Thank you, Anjana and Marty for responding to last week’s Breakthrough tip on resentment. Over forty-five years ago, I wrote Alternative Healing, a column challenging the psychiatric establishmen, for the New Women’s Times, one of the first women’s newspapers in America. I wrote about over-medication and chauvinistic diagnosis of women’s feelings; about the anti-woman bias of many psych theories; about the failure of academic psychology to take women’s stories as reliable data. As I learned more and more about the inherent power imbalance in the teacher/student, expert/follower, guru/devotee paradigm, I knew I had to challenge that dynamic. I invited my readers to become co-writers for Alternative Healing. They responded. We wrote the column till the New Women’s Times came to an end..
I continue to believe that we have more power, wisdom and compassion than any I. So I am grateful to Anjana and Marty for responding to my request for writing on resentment. We are the keepers of the deep spirit of the human story. Each of you who have sent in your responses to earlier Breakthroughs are part of that We. Thank you.
I ask any of you who read this Breakthrough to consider how you might add to our Breakthrough We. And to consider where in your life you might take back your power from the power-hungry of these times: frantic busyness, Facebook obsession, getting everything right, believing that if you just push through one more task, everything will be good. Please give yourself and us the time to write for twenty minutes beginning with this prompt: I am ready to take back my power…
When I asked Anjana if I could use her response to last week’s Breakthrough on resentment, she wrote: After I finished venting through the freewrites, my pressure released I went about making chai Indian tea – its a strong brew of tea with milk and sweet as a dessert. Feel free to use whatever you need in your posts – if it help someone somewhere, like the way yours helped me. Sometimes just knowing someone else also feels the same way is relieving.
Here is her response: Mary, its very very strange that your latest newsletter should be about resentment. I had just penned 15 min, maybe less, of Freewrites this afternoon (much before your breakthrough came into my mail box) and the 2 words I started with was “I resent”. Here is the beginning of what I wrote : “I resent This afternoon I learnt something. Sitting on the goat loft with the late afternoon sun blazing over the hills and valleys ahead and beneath me, I learnt the reason why I am angry so much, or where most of my anger is coming from. The carpenters are here, working on the table and benches that I have been sitting on for the past week. My palms got scratched, the skin on my elbows have worn off, a part of the dress got torn and my shin has taken a hit more than a few times from the sharp edges, rough cuts and uneven shards of wood. I heard anil tell them to round off the edges. They start working and then stop to discuss how to go about it. I watch them, overhear their conversation and decide when they are finished rounding off, to point out the parts around the curvatures where the wood was hacked out unevenly. Its tricky they wont see it unless it is shown. I mention it to anil before interfering with the work, as a courtesy and he vetoes it. Says you don’t, I will tell them. This is what pisses me off. I am to just shut my mouth and not have anything to do with the work that is going on. Why ?? …” The rest of the freewrites is too explosive to copy here. But all I wanted to say is that writing it down reduced the pressure of the “resentment” I was feeling. Secondly, I have a feeling people of similar feathers think in similar patterns – no matter where they are, what race they belong to, or who they are. Thanks for letting me in to that community. Hope you have a wonderful day !
Marty’s response was in confidence.
I hope to hear from more of you. Feel free to use my personal email at shebetsherlife@gmail.com
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