Holiday Page Burners

BY RITA

Lately, multiple friends have had emotional, tearful discussions with me about painful events in their lives. These stories involve friends and family hurting them deeply, and now—several years later—the memories are still alive and burning. Each time my friends encounter the people who’ve caused them heartache, the “just let it go” mantra seems to fail them.

I can confirm that this mantra hasn’t been working, because I have been listening to the same stories over and over again. I’ve been watching the same aches and pains reappear and I see a familiar agitation emerge each time my friends are forced to see their hearts’ offenders. Their agitations have begun to rub off on me, the listener.

With one of these friends, I brought up the idea of a cure. Her traumas are not physical ones but rather emotional wounds that reopen every time she has to confront the person that has caused her pain. Any effort to have a calm and honest conversation with this person has been met with amnesia of past offenses and a constant need for justification. The two often go down the same old, rocky road, rehashing the same anger and reaching a destination of denial.

So what’s there to do in this kind of rut? Many if not all of us have experienced situations in which public peace must be held, despite our true feelings toward another person. Being in the mere presence of these people can cause stomachaches and heart palpations. For my friend the options of never speaking to her emotional offender is out. In her global village the rules of engagement demand a limited amount of polite encounters.

I am not a professional, but counselors, therapists, shamans, clerics, and spiritualists alike have a common suggestion. Make time for yourself in a place that makes you feel safe and comfortable and write down exactly how you feel. The story, the incident, events, hurts and tears—put it all to paper.

In a smart, fireproof environment, read your story out loud or to yourself, and then banish them to the fire. You can do this by yourself in front of your fireplace or around a campfire or BBQ with people you trust.

When you throw your story into the fire, visualize your anger and hurt burning away, turning to smoke, and dissipating into intangible ethers. As much as you’d like to, avoid visualizing the person responsible for your pain in the fire. Violence is not really the objective.

After your bonfire, set an intention for your future encounters with your pain maker: when you feel the emotions start to bubble, make all the ugly thoughts and feelings turn into smoke before they can touch you. Don’t allow yourself to be burned anymore.

My advice to my friends and to anyone who keeps revisiting a similar emotional rut is to pull a Harry Potter and put on your invisibility cloak in the face of useless turmoil. Don’t allow futile angst over past events get through to you. Simply turn the anger and hurt into smoke.

With the holidays upon us, this recipe may be better than the one for Grandma’s pumpkin pie–or at least a healthier one.

****The two cards feature in this post are available HERE!