“I want to say somewhere: I’ve tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.”
Nicole Krauss
Today is my day for posting at Vision and Verb. I have been contemplating what I am learning as I walk this new path of retirement. Here is a small excerpt of today’s post….
Yes indeedy I invited anger, bitterness and resentment in for a long time. It had resided somewhat quietly awaiting one of my famous private tantrums of release….these were never pretty nor very helpful. They were instead deadly.
I have learned the hard way that holding on to anger has so many ugly side effects. It reaches into every crack and crevice eating away at your body, mind and soul inevitably compromising your health. My blood pressure was inching up, I was breaking teeth, the weight gain was out of hand, I had insomnia, a bleeding ulcer and migraines. And while these all seemed like enough, I was also unhappy, depressed, stressed out and angry all the time…..oh so angry.
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ― Mark Twain
And why was I so accepting of anger… so happy to keep this close relationship with something that was literally killing me? It seemed to boil down to this…I could not forgive. Actually it was more like I would not forgive. I was happy to savor the nasty, bitter taste. I found power in it.
I hope you will pop over to Vision and Verb to read more about how I came to grips with anger and channeled it to happiness….
On a personal note, I may be absent from reading blogs, blogging and email as I have to have hernia surgery. This all came up on me fast landing me in the emergency room this past weekend and then the hospital. I do not have a surgery date but it will be soon, and then weeks of recovery as this particular surgery will have to be full blown abdominal surgery. If I have another flare up, then it will be even sooner as an emergency surgery.
To say, I am scared, angry and all around not happy is putting it mildly. Yes, I am grateful for a great surgeon and that this can be corrected, but all the risks of surgery are there (I am not a great candidate for anesthesia) and hard to put aside. And then my garden, veg garden etc are now on somewhat of a hold since I do not know when this will all happen. I cannot go out and garden and my wonderful husband is finishing the clean up under my supervision (as he calls it). I am trying to plan, but you how life is….so I will keep you posted, but if I am missing for a time without any word, then it is this darn hernia. Meantime, I am cramming in all the blogging and blog reading I can as I will miss it and my garden.
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Next up on the blog: Monday I will have a recap of the April Garden.
I hope you will join me for my posts once a month at Beautiful Wildlife Garden. See my latest post.
I can also be found blogging once a month at Vision and Verb. I hope you enjoy my latest post.
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