I left the pasture on this beautiful morning and came into the house to check my e-mail and there was, as there often is, another message from a person I call “The Angry Woman From Ohio.” I know a lot of people from Ohio, and they seem very nice to me, but this woman is usually angry with me, and if she isn’t, then her mother is. They take turns sending me impassioned and long, sometimes enraged messages of disappointment. They don’t seem to require an answer.

How striking to come from a scene like the one above – working with Red, walking the dogs, seeing the donkeys –  to the Angry Woman’s messages. It’s a fascinating thing about my life, one which brings me into the real world and back all day. Healthy, I think. I can’t get to read all of my e-mail anymore, sadly, but I do try and scan it once or twice a day, and the Angry Woman From Ohio seems to stand out, as if her messages are charged with a particular angry righteousness, appearing in psychic bold. Her mother writes less frequently, usually imagining that I am deleting her messages (or even reading them) and insulting her, and threatening to quit the blog. The last time she wrote, she said she would only read my blog every now and then. I wish.

Her daughter also threatens to quit the blog often, but they don’t seem to go away, even though I disturb them regularly. I’m not sure I understand what they get out of it, although the answer is fairly clear – some people need anger, need to be aggrieved,  it is fuel to them.

And the neat thing is that the more sincere I try and be, the angrier she gets. This morning The Angry Woman From Ohio wrote me that she ready my piece on grieving and she said she has long thought there was something wrong with me, adding she didn’t mean to be mean-spirited, just sorry for me, I think. She is more of a gift to me than the knows, The Angry Woman From Ohio, because, as is often the case, messages from the outside mirrors feelings within. There has been a lot of anger in me, still is too much, and I work hard to say goodbye to it, gently and firmly, as I do with fear. Goodbye, thank you, time to move on. Every time I see a message from The Angry Woman From Ohio, I shed some of my own anger, piece by piece, bit by bit. Rejecting anger is a healthy thing to do, it lightens the load.

I do not ever want to send angry messages like that, and because of her, and  my other continuing self-improvement projects, I am very unlikely to.

I never answer the Angry Woman From Ohio or other angry people,  because I know better than that.  In America, people hate what they disagree with, it is the true viral disease you won’t be warned about on the news. You answer just once, and it will never stop. This is a hard-earned lesson of many years of writing online.

My life is not an argument, and I just won’t be lured there. I was tempted to say, as I often do to angry people, of whom there are many in this country, just because I am different doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me – or you. Take it easy on yourself and go read something that makes you happy. Or take a walk with your dogs. But I didn’t, I deleted the message, I don’t want anger nesting in my inbox or trash. I have the feeling this Angry Woman From Ohio is not a mean-spirited person, just a sad and disturbed one, to be sending so much bad energy out into the world, and I fantasize sometimes about meeting some of these people. Every now and then, one of them turns up at a book reading, and they are often surprisingly nice, usually nervous. They just don’t know how to talk to people out of grievance and rage and the Internet makes it so easy to say hateful things hiding behind a computer screen.

I doubt I will ever meet the Angry Woman From Ohio, as people who send angry messages on the Internet are rarely brave enough for face-to-face encounters. But I thought of her this morning. I hope you have a good day, Angry Woman from Ohio,  and I hope you find peace and compassion, and all of the things you really need. If you were in my pasture this morning, with Maria and Red and the sheep, I think it would have soothed your restless spirit, your mom’s too. I try to find love and connection in this, and I am sure it is there somewhere.

I hope you find your own pasture. Take mom.