wondering about healing...

visiting these boards is an experience that can really leave one puzzling over the route to healing. i read a lot on the subject as well, trying to look for insights into the issue of healing from the wounds of abuse. it would seem that many here find some relief in simply expressing anger over what has happened to them,the rape of their innocence and ideals, and sometimes their very being. as many have observed, anger does have its useful purposes, w/ a cleansing power, like Jesus w/ his "whip of small cords." in my own life i recall in those final days before i finally "blew" and was escorted from the premises, i used to recall the scene in "midnight express"..where the guy is in the turkish prison, and his girlfriend comes to visit him w/ a way to help him escape, and all he wants her to do is show him her breasts so he can jack off. she, weeping, implores him,"you've GOT to get out of here!". it finally breaks thru to him, in the next scene, he starts walking in the opposite direction of all the other inmates in their exersize yard..regaining his sanity and finally harnessing his anger to break out.(i still can feel that emotion...)

but does expressing anger alone bring one to a place they can heal, and go on to grow in healthy new ways, somehow incorporating the strength one gains thru that effort? is it possible to work thru the pain and loss and somehow emerge w/ a stronger, wiser, sense of one's self, and the world in which we live? where the anger is channeled in ways that push us forward w/o seeming to permeate us, and color our experience from some point? i think most would agree that besides having the power to cleanse, anger also has the power to devour (or perhaps even worse, slowly eat away at one's insides.). any thoughts ?

"in the clearing stands a boxer
and a fighter by his trade
and he carries the reminders
of every glove that laid him down
and cut him till he cried out
in his anger and his shame
'i am leaving, i am leaving'
but the fighter still remains.

-paul simon