Resentment and Grudge-Holding

There is a wound in your life that has not healed. Perhaps it is two years old. Perhaps ten. Perhaps thirty. It does not lie open — you are no longer bleeding — and yet it is not gone. It has only moved to a different place: inward. Into your stomach, your shoulders, the fine tension around your heart, the hardness you sometimes feel in your own face when that one person's name comes up.

Grudge-holding — the word itself says it. You are carrying something with you. A burden you have not set down. A weight you have been dragging with you for years, often without noticing, because it has become part of your body the way gravity has.