I recently got cross with a dear friend’s little girl. It had been bubbling a while, something that I needed to take some time to look at and also a reflex. I had spent the weekend being told a series of untruths, just as children do, but one came after too many and I had enough. I was angry, not wildly so, I didn’t say or do anything terrible but it was clear I was annoyed and cross. As many of us know, this a great faux pas. To be angry with another person’s child is a line that ought not to be traversed.
I apologised, and I meant it, both to child and mother but that line had been crossed and therein lies an issue.
I “shouldn’t” have been angry with her.
Except where there are ‘shoulds’ there are unhealthy shadows, more over it has been done, it can’t be undone, yet the focus is so often about trying to erase its memory, trying to find a way to discount it from our past. Why have we got such an aversion, such a stigma around anger? Of course, we can always endeavour to find the kind way, of course we can learn from our outbursts and try to do it differently next time, but why are we, as a society, so unforgiving about anger? If someone does something to upset you surely it is healthy to let that out? And even with the very best of intentions, sometimes that comes as an explosion. I don’t believe that anger is a bad energy, it is One of our energies and it is important to acknowledge it.
I look at all the sickness in the world right now and so much is spawn from anger; I am closely present to a darling friend trying to save her own life as she heals herself of cancer, and she has Anger. She has anger from her childhood, so buried within her system that it is making her mortally sick. And I can promise you, that anger is well deserved, I know a fraction of her story and she has every right to be mad as hell. I expect she has her moments of daily anger, she has a political rant every now and again, but she needs to get crazy angry for a moment, a real stomach churning, yeti screaming, puce face eruption of energy and get it out. But where can she do this? Where is there permission to do this? Instead she is supposed to move on, forgive, take the high road, have compassion. Well she does, she has all of those in buckets and spades but she needs her anger too. She needs is so that she can live to see her children grow up and so that I can make my way to Oz and give her a bloody big hug.
So I go back to this place I’m at right now where I feel so horrible for having been angry with this lovely little girl, I feel mean and ogre-ish and yet there is a tendril poking up through my shame that says, ‘it’s ok’, ‘you got cross because right then you needed to’, ‘you apologised because you’re nice too’ and actually I think that is true.
And I am grateful to this experience, as much as the fences that need building between me and my friend are hurting my soul, I know this reflection on my own anger is healing and positive. I know that I am going to take it into my own family and give greater permission for my kids and my husband AND Me to have our outbursts. That instead of shaming those moments, instead of shaming me for being perceived as imperfect, I am going to feel that energy course out of my system and return to peace.
Anger is welcome here.