Jaycee Lee Dugard was a young girl who was abducted and kept in captivity for many many years, forced to have a child with her captor, sexually abused, etc. Since her rescue and rehabilitation she has shown that she's an extremely strong and beautiful person, inside and out. She sometimes speaks as a victims' advocate, and one of the things that she always says that I really hold onto related to this:
"This is not who you are, this is just something that happened to you."
When she says this she is often referring to abuse, but it holds true no matter the exact circumstances of each of our personal pasts. We have been through a lot, every single one of us, and though our experiences may have helped to shape our character, those experiences don't have to define us. We are not those bad things, those are just bad things that happened to us, we are each of us so much more than that.