Emilia Clarke Instagram – The heaven sent Helena Bonham Carter has gifted us a glorious rendition of ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver. Her charity is the Camden Psychotherapy Unit (CPU) a brilliant organisation that helps those who can’t afford therapy the ability to heal. In @thepoetrypharmacy this poem falls under Self Recrimination. Here’s the prescription as it reads in the book: There’s something about nature in poetry that always seems to speak to people. The natural world brings with it an extraordinary sense of vigour and renewal one which, in turn, provides the perfect springboard for rethinking our own problems and difficulties. There’s no worry so great that it can’t be made small by the sweep of wild geese across an endless sky. The scale of such images helps us to escape from the constrained- and often urban- emotional patterns in which we can so easily become stuck. They prompt us to say to ourselves: ‘I can. I can overcome.’ In its seventeen lines, Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ communicates a wonderful and quietly radical idea: that we might treat the soft animals of our bodies with kindness. Allow yourself to love what you love- not only whom, you’ll notice, but what. Feeling needn’t always be help in check by rationality, especially when so many of our desires and compulsions relate to the animal in us. Rather than fight it, we should celebrate and nurture our animal self: so much stupider than us in some ways, and let, in other ways, so much wiser. The attempt to civilise ourselves is often our greatest source of pain. Imagine a life in which we did not have to repent an undignified desire, or a so-called ;sinful’, ‘bestial’ or ’savage’ thought. Oliver tells us that there is no need for the self-flagellation that seems part and parcel of being a person, of being good. There is a small, wide-eyed animal within each of us that doesn’t understand why we keep kicking it. All we need to do to overcome is to treat ourselves like a loyal pet: with love, forgiveness and understanding. Thank you thank you Helena!! ❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️ https://donate.justgiving.com/donation-amount?uri=aHR0cHM6Ly9kb25hdGUtYXBpLmp1c3RnaXZpbmcuY29tL2FwaS9kb25hdGlvbnMvOWQ0ZTYzYTk2OGY1NDQ5ZjlmO