Letting Go – Day 19

Books have the power to leave you in tears, in laughter, feeling despair or confusion, or feeling delighted and filled with childish glee. They can leave you wanting to throw them at the wall or desperate for the ending to be in some way different. And once again, they are an opportunity for the artists, as authors, to express their most heart-felt emotions through their creativity. As we connect with that current flowing out of the pages and through us, we allow ourselves the same permission to express what we feel, responding naturally to the words.

Another advantage to books is that as people share their stories, we no longer feel so alone in the world. Someone somewhere has had an experience like ours. We can let go of the feelings of disconnectedness and desolation and celebrate the fact that we are understood, on some level. Joan Didion wrote through her grief after the death of her husband, in ‘A Year of Magical Thinking,’ and the reader travels with her to some of the unspoken places grief goes, like near insanity and fury. It is through others’ journeys that we learn much about ourselves and our capacity for love and compassion. We can let go of our definition of insanity and realize that grief can be expressed in many ways. We can let go of feeling that our own experience with grief was warped or unacceptable, as we see that others explore their own versions of hell.