I do think we can get bogged down in why, why, why and forget to work on what we have right in front of us. I tend to look at the past as just a way to understand where my ways of thinking about myself and about life got skewed along the way.

It doesn't honestly do me any good to play the blame game now. What DOES do me good is to see that I don't HAVE to continue thinking the way I used to; I don't HAVE to continue believing the old skewed/false messages that I picked up in my history. I can choose to live in the here and now, changing to more healthy thoughts and beliefs, rather than clinging to the ancient history in my life as a reason to continue in my self-loathing and destructive behaviors.

Yes, I was once (actually many more times than once) the victim and believed all the lies and messages that my abusers and I myself told myself, but I'm not being victimized anymore. I don't have to keep owning that "role".

Knowing my history has served to bring me better understanding of myself and given me the ability to give myself a break, quite frankly forgive myself, for reacting the only way I knew how at the time. But I'm not that child anymore and don't have to keep thinking as I did when I was a child. No one is hurting me anymore. I am safe and independent and quite able to stand up for myself and think for myself in ways that I just wasn't capable of at 5 years old.

So perhaps think of knowing your history as a way of just understanding why you think and behave and react the way you do now, and try not to get to terribly bogged down in the blame game except where is serves to allow you to let yourself off the hook for things that truly weren't your fault.