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I guess you can say this is my take of the poem “The Uses of Sorrow” by Mary Oliver. I read it years ago, but it really resonated with me, and you can see why. I think at first it makes you angry and you disagree with it, until you actually understand it. At the time, I remember I was going through a painful breakup, so I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of sorrow and darkness being a gift.
Like the poem, it took years, but I think I get it now.
“Once” is my perspective of the same scenario with the twist that the person here calls the hurt a gift, which honestly makes it more raging. You can tell that for the first part of the poem, Mary Oliver’s teaching had not hit me yet, so I held on to the hate. I had to learn about letting go and how that is not something you do because someone else deserves it, but because you do.
I wrote this poem short after “A girl on a mission”, and now I can see how the idea of feelings as gifts was dancing in my mind, but within so different contexts. Maybe this piece is processing that sometimes people hurt us and a long time after what happened you realize that it was not about you. Maybe that was all they had.
Maybe “Once” should be called “Forgiveness”.
How does reading this poem make you feel? Do you agree with me? Let’s talk in the comments!
Once You gave sadness and heartache and called it a gift. I carried them around, hating you for years Until I was made think that, if a person gives you Everything they have to give, How is that not a gift? So I kept them, and hope you find better gifts. Until the ones I was given don’t hurt anymore.