What Helped Me Release Resentment

I was living in a state of anger and resentment for the last several months. It was hidden for the most part, but came out from time to time in snide comments or sarcastic “jokes.” As the resentment and anger cooked deep within me, I could feel it boil, bubble, and make its way closer to the surface.

The cause of my resentment?

I was having a hard time accepting my husband’s job. He’s a chef at a prestigious private country club. Chef-ing is what he was made for. He’s extremely talented (by so many other’s unbiased opinion, not just my own!) and loves what he does.

Even in the heat of battle (which he calls a busy dinner service) and in the challenge of his most demanding, longest days on his feet, he leaves for work with a smile on his face excited to take on the day.

But this career he loves requires him to work evenings and weekends – 6 days a week for 7 months out of the year to be exact.

And it takes a toll on me….

I miss him and the four of us being a family together. I find it challenging to parent two young, energetic boys by myself. I have a big job that financially supports our family, but struggle to rest my brain and body on the weekends with two little guys I love so much always in tow.

Mike’s been in the restaurant business since I knew him, so this schedule isn’t anything new to me, but it had been especially hard on me lately.

I resented his job. I resented his hours. It almost made me resent him.

I knew that I needed to accept this reality in my life in order for me to find peace. One of the greatest causes of human suffering is denying or fighting against what is.

On the other hand, I struggled knowing that I create the experiences of my life, that when there are things in my life I do not like, I change them.

I was having a hard time both accepting or changing his job, so I was feeling stuck… and angry… and mean. I couldn’t seem to release the anger and move out of victim-hood into empowerment (which you can so clearly see in my writing above!).

One of the first chapters in Panache Desai’s recent book, Discovering Your Soul Signature, is about anger. I read it on vacation in St. Lucia when I was in a really happy place. Feeling my anger rising now that I was home, I decided to revisit that chapter.

Panache speaks of anger being ok – a normal human feeling. What becomes abnormal is when we try to suppress it and hide it and not say or do what we need to do to address it. He suggests we feel our anger and allow it to flow through us, knowing that we are still whole, loving human beings even with the experience of anger within us.

I sat with his words and my anger a bit, and then I got a hunch.

These hunches come to me regularly now that I meditate daily and am more in tune with my spiritual self and intuition. The hunch said it was time to help this anger move through me. It told me to take a seat on my meditation cushion.

So I did.

I thought about my intention for the meditation: to release the anger, resentment, and heaviness that was inside of me. To make space for something new.

I flipped through my notebook of favorite meditation mantras, and chose the following themed around making time today for my healing:

Ananta Swa Bhava = Meaning, my true self has no limits or boundaries.

I started meditating, repeating this mantra over and over in my head.

Then, as often happens in my meditation, God, Source, Spirit, The Universe, whatever you call our higher power, spoke to me in a gentle little hunch.

“He’s doing this for you,” the voice said. “This is all for you.”

This is all for you.

As soon as I heard the words I felt my shoulders soften, my heart open, and my eyes fill with tears.

This is all for you.

At that moment I understood what it meant for me: Instead of starting his own restaurant, my husband chose to take a stable job to support me as I built my business. He chose a job that allowed more time with our family in the summer months. He chose a different dream path… that was all for me…

Life doesn’t happen TO us. It happens FOR us. This experience that was causing me so much angst and separation from my husband and anger toward people I barely even know, it was all FOR me – created by me, even, in the building out of my own dreams.

The timer signifying the end of my meditation went off, but I stayed on my cushion letting the tears roll down my cheeks and the words land fully in my body.

“Thank you, God,” I whispered. “Thank you for always being here.”

This is why I meditate every single day. This is why I sit in stillness. Yes, I pray and practice gratitude regularly, but for my relationship with our higher power to be a two-way street, I need to just as regularly shut up and listen.

I hope you are listening too.

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