From Clarissa Pinkola Estés
A Prayer to Open Doors.
I would ask you to do this one thing. I would ask you to heal your wounds completely, to the best of your ability, and to let the rest go.
I would ask you to heal your wounds completely, insofar as you can, and to let the rest go. You have suffered long enough. If you look, the expiration date is long, long overdue. To be able to speak of the wounds, you have to let them go. To be able to speak with wisdom, you have to let the wounds go. Do not sit in them and relive them. Let them go. Let them go.
And you’ll say, how do I do that? Honestly? It’s as easy as unpinning a fresh, sunshine filled sheet from the clothesline, folding it, bringing it indoors, making your bed with it, lying down on it, taking in the beautiful smell. It’s that easy. It’s focusing where there is beauty and cleanliness and goodness, and letting everything else go.
There’s no consequence. There’s no ocean that backs up that creates a tsunami that will come and punish you if you let go of everything that has hurt you, and say, I understand. it was for my learning. Or say, I don’t understand, and I will never understand, but I do understand this, that I learn something from it. But I let go now. Now I let go.
The prayer is to let go, so one can be a competent Elder and pour toward others without dragging—may I call it crud? may I call it detritus? may I call it effluvia? with us. To make as clear and clean and as beautiful and powerful as possible, the transmissions we have to give to others about how to mend from life, how to live life, how to live intensely creative life, how to take the hits we get in life, and how to stand together with the soul and with the spirit.