From Disconnection to Life.

Rage was almost totally displaced from my life for almost all of my life. And for sure the conscious and ‘not-gremlin’ one. As I was growing up in Poland, this bizarre country in the middle of Europe in ’90s, I didn’t know anybody who could have taught me how to feel, express and use my anger in a safe way. I didn’t know anybody talking to me about emotions and feelings and inviting me to get to know my inner world. I was lost. I was lonely. As a girl. As a teenager. As a young woman. I was overeating my emotions because I couldn’t handle them. I was harming my body because I was feeling so much and so deeply that I had to numb myself to survive. That was my strategy. I was choosing disconnection from myself and others because staying connected while expressing feelings, seemed impossible for me.

As a child I was mostly rejected by my parents while feeling anger (and sadness and fear and big joy). In my family anger belonged to my father and earlier to my grandmother. They were shooting like shotgun shuts of rage in anyone who came on their path. Just because they were full of it and couldn’t handle it. Nor express it in a healthy and not harmful way. I also started to do it in a harmful way. In a passive aggressive way with jokes, sharp words, feeling of isolation.

As I observed what it was bringing on I quickly made a decision never to feel anger in my life. And especially as a woman in a culture where being nice and polite was serving as a way to survive for many many decades. Rage was for men. Rage was for some crazy and frustrated woman on television. Rage was to make wars. To break love and families. To destroy. To blow up like volcanoes with no responsibility. I was sure I didn’t want to have nothing to do with it.

I went in the direction of inner peace, accepting and loving everyone, being nice and cool with everything around me. I went into yoga and meditation, just to look for calmness and an artificial mask of a ‘not feeling’ woman who can perfectly control her feelings and that brought me superiority over anyone who dared to express anger around me. I despised everyone who felt something other than joy.

When I look at myself now, I realise what I went through and how much work I did to find myself on a new map of feelings. Those feelings are okay, feelings are neutral, they are important information and messages for me. My anger is beautiful. It protects me and helps me take care of myself. Actually anger serves me to love myself more and in a more courageous way. Anger is here and reminds me that I am alive and what I want and don’t want.

First few times I said what I was angry at in front of other people was so scary that just before I expressed it, I already had a story that our relationship would be over. Next discoveries were more and more fascinating. I can love someone truly and feel anger at him and her. I can make boundaries about my body, my decisions, my space and stay in relation and connection. Anger wasn’t the final word to end a friendship nor break a relationship.

Anger became a life energy that I missed all my life. This vibrant echo going around my body, bottom to top and top to bottom. Sometimes still scary, but I started to fall in love with this feeling. With this state. With the idea and story that I can ask my anger: “What do you have for me?” and I can make friend with it. I can feel safe because it’s always with me.

Thank you my anger.