My oldest daughter suggested I write of my life, my pain, my anger. Someday I am sure I will if for only myself and the women who will follow me in this particular flow from the river.
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of being mindful of anger. He teaches that we can show attention and even affection toward our anger and that such added focus can lessen our own suffering. There is a reconnecting that I continue to work on in my own life. I am reconnecting to my body and to my life past the traumas that have separated me from my own heart and best self-interest.
Thick Nhat Hanh's teaching in his book "Anger" uses the illustration of anger being like potatoes placed in a covered pot of water over a flame to make them edible. This illustration teaches that the warmth of mindfulness prepares our own anger for ourselves.
No one can eat a raw potato.
Years ago I was in psychotherapy. There was a great deal of frustration and anger that dwelled inside of me at all times much like a huge knot of my own internal organs threatening to choke out my very life.
Perhaps my doctor and I were a bad match or perhaps I simply had to find my way in a circuitous route. Whichever the case, the only thing I understood from my psychotherapist was that my life was a rotten tomato and that I had to slice that rotten tomato up and make of it a sandwich for some kind of final supper.
Perhaps my daughter is right; perhaps there is a book in this path I have taken, particularly of these most recent years. If nothing else, I have decided, I will have the pleasure of the recapitulation this writing promises to be and through that I may likely find even greater healing. Time will tell, time and these words that I place in this healing blog.
