Update: Saturday, January 30, 2021

If people have hurt you and have never made amends, it is the most natural thing in the world to be in pain and to have dark feelings about it, whether angry or sad.

This applies even if the hurt happened years and years ago.

The trick, I think, is for us to express these darker emotions in ways that are healthy and safe, and which help us grow.

Doing things to hurt ourselves and/or others is extremely unhealthy; but there is nothing wrong with drawing pictures, writing poems, or telling stories to express our pain.

We can’t let our feelings run the show, but we aren’t doing anything wrong just by having them either.

Where we go wrong is when we ignore the darkness inside ourselves, giving it the power to trick us into destroying our lives.

Feelings come and go, passing through us all the time; but we remain. And it is really hard to remember this and live in healthy ways when we are grieving or enraged.

It’s even harder to remember if we try to ignore our pain and refuse to love ourselves in the first place.