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Flourish Weekly

You must kill the Angel in the House

Published 4 months ago • 1 min read

Dear Ones

“You must kill the Angel in the House” - Virginia Woolf

I can’t stop thinking about this piece of writing by Virginia Woolf that my friend Erica shared with me many years ago:

“And while I was writing this review, I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom… I called her…The Angel in the House...She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life.

She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draft she sat in it — in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others…

I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.”

While I’m not a fan of killing - even metaphorically - to solve any problem at all, I think listening to and obeying the Angel in the House - pleasing everyone, everywhere, except ourselves - is extremely dangerous to our well-being, joy and vitality. We MUST confront her and disempower her if we are going to do anything truthful and ambitious in this life.

Who is your Angel in the House? What would freedom look like if she were not in control?

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With love,

Yael

Flourish Weekly

by Yael Shy

Yael Shy is the CEO and Founder of ​Sefira Wellness​ with over two decades of supporting others in uncovering their inherent worth and capacity for deep joy through mindfulness. She is the author of the award-winning book ​What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017)​ and teaches at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service.

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