'A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work.
We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking — or, more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth. “Health is not just a matter of thinking happy thoughts,” writes the molecular researcher Candace Pert. “Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-suppressed anger.”
_When the Body Says No_, Gabor Mate, MD
Turning to science doesn't turn me away from witchcraft, it marries ways of knowing to see better.
I never learned to repress emotions. Upside to crazy parents, no repression was present in my upbringing whatsoever. I can control them to a point, but my body will decide ultimately. According to this book, that is probably what has kept me alive, this forced marching (away) that my body decides upon.
Since I left AZ and went dark, it feels like a rubber band around my throat too tight has been snipped. I gulpgasp for air. Breathing is more vital than eating. ("30 days without food, 3 days without water, 3 minutes without breathing" - that's the yoga math on what kills you, so breathe.) I'm staring into my own reflection in a puddle (my little world), both me and the puddle being shaken, shaking. Scrying inside.
Did I treat anyone this way? Did I entirely ignore your pain, blind to it even though you spoke it, if you spoke it or could not, carrying on until I was inconvenienced by it, and then only notice my own heart about it? Things like that are what I worry in reflection. In the ground-shaken puddle, alibis looking rightfully shattered.
food in the belly - xavier fudd shazammed for the dancing in the shower playlist (not safe to dance or use the phone in there but 🤷🏻♀️)
