Wider than Sorrow

 From the Victoria Regina Tarot, the Five of Cups; from the Alchemist's Oracle, Family:

Despair is a cruel companion. It robs you of everything; especially the choices that still lie within your control. ~Brownell Landrum

          Despair is a feeling of overwhelming hopelessness, the sense that things are profoundly wrong and will never get better. It isolates those in its grip, telling them that no one has endured such pain and therefore no one could understand it. My mother-in-law, who experienced great depths of despair at various times during her life, had one antidote: Keep on keeping on. Like many people, she didn't have the luxury to lay about - there were chores to do and people to care for. Yet I think at some point she also realized the world was much wider than her sorrow. As Pema Chodron stated, "The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy." Besides a spacious perspective, another help comes from waking up to and acknowledging our interconnection with all of life. As Sylvia Boorstein put it, "Perhaps that’s the clue about the happiness inherent in caring connections: The frightened “I” who struggles is replaced by the “we” who do this difficult life together, looking after one other."