I heard a gorgeous story from one of the rebbaim here in neveh about being able to move on and try to strengthen ourselves even if it sometimes seems very hard to not keep looking back. Especially now, in the 3 weeks we have to be working on ourselves to grow and move forward into the geulah bimhara beyamenu Iy'H amen.

It was a friday afternoon before shabbos and all of the jewish men were at the mikvah. One bearded man with long peis was about him was about to enter the mikvah, he wasn't clothed and he was covering an area of his arm with his hand as he walked into the mikvah. There was a puddle on the floor and the man slipped , and it was revealed that the area of flesh the man was hiding had a big tattoo on it. The man was ashamed, as everyone in the community was looking at him and astonished to see a large tattoo plastered on one of the chassidim of the town. Suddenly, an elderly gentleman walked over to him and offered him a hand , and helped him off the floor. In front of everyone he rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo as well, a combination of numbers that had been put there in the Holocaust. The older man said to the chassid "I've been through my gehennom and you've been through yours, and baruch Hashem we both made it out, now let's go to the mikveh and be kadosh"
This story is so applicable to all of us, because we all have things of the past that can tie us down and discourage us from moving on, but the point is that we have to be able to approach Hashem with a desire for growth and devekes Hashem and the knowledge that Hashem loves us no matter what we've been through!