Hello Anger

Anger presented itself to me through my relationship with my mother. My relationship with her is my greatest source of spiritual growth. Not because either of us are particularly virtuous. But because my mother is able to provoke me in ways no other being is able to.

Each provocation has provided me an opportunity: To choose actions that keep me entrenched in corrosive patterns, or actions that guide me towards becoming freer.

During a particularly trying set of interactions between my mother and I, I felt unexpected compassion for myself. And from this compassion, anger arose.

At first, I was confused by this experience. Both because I was so unfamiliar with anger as an embodied emotion and also because I was unsure as to why it had presented itself in this manner at this time. But as I came to make sense of it, I realized anger had emerged when I’d hit my internal rock bottom.

Over the years, to make space for my mother’s grief and rage, I had dug and dug to hollow myself out to create more space for her untempered energies. 

In some unconscious way, I had been moving through a dream that if I could be
more patient,
more generous,
more accomplished,
more accepting,
I could hold enough of her grief and rage so that one day she might soften. 

Soften enough to become a different person. 

A different mother.

But through this particular interaction, I'd dug so deep that I had no more of myself to hollow out. I’d hit my internal bedrock. And there, I encountered compassion.

Compassion for myself for having taken on a Sisyphean task. 

The task of trying to change her from the outside in.

My compassion came with assurance that my efforts were not wasted, as the process had changed me from the inside out. 
But also a nudge that it was time to let go of the hope for an outcome that was not within my control.

I had known conceptually I couldn’t change my mother, but hitting the bedrock of my being let me feel this. Once I felt it and knew it to be true, the insight offered me anger.

Anger for the ways in which my spirit had been attacked for so long.

Anger that compelled me to step out from my fawning and acquiescing.

Anger that cut and cauterized the emotional umbilical cord between me and my mother.

I understand now that prior to these realizations, I had lacked an embodied sense of worthiness. My mother’s unfiltered furies had sent me straight into the worlds of fear and shame, relegating any flickers of worthiness and its accompanying assuredness into the shadows. This lack of felt worthiness had left me exposed to my mother’s reactivity. Her nontruths about me so effectively took up the space I had hollowed out that they seemed true.

Encountering and believing in my worthiness was the key to accessing anger and clearing out the nontruths.

Belief that I was not all the shameful things I’d been told I was.

Belief that being born did not subject me to a life of obligation and servitude.

Belief that I was precious and worthy of love—“a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.”

This belief of worthiness translated into the action of taking myself out of an unkind dynamic and into my own care.

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Takeaways

I am so grateful for my access to anger.

Anger now serves both as warning sign and boundary system. Irritation, annoyance, and frustration warn me of an edge being approached. Anger, fury, and rage ignite as a wall of fire when I need to hold at a distance attempts to dampen my spirit. But as with fire in the external world, fire of the internal kind requires my conscientious tending to in order to foster regenerative vs. destructive tendencies.

There are times for a flame and times for a blaze. 

Through attention to the present and discernment, I can tune into what is needed when. 

I am also at a stage now where I am grateful to (not for) the conditions that facilitated this access to anger. This particular journey has granted me access to emotion, connection, and insight that would have otherwise been out of my reach. I do not excuse my mother for her actions and reactions towards me, but I do not blame her. She, as we all are, is a product of the interaction between her internal and external worlds. And I know hers has not been an easy exchange. I understand her reactivity stems from her unrealized dreams, intergenerational wounds, and own lack of felt worthiness. My tethering to her granted me rigorous training in empathy, metacognition, and introspection. But I no longer feel obligated to take on the transformation of her pain.

“We [each] have to take responsibility for what we're not responsible for.” I also know we were, and still are, parts of a dynamic. I didn’t choose my existence, but through being here and being agentic, I contributed to the swirl we were stuck in. I am now choosing to take responsibility for my role in getting us out of a relationship fueled by fear in order to give us a chance at reshaping our relationship into one fueled by love.

I hope my mother will choose to take on her responsibility as well, but I’m going into this endeavor accepting that this may never happen. The beauty here is that even if my mother chooses not to participate, my taking on of responsibility will still help me become freer beyond the dynamics of our relationship. However, if one day my mother decides she’d also like to take responsibility for discovering her own freedom, I’ll be there to welcome her with open arms. 

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Questions for you

What is your relationship to anger?

What are the relationships that contribute most to your spiritual growth?

What felt experiences do you have with worthiness?