Sorrow's Door

"It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain."  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

To live is to sorrow.  There are losses of a million kinds.  Each unique individual has had, and has reacted, to sorrow in their unique way.  Some of us work through it and come out, not necessarily undamaged, for sure, but still able to thrive with dignity and grace.  Some of us become bitter and that is simply anger at being so helpless to be able to control the situation. This becomes habituated and we can spend the rest of our life, cold, tight lipped, the 'grouchy old person', the person who cannot love because they are afraid...afraid to lose again.  

When we are bitter, we cannot sleep for thoughts of the loss (in fact, a world of different kinds of losses all rolled into one) going round and round in our head like a hamster on a wheel.  Our energy is sucked dry and we will blame lack of sleep, but lack of sleep is caused by our anger.  Our self-esteem drops down further and further as we sink into that sense of helplessness and lack of control.  We tend to have a more negative sense of most things and we give off a hard aura of bitterness.  Our abioity to have normal, satisfying, relationships diminishes and we still find reasons for this rather than find the solution to our anger.  It is not beautiful to see, to be around, to watch a loving, beautiful soul, turn breakable hard.  

Bitter people blame everything and everyone rather than focus in on what has hurt them.  The loss becomes our whole book of losses since bitterness attracts bitterness and suddenly we seek solace in varying ways of seeking sympathy and enabling  rather than empowerment.  The only cure for it is to, again, find the trigger, then focus in on that asd if you were mining for diamonds.  The diamond is who you really are, made more beautiful by loss or losses, rather than hard and dull.  Oh, there are so many reasons to be bitter, of course.  Life is not easy down here on earth.  Those who become bitter will have a whole list of reasons that they pocket away in one area of the mind, heart and soul.  You can see the most bitter a mile of.  You can feel the negativity rise from them.  Somehow they never move beyond that one hurt and begin collecting them to further prove to themselves that being hard is the best to be.
Sometimes the story of loss, hurt, anger, over and over embeds the negatives of your story.  When we meet something that reflects part of that same story, we grab it to us, to be more evidence that to trust anyone becomes part of waiting to be hurt again, rather than seeing it as the same lesson returning again and again until ewe heal ourselves.  The patterns of turning away from that which could heal us, becomes more parts of our hardness. It means hard work to dig down in the trench, find the truths, and cover over those well-worn paths we chose to walk rather than to explore. You have given over your power to the negative(s).  We forget our own part in what happened afterwards.  It becomes imperative that it is someone else's fault.  It keeps us from digging deeper and the truths of it become buried further and further down away from authentic stories.  Sometimes it is our shame that is driving us.  Often it is misguided shame, but shame, nonetheless.  It is just easier for some to become bitter.  Down in the heap of sadness and anger, are the truths that will set yourself free.

Sometimes, like a monk who thrashes his own back raw with wire whips, we love to continue to hurt ourselves with our own story.  We wil feed in on comparing what we have said hurt us, what we lost, to what others have and seems to give evidence what a victim we are.  It drives the anger/hurt/helplessness deeper and deeper, internally, and it substantiates our story to others as we try to convince everyone (and ourselves) that the fault of the loss lies with simply one other.  

That fear of abandonment, of rejection, of needing to change oneself, is huge.  (Thus speaks the child, in me, that was a throw away baby).  We can know the truth feelings and rise above them, or we can sink into victimhood for the ret of our lives, missing out on some beautiful, awesome connections and relationships because we were too hard-hearted and so at ease with our comfort of denial and bitterness.  Sometimes we are not even aware of our bitterness until we spit it out and realize that we are not so easy to be around because we are so hard.  Sometimes it makes us spiteful.  We evolve around feelings of jealousy, of hatred, of self-pity, and that circling becomes spiraling and spiraling becomes deeper and deeper.  We turn our own screw.  

Hoiw do we release that original hurt?  By knowing it so deeply that we understand it is only us that keeps it alive in us.  We only soften our bitterness by allowing truth to shed light on it all, and on self.  In that light of healing, we learn that we chose to feel what we feel because it was easier than facing up to what truths might be laying there ready to be found.  In fact, some of that, in fact, a huge part of that, is anger at self for not dealing with the loss in the first place.  Ego loves to have you bitter.  It can become the whole theme of your story it has been telling you.  Would you not rather tell the story right from your soul?  Soul can have a locked door, and the lock is towards you, and you hold the key.  It is pretty hard to accept such and your very skin will crawl at the thought of forgiving yourself for what you might have done to yourself.  Remember the two wolves?  Which one have you been feeding and how can you get to where you only feed the best wolf within?  You know the answer as well as I do.  You feed the one that helps you thrive.  You starve the one of fodder that is keeping it alive. Reframe the story.

Check your feelings well, seek truth in that rather than in that which may make you bitter.  Stay Present.  Stay in tune to every feeling as it comes. Mostly, be honest.  Make a commitment, one morning, to not allow the grunge within to keep on grinding.  Find a way to stop the negative thoughts the moment they arise.  Some us a rubber band around the wrist that they pop the moment they sense the same old, same old, story beginning to retell itself to you or others.  A snap, is your personal warning to stop...stop and think. Stop and reframe.  Some of us use worry stones.  Some use medicine bags or totems.  Whatever it takes for you to reframe, take it.  The world does not totally revolve around us.  There are many sides to every story.  Our perspective might be solely ego-story.  Check it.  Are we making sorrow of something that could have brought us joy and we have been unwilling to take our part of that story?  Of course!  Of course!

We might be standing right in front of the door of knowledge, truth, and freedom.  Open it, sisters, open it.  See what joy and peace and dignity and grace is right there for you to step in to.

What is your sorrow/are your sorrows?  How does it effect you?  Are you aware of the fear, the anger there?
 
©Carol Desjarlais 6.20.19