Anger is Not My Path
After a brief stint in the Anger Stage of Grief, I knew it wasn't for me. This book helped me get out of it.
Storms Can’t Hurt the Sky
As I’ve written here, and here, the final week of 2022 turned out to be the time in my post-divorce chapter where I’d finally engage with the Anger Stage of Grief.
On one hand it felt good to finally let myself feel all the feels I’d been keeping at bay. But on the other hand, as I said, I don’t particularly like or enjoy the emotion of anger. So it was a confusing and complicated week for me.
On the morning of December 31st I woke up early, lit the fire in the living room, opened my Kindle and looked for something to read. My eyes halted on the following cover:
I don’t even remember how or why I originally came across and purchased this book several months prior. But there it sat, undownloaded and unopened on my Kindle.
*Tap* … *Download* … Why not? Let’s start reading.
I didn’t stop for three hours.
The author, Gabriel Cohen, tells the story of how his wife unexpectedly ended their marriage and it left him empty, confused, and alone.
Same, bro. Same.
One night he found himself randomly attending a seminar on Buddhism where he was immediately drawn to the ideas and principles shared by the teacher. Eventually he began practicing himself, and the books describes how it provided for him a healing path for his divorce.
Now, over the years I’ve dabbled in and around Buddhism (primarily through reading Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron), so it wasn’t so much that I was struck for the first time by some of what the author was saying, rather it was one of those “right place, right time” moments, where my soul was perfectly primed to receive certain ideas and words and concepts.
As a result of reading Cohen’s story, two monumental shifts happened in my heart and mind over the weekend of the last day of 2022 and the first of 2023.
They are…
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