Emotional composting

And other links for your Sunday

My friend Anna, who has been my best friend for over 20 years, sent me a screenshot of a book she’s reading, Fermentation as Metaphor by Sandor Ellix Katz. In it, the author talks about emotional composting. The idea is that so often the negative feelings we have arise not out of our own personal failures, but systemic failures and family traumas, which began long before we were born and will continue long after we are gone.

Negative feelings of frustration, rage, sadness, and loss, are often expressed, but we soon expect people to pick up that mess. You can be mad, but not for long.

The idea of emotional composting is giving those negative feelings not just a place to rest, but a fertile place where they can ferment, and in the process change into something else entirely.