to what's possible and what's waiting for you. The past is just something to learn from. Enjoy the music and dance like today is the last!

Your mother is afraid that you will enjoy life, because it will remind her of the life she's denied herself.

I didn't believe I was allowed to do anything other than get married and have kids, so I did that (at 19, before I even had time to try anything else, and without considering if it was actually something I wanted or just something I had been taught to want).

So, like, literally everything could have been different.

I wanted to live alone, travel, take voice lessons, learn other instruments in addition to piano, have my own income, make my own decisions, learn new/more languages. I might have had music gigs, translating gigs, gotten a degree in linguistics eventually.

Having kids, as much as I adore them, imposes some pretty severe limits on my autonomy.

But being a parent has also pushed me in other directions that I likely would never have gone if life had been more ideal. I'm now in school for a medical/STEM degree and I'm kicking ass at that. Once I graduate, I may have the financial ability to experience a little more freedom.

I might still do the things I used to want to do, but it'll be as a middle-aged person and not a young thing. I can be okay with that.

All my brothers and I had a lot of athletic abilities but being JW's we weren't ever allowed to participate in extra curricular activities that...who knows...might have turned into something in adulthood.

But I don't think about it anymore. I made my own path and I'm happy with where I ended up.

How about instead you say Now... What I am going to Pursuit Now?

This might not be a popular response for people here, but I've become somewhat grateful for growing up in a very chill, loving country church and buying into the BS.

There was zero chance I'd be a drug addict and it's hard to virgins to impregnate people, so I dodged big bullets right away. I'm thankful for the Protestant Ethic and overall the self-discipline I learned early in life.

I'm also extremely thankful I studied to be a preacher where I had to study history and religion. Studying religion might be the best cure.

I prefer to think of the bullet I dodged: I considered going to a Bible College instead of a real one. Glad I went the route I went.