We Did Not Know What Was Coming Series: Anger and the Light

PREFACE: To say the last seven years have been a journey of growth for me and this country is an understatement. To help me process and cope with the roller-coaster of emotions I have felt these years, I started writing on Medium right after the 2016 election. My last series ended December 31, 2020, after Biden won the presidential election.

Recently I realized I missed writing “in my journal” and decided to go back to the very beginning and re-read my essays. I wanted to see where I started out on November 9, 2016, and where I am now. I decided to repost my favorite blogs with a short present-day commentary and continue onto current times.

I hope a few of you will join me on this journey of recollection, reflection, and learning. Little did we know what we were headed into.

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Anger and the Light: April 21, 2017

This is a deeply personal essay.

On March 4, 2017, I posted: #postcardsforamerica — 7046 Points of Light. I have not written a word for Medium.com since. Where previously ideas filled my head waiting patiently for their turn to be explored and written, there has only been emptiness. Where my spirit felt tested but hopeful, there has been darkness. Where my heart had felt purposeful, it has been leaden and heavy these many weeks. This void has not been easy to hold. Some might call it a dark night of the soul or burnout or overwhelm; I identified it as a kriya.

Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way teaches a kriya is a Sanskrit word for spiritual emergency or seizure. It is the result of a collision of beliefs and values and runs so deep she states, “… they should be spelled crias because they are cries of the soul…”

My kriya showed up as deep emptiness. I am a therapist and well aware of depression — my own and others. This was not depression. Rather a conflict emerged at the soul level that stopped me cold in my tracks because neither side would give.

Naming is a big deal for me, so I have been sitting with each side of this internal polarity for weeks seeking clarity. On one side I have many parts that adore the light, hold on tight to optimism, have faith goodness will prevail, and believe everything is a learning opportunity.

These parts are certain higher good triumphs over time and that light will always heal the shadow. These parts speak kindly, hopefully and seek to be impeccable with their words. In this moment, they strive to bring their wisdom and metta views to the current situation with Trump and his administration and guide my actions. I adore these parts of myself and have worked for years to let them lead my life.

The crosscurrent that slammed into my light bearing parts began with the Trumpcare health debacle. As I watched Ryan, Trump and the Republicans seek to deny 24 million people access to healthcare — old people, rural people, poor people, mentally ill people, and children, I felt a rage begin to grow that seemed out of control. “How dare they take coverage away from our most vulnerable citizens?” “How dare these fools turn their back on constituents coming to town hall meetings or refuse to meet with them?” How dare they repeal regulations to protect our environment and planet kill the Earth?” “How dare they want to follow the path of Nazi Germany with the wall and ghettos and gestapo rounding up Mexicans in the United States…how dare they…how dare they…each ‘how dare they’ growing in timber and volume to the point of shaking rage inside my body.

If truth be told, these parts of me wanted to lash out, act out, burn anyone or everyone associated with Trump in any way. The fierceness and violence of these parts startled my inner system which is accustomed to peace. I felt like the Hawaiian goddess Pele, the volcano goddess of destruction and violence, or Durga, the fierce Hindu goddess who fought demons, or Freya the Norse goddess of war entitled to the souls of the bravest warriors she killed on the battlefield, or Kali the Dark Hindu goddess of death, destruction and time, or Macha the wild Irish goddess who battled against injustice to woman and children or Sekhmet, the lioness headed goddess of Upper Egypt whose name meant lady of slaughter. I think you catch my drift; half of my inner system was enraged and barely contained.

This incredible tension between the light and the rage stopped me in my tracks. The crosscurrents of the kriya made it impossible for me to move. I really was having a spiritual seizure. Then three things happened in one week. The first was Good Friday.

Good Friday has deep personal meaning for me. My sister was murdered in October 1981. It took me years to recover. One of the keys to that recovery was developing a relationship with Jesus; he was a good man and I loved him for that. He also was murdered so he and his family knew what I was going through and I loved them all for that.

This year, I thought almost exclusively about his mother. Let me tell you the pious, silent woman depicted in the movies with tears streaming down her face as she mutely followed him to the cross is ridiculous. I am a mother and if I watched my son being murdered — his eyes closed due to beatings, blood and torn flesh hanging from his back from being whipped, dragging a cross heavier than any man could carry, stumbling and falling down miles of rocky terrain, a crown of thorns smashed into his head with blood dripping down his face, nails pounded into his hands and feet and hung on a cross to suffocate, I would be screeching, screaming, hitting anyone I could — I would be filled with hate and rage watching my gentle son tortured and murdered before my eyes and no one doing a thing to stop it.

I loved thinking about Mary all day Friday in her rage, outrage, bitterness and impotence. She was not thinking of Jesus as the Messiah; she was out of control that her first born child was being murdered. Thinking of her in that way, I did not feel so alone in my rage or ashamed of my rage. Actually, I felt I was in sacred company; just like her I was feeling that darkness was winning big time. I wasn’t crazy, I was in pain and grief.

The second thing happened the very next day. It was the Tax March in Chicago on April 15th. Getting Trump’s taxes has become almost a single focus for me. If we can access his taxes from 2000–2015, we will have our smoking gun and can begin impeachment proceedings. I believe we will have evidence of fraudulent tax practices and we will clearly see his conflicts of interest and foreign emolument violations. As per the U.S. Constitution, Article I, treason will come to light and we can get rid of the man, or so I hope in my fever dreams.

April 15th was a beautiful Chicago day with temperatures in the high 70s. Ten thousand people signed up on the Tax March Facebook page and I think two to three thousand showed up. While I was disappointed by the numbers, I was not disappointed by the fierceness of the crowd.

Let me tell you, the signs were filled with outrage, marchers chanted outrage, and the walk down Dearborn and Wacker ending in front of the Trump Hotel was enthusiastic and fierce. Boy, I felt I was with my tribe and my spirits lifted. My fellow marchers were all ages, colors, sexual orientations, and nationalities. Later watching the news, the people that were interviewed were smart, well informed on the tax issues and articulate. They were all calm but determined to keep pressure on Trump to release his tax returns or there would be no tax reform. That was the refrain of the rally speakers as well — fierce and focused.

Something started to soften in me. It was okay to be mad. It was okay to stamp my feet and yell and scream. Something bad was happening to this country and 250,000 people who marched people across America demanding to see Trump’s taxes agreed with me. I slept better that night than I had in weeks.

The third piece in the puzzle fell into place for me at the end of the week. I follow Marianne Williamson on Twitter. Williamson is the author of the international best seller, Return to Love. The woman is a spiritual guru to many, a personal growth coach to others, a smart commentator on the emotional/spiritual connection to social events. I really like what she has to say. Over several days I read the following tweets:

· The political situation at the moment is one in which the entire country is being treated like an abused spouse: bullied, lied to, wronged.

· Each of us has a moral responsibility to be fierce, be vocal, be obnoxious if you have to be but do not let insanity prevail.

· Even sociopaths are innocent children of God but they are accountable for their actions. This isn’t a time to be naïve about what is happening.

Like Mary, mother of Jesus, Marianne is deeply spiritual. She is a light house so to read those tweets was very reassuring to me. That first tweet went straight into my heart because it named in twenty-four words everything I was feeling about this country and administration but could not name succinctly. The second two gave very specific direction as to our individual responsibility to speak and act to stop the abuse and hold the abusers accountable — even if they are children of God. In this situation we are called to be fierce, vocal, and obnoxious.

I said this was a deeply personal essay and it is. I grew up in a patriarchal culture and family that diminished women. There was a deep cost to me growing up in that environment. I also was in terribly abusive relationships from age sixteen to twenty-five. Thank goodness for help from many quarters; it took a long time to heal from those wounds. And yet, I felt an echo of my pain from that past watching the Trumpcare drama. My rage was about Trump abusing this country but the degree of rage signaled an invitation to do some healing on a very specific issue from my past.

Once again Julia Cameron in The Artist Way helped me name it. She gives one of the best summaries of anger I have ever read. She says:

“Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into a well, tell those bastards. But we are NICE people, and what we do is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but LISTEN to it.

Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we’ve been and lets us know when we haven’t liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the recovery of a blocked artist (person), anger is a sign of health.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our angers points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us…

When we feel anger, we are often very angry that we feel anger. Damn anger!! It tells us we can’t get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that our old life is dying. It tells us we are being reborn, and birthing hurts. The hurt makes us angry.

Anger is the firestorm that signals the death of our old life. Anger is the fuel that propels us into our new one. Anger is the tool, not a master. Anger is meant to be tapped into and drawn upon. Used properly, anger is use-full.

Sloth, apathy, and despair are the enemy. Anger is not. Anger is our friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend. But a very very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interest. Anger is not the action itself. It is action’s invitation,”

Every word she wrote speaks truth to me but the echo from my past was in the line, “It (anger) will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves.” I still feel the echoes of shame I betrayed myself all those years ago by not saying Help! Stop! No! Unacceptable! sooner or louder. I understand that at the time there were a million reasons I could not and did not and for that I need to continue to forgive myself.

What I am recognizing on April 21, 2017, is I can and must say those things about what is happening in America. Being part of the resistance to stop the abuse of this country and its citizens by the Trump administration can take many forms. I understand I can operate from the light and act in calmness, curiosity, creativity, connection to self and others, confidence, compassion, clarity and courage.

What I now feel easier about is that there is nothing wrong with being fierce, vocal and obnoxious and that sometimes that will have to be the appropriate strategy. I had a wonderful therapist tell me once that a bully sometimes only understands bully energy back.

I can hold the fact that my rage tells me where my boundaries as a citizen of the United States of America have been violated; that my rage points the way to right action. I love Julia’s words that my anger is my friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend, but a very very loyal friend.

My anger will always tell me when I’ve been betrayed as a citizen of this country. It will always tell me when I have betrayed myself by not speaking out or acting on behalf of this country’s values and rights. It will always tell me that it is time to act in my own best interest and that of my fellow citizens and planet Earth. That is the key for me — I can consciously choose how to act and sometimes acting with anger as the fuel is just fine.

What happens now for me? In this moment I feel relieved and calm that my new form will probably be fierce like Mary and Marianne and all those goddesses I listed but all those women were also filled with light. I like thinking about it and may need to do so for a while.

My new form (which will probably be unnoticed by anyone but me) should be interesting, maybe scary, but also exciting. I shall see where these new insights lead, but in this moment I am happy to be writing. I guess I had a few things to say.

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Commentary: December 4, 2023

Has anything changed for me with respect to my anger since I wrote that essay? Yes, but I have had and continue to have a very complicated relationship with anger.

I was incredibly angry every single day between November 9, 2016 and November 7, 2018. Sometimes the anger would last a few minutes of a day. Other times the anger lasted the entire day. The intensity of the anger changed as well ranging from one f*** bomb uttered silently or spoken to forty, fifty or more f*** bombs depending on the atrocity committed by trump and his surrogates any given day. I was an active volcano of anger and lava flowed freely every single day.

The intensity of the anger began to shift ever so slightly when:

· Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in November 2018

· Joe Biden won the presidential election in 2020

· Raphael Warnock won the Georgia special election on December 6, 2022, and Democrats secured a majority in the Senate

· The January 6th Hearings were televised on all major networks beginning on June 9, 2022 and ending on October 13, 2022

· The predicted red wave in the House did not materialize in the 2022 midterms — in part due to the January 6th Hearings.

· More than 1,069 defendants were charged in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia for crimes committed on the January 6th assault on the Capitol. 692 have pled or been found guilty. 473 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. The DOJ investigations, new arrests, trials and sentencing are on-going.

· The first indictments against trump and his surrogates were filed in March 2023 in the state of New York. Trump currently faces 91 felony charges at both the Federal and State level.

What was it about those events that caused a shift in my anger? I think I started to feel a glimmer of hope. I think I started to feel trump and his surrogates would be held responsible and accountable for their crimes. I felt we had control of at least two branches of government so that sane legislators could undo some of the bad that trump had inflicted upon this country and put forth policies to help those in need. I felt relieved that the guard rails of our judicial system seemed to be holding and that indeed, no man was above the law.

I also felt exhausted by my anger. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to manage the polarity between those parts of me that know and honestly believe good can come out of this mess and the rage parts that cannot tolerate the meanness and stupidity of trump and his surrogates. My anger was a fire hose gone crazy; I needed to figure out how to direct the energy to the source of the problem rather than live with a scorched earth mentality.

So where am I this morning? I have a bit more clarity and calm about anger. It has been tremendously helpful for me to go back to the beginning of my essays in 2016. Reading them, thinking about them, reflecting on the state of the country and my inner world in 2023, I recognize how I have incorporated much of what I wrote about into my life.

In this moment, I have more hope decency and right will prevail given the reasons I listed above. I recognize I have learned more about equanimity and actually live in the eye of the storm a bit more.

I understand the value of persistence and know good comes from being the turtle in Aesop’s fable — that turtle won the race. I have become more resilient in the face of those issues that trigger my anger — not only on a political level but also in my personal life.

I have also made friends with my anger — at least a little bit. I can now say anger is a prickly friend. I am no longer ashamed of my anger or fierceness — sometimes I am a bit embarrassed but not ashamed. Instead of trying to break up with my friend, I acknowledge I need her.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do [or say] nothing.” I need not worry about that. I believe anger and I are partnered for the long haul. I am a good woman and my prickly loyal friend, anger, will see to it that — when needed — I will speak and move into action as best I can. I am good with that.