You make an excellent point. There are many different roads to follow. In a self help forum we tell people of the road we have followed and we watch the path they have taken because maybe they have a new idea that can help us on our path. But we must choose our own path. For every response to the lines in the song Imagine that you made I have a totally different take on what it means to me. That is the joy of poetry, one cannot say what it truely means, Not even the creator of the poem. Once it is out there it takes new meaning for each individual who reads it. Poetry is very much alive. The same is true for the process of healing. And that is what it is, a process. Each place a person is at is a part of the process. Sometimes being stuck in the bottomless pit of despair IS an important part of the process that person is going through. Just because it is dark and painful does not mean that it isn't beneficial TO THE PROCESS. It may not seem beneficial to me or to you but to that person it is an important place to be, and only the process knows how long it will be that way. That is why it is important to remember that as a self-help group we need to excercise great patience and great restraint when it comes to responding to someone who is fighting her own demons. You never no where in the process she is or where you will soon find yourself. The process is as alive as poetry.
Carrie

<font color=green>But the implicit and usually unconscious bargain we make with ourselves is that, yes, we want to be healed, we want to be made whole, we're willing to go some distance, but we're not willing to question the fundamental assumptions upon which our way of life has been built, both personally and societally.--Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft