I’m quite ‘good’ at being angry… in the sense that I don’t really ‘lose’ the plot. Even when shaking with rage, I have a certain element of control and don’t say things I don’t mean just to be spiteful. I learned a long time ago that those type of words can rarely be expunged. But most of all I learned to walk away… if the fire got too hot, to find a place for me to get some space, some thinking time, gather myself, analyse myself and come back with efforts to heal and resolve.
That doesn’t work with a toddler. If I walk away, not only is she frightened by my anger, she is abandoned by my leaving. For almost the first 3 years of parenting, I never had to visit my ‘angry’ place with my beautiful child. Then my gorgeous son arrived and brought with him a change in dynamic that has shocked me to my very core. I have visited darkness in myself that I hoped had healed and I have not been the mother I choose and wish to be.
My anger has flared when my eldest accidentally hurts my baby – a mother’s raw instinct kicking in? Yes, sometimes that is true. But it has also risen from the depths when my energies are low and both need me. I want to give them my time and my love and sometimes one of them has to wait. It hurts me to put their needs on hold, but my reaction hurts them the most. I have looked myself in the mirror and failed to recognise myself, but what I did see was my legacy…
I have realised and recognised this vein of anger as a thread running through my ancestral family, a coping mechanism, a ‘validated’ output. It is not acceptable to me but it is a habit hard learned and well worn into my psyche. It is going to take time, effort and pain to start to explore different ways to express when nerves are tight and jangling. Momentous waves of patience and compassion are required, not least for myself in order that I may have enough to pass onto my children.
What I acknowledge instantly is that, more often than not, if I can take a breath, pause and explore what is pressing that ‘button’, I really just want to cry. Cry because I’m tired, because my toddler is frustrated and I can’t find a way to help her, cry because it’s been a hard day. Crying was not OK for me growing up, crying was ‘manipulative’ and ‘weak’. My father sometimes cried and that was him being ‘manipulative’, so I believed, maybe it wasn’t…. My mother, I don’t remember seeing her cry but I do remember her being angry and I do think of her as ‘strong’. My grandmother, my grandfather… yes both angry but not ‘sad’. What has happened to sadness? It exists, it is natural, it is human, somehow it has been ‘wronged’.
Would my toddler be upset to see my cry? Yes, probably. But given a choice between Mama crying and explaining I’m tired (just as she does), Mama showing tears because she has tears too, Mama sitting down for a moment with a tissue and a sigh OR Mama cross, unaccepting of her feelings, pushing her away through the energy of my anger. I know which I choose and I know which is better for her in the long term.
Anger has a valid place in our lives, anger can save us from danger and can inspire us to fight injustice, but it is not valid for day-to-day parenting. I own that it is present in my life and in my house right now, but I am making a choice. I am choosing to cry and I am fighting that legacy that has hindered and inhibited my ancestors.
Send me blessings please, ooof, I can feel this mountain is going to be one hell of a climb.