On Death and Dying

So last spring I picked up "On Death and Dying" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and I've finally started to endeavour to read it.  I'm going to post a fear that started shouting in my mind upon reading, and also a poem in the introduction. 

I'm terrified of hospitals.  I'm terrified of what can happen in them, afraid someone will take me to one against my will (again), and afraid of what the people can do inside them.

I need to work through a specific event that happened to me while I was inpatient in 2006, but I don't know if this is an appropriate venue for that fear.  It's deeply personal what happened, and I don't really know how to work through it.

But anyway.  I don't know why I decided to read this book now.  It's been highly recommended to me for many years because for as long as I can remember, I have feared that darkness.  Anyway, out of the growing stack of books I have queued, this was the lucky one.  It's going to be quite the journey.

Let me not pray to be sheltered from 

dangers but to be fearless in facing 

them.

   Let me not beg for the stilling of

my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

   Let me not look for allies in life's 

battlefield but to my own strength.

   Let me not crave in anxious fear to

be saved but hope for the patience to

win my freedom.

   Grant me that I may not be a

coward, feeling your mercy in my 

success alone; but let me find the grasp

of your hand in my failure.

~Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering