What are the best lessons you learnt from your life?

Never to fall for anyone or trust anyone. You'll always be the one to fend for yourself so be brave and don't expect anything from anyone else.

My Dad is a very hard man. He was born and spent his whole childhood in Iceland. He came to the US as a teenager with my grandparents and worked his ass off to become a cattle rancher. He is without a doubt the toughest and hardest man that I’ve ever known my entire life. He is also kind and compassionate but he is never weak and suffers no fools. I’ve always been his princess but princesses have to be smart and tough as nails as well in his book. Probably the only reason I survived my hell is based on what he taught. Don’t remember the exact details but one summer when I was an arrogant teenager, I was helping my dad and he noticed a break in our fence. Somebody on the dirt road must have clipped it with their car. We hadn’t had any cattle wander out but it needed a temporary fix to keep them in until we could fully repair the fence. I told my dad I’d fix it with some bailing wire and he asked if I needed help and I said no because I wanted to prove to him that I can do anything my brothers can. It had been hard to see from the road but when I walked over the break was worse than I had thought. Some of the fence that was still up was bad and the section too long for any bailing wire to work at all. I tried to bail it up the best I could but I knew it wouldn’t hold them if they pushed up against it but I was way too embarrassed to tell him that it was a bigger job than I could handle. My Dad thought he had at least a few hours to fix it. About an hour later we had about a dozen head break through my shit job. After we got the cattle back he went over and saw that I had to have known that the posts were pulled up and I’d be a dumbass to think it would hold. He wanted me to apologize for not asking for help when I knew better. My stubborn pride felt that would be weak. He said any child of his too stupid or too arrogant to apologize when they are wrong and know it, could walk the fuck back to the house. It was a long way back home. It was getting evening by the time I got home but I learned a whole lot during my long walk that evening.

1.) I learned my Dad don’t fuck around.
2.) That I’m strong enough to hold to my convictions even when I’m dead wrong.
3.) I learned my Dad won’t expect me to apologize unless I’m actually wrong because he wouldn’t.
4.) Most importantly that arrogance is not strength, even it feels like it, it’s stupidity & weakness of mind.

I’ve watched my Dad apologize since. Not very often because he’s rarely wrong but all the more moving when he does because it’s very fucking real.

Don't let life pass you by...always just do it afraid. (too bad I was a little late learning it)

Keep trying you’ll eventually get there.

To never do [b][i]that[/i][/b] again! Whew! 😉

Everyone has untapped potential; life isn’t fair, but that goes both ways; I am more than I believe, but less than I act; time is not gentle; grandkids are perfect (at least if they are not staying overnight); there is great pain in the world and we all know less about why then we think, however there is the potential for unbelievable joy. I can’t be happy and ungrateful at the same time and in order to be unhappy I have to be focused on myself.

Nobody actually knows what they're doing. Some are just better at faking it.

I always take care of my kids before I do things for myself

People are cunts

Despite living in the digital age where everything can be reduced to 1 or 0, most everything is very nuanced and the truth lies more in the middle than in the polar extremes. Particularly when it comes to politics.

how to give people the benefit of doubt, while also creating boundaries all the same just in case. i can't really explain it in words.

Actions ALWAYS speak louder than words🦉

I've learned.