Some people like to snoop through the medicine cabinet when they visit other people's homes. Their curiosity about their friend's medical issues gets the best of them. I think there was a Seinfeld episode completely devoted to the subject.
Personally, I don't care that my friend has Xanax or Viagra in their medicine cabinet...
but I loooooove to look at their book shelves! You can tell so much more about a person by the books they read than the prescriptions they take.
I have a small bookshelf in my living room that I keep all of my favorite reads. I like to think it says a lot of interesting and accurate things about who I am as a person.
There are just some reads on that shelf that I continue to go back to regularly, a prescription for my soul.
The other day, Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run with the Wolves
, jumped off the shelf into my hands.
I glanced through the Table of Contents asking the tome what it wanted to tell me.
"Chapter 12. Marking Territory: The Boundaries of Rage and Forgiveness," it said.
Ahhhhhh.... such soothing understanding...
"...But
there is another aspect to mastery, and that is dealing with what can
only be called women's rage. The release of that rage is required. Once
women remember the origin of their rage, they feel they may never stop
grinding their teeth. Ironically, we also feel very anxious to disperse
our rage, for it feels distressing and noxious. We wish to hurry up and
do away with it.
But repressing it will not work. It is like trying to put fire into a burlap bag..."
And this reflective mirror...
"If a woman
is instinct injured, she is typically faced with several
challenges regarding rage. First, she often has a problem with
intrusion recognition, she is slow to notice territory
violations and does not register her own anger until it is upon
her. Her temper comes upon her in a kind of ambush.
This
lag is the result of instincts injured by exhortations to little
girls to not notice dissension, to try to be peacemakers at all
costs, to not interfere and stand the pain until everything
calms down or temporarily goes away. Typically such women do
not act upon their rage at the right time, perhaps jumping the
gun, or having a delayed reaction weeks, months, or even years
later, realizing what they should have, could have, would have
said or done.
This is usually not caused by
shyness or introversion but by too much thinking, too much
trying to be nice and not enough acting from soul. The wild
soul knows when and how to act if a woman will only listen.
Right response carries insight and right amounts of compassion
and strength mixed together. Injured instinct must be arighted
by practicing and enforcing strong boundaries and by practicing
firm and, when possible, generous responses, but solid ones
nevertheless."
Or this little zest...
"...there is a right time for the gust from the gut, a time for righteous anger, rightful rage... there is a time to reveal your incisors, your powerful ability to defend territory, to say "This far and no farther, the buck stops here, and hold on to your hat, I've got something to say, this is definitely going to change."
I re-read that chapter probably four times in the past four days. I think I am going to re-read the whole book again for the tenth time! This book is about your inner life. It will give you courage and inspiration.
The wolves are calling! Gotta run!
Namaste,
C H E Z
