Orphanhood

“...Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can be understood.

Most people carry around a load of feeling that they bury or pretend is not there because it is too painful and alarming to cope with or because it involved unbearable guilt. Anger against a parent, for example.

I knew the tide of woe was rising, that woe that seizes me like anger, and is a form of anger, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it, so I got up and picked flowers, cooked my dinner, looked at the news, all the same usual routine that can ward off the devils or suddenly clear the air as when a thunderstorm seems to be coming and then dissipates….it always happens when there is a galaxy of problems that get knit together into one huge outcry against the sense of being abandoned or orphanhood…”
― May Sarton, Recovering: A Journal