Category Archives: Intention

Rage Against Everything: My Secret Addiction to Anger

Fire Anger BuddhaThe first draft of this essay was written in early October. I stopped writing it because I did not fully understand what I was trying to say. It started as a revelation of one of my most shameful coping mechanisms. I stopped myself from going there because if I stripped myself of that armor, where would feel safe again?

The people I love will use this against me to hurt me. I know this, and it is my greatest fear which is why this essay has laid dormant for two months. But I’m ready. At least I think so. I’m ready to understand this part of me. I’m ready to open myself up to my family, friends and neighbors because I have come to understand that the only way forward is through.

I am addicted to anger and rage.

I have written, rather flippantly, that anger is my “signature emotion.” I wrote it that way because sometimes the truth is ugly and without the mask of humor, the shame is too hard to take. If you are one of two people in my life, an acquaintance, or my closest, dearest friend, the words “angry person” are not how you would describe me.  Even those here who have read my words on this blog understand that my nature is not a warring one. I do not go around picking fights in life, anymore. I write “anymore” because I did punch my best friend in the face once during a fight when I was 19 (sorry Kel) and the physical fights between me and my sister are unmentionable.

I have come far since the days when I urged to punch people in the face, though not far enough. Now, I have more wisdom, more compassion, more empathy and I try very hard to find the positive of all situations and people. But the operative word in that sentence is “try” and the implication in that sentence is… that I fail.

On the whole I am a happy, grateful, genuinely kind and sensitive person. I see the sameness in all faces and I will treat you with respect and compassion. When I am conscious, I see this life as something full of magic, wonderment and love. I smile at strangers and hum Christmas carols all day long. That is the whole of me. But it is not on the whole that my anger takes me. It takes me in the unconscious minute-by-minute moments. The times when I am tired, weary, in need of something and feeling unworthy of everything. When I feel out of control.

For example, if you stand between me and one of my basic needs (like sleep) or you are the perpetrator of a perceived injustice (a recent traffic camera ticket) or annoyance (my children’s incessant whining) or even if you are a drawstring that has pulled yourself inside the seam for the hundredth time while in the dryer; my chest quickly tightens, my lips purse, my teeth clench. If you have a soul I will burn my eyes into it with the laser sharp heat of seething hatred while saying awful, awful things under my breath. That is me being sarcastic again to hide the truth.

The truth is… anger is my friend. It’s an easy emotion for me to turn on like a warm furnace for whatever makes me feel cold and disconnected and if I’m being honest again, I feel that way more than I’d like. I curl up inside the heat of anger and I feel a whoosh of release when I open the furnace gates with a verbal or non-verbal tirade because frankly, it is the only thing I have known how to do for a very long time to release any uncomfortable pressure.

Anger is one of the reasons I no longer live in my hometown. My hometown is where all the seeds of my anger are buried like landmines and when I get close to them, my already volatile tendencies bring me to the edge of annihilation. I took a trip there not long ago and per usual, I came home licking my wounds from traps I stupidly walked into although I have long known where they lay just below the surface. I have Freudianized the origins of my anger and I can say definitively when they were planted but none of that matters anymore. That was yesterday and I don’t live there anymore.

Although I moved away from the landmine seeds, I still took away the germinated and maturing vines of anger that twist inside me now. I asked my husband if he thought I was an angry person and he said no, but that I get angry a lot. He should know. He lives here and bares witness to every moment of frustration that crosses my path in this stay-at-home-part-time working-going-back-to-school-writing-mother-of-two-toddlers. He sees it more often than most and it hurts him, and us, and I am coming to understand that my anger is my half of why my marriage isn’t better than it could be.

Recently, I have witnessed my three-year-old point a rigid finger at her younger brother and yell at him when he’s just being a typical toddler. When she gets frustrated she lets out a chest growl just like I do. It kills me. I’m sowing her anger seeds as I type this.

But aren’t there certain things in life that deserve our outrage? I’ve been thinking about conflict recently. The class I’m taking on literary fiction says that conflict is necessary and central to a story. Without conflict, there is no story. This is true of fiction, and I suppose, of life. But conflict is not the same as anger. Anger is a reaction to conflict; it’s nearly always my reaction and it has proven to be a poisonous weed. I’m sure I will feel anger or rage from time to time in my life, but too much of any one literary device strangles the overall narrative and my overuse of anger is a part of my story that needs revision.

I read a book recently by Byron Katie, a leading spiritual teacher on the subject of acceptance and breaking the cycle of destructive thinking. She has a method of learning how to accept life for what it is and stop creating your own conflict with stories inside your head. A phrase from that book keeps reverberating inside my brain,

“We suffer when we argue with what is.” ~Byron Katie

My learned coping mechanism for suffering and for all that I cannot control is anger– shown either overtly, or covertly. Because of my aptitude for resisting what is–I am now suffering and I am paying the price along with those I suffocate with my anger vines.

All of these themes converged for me a couple of weeks ago when I went back to the yoga mat after an eight month hiatus. I love yoga. It is my church, where I am my most holy, divine self. I was willfully depriving myself of this and I’m not entirely sure why. I do this a lot, withhold pleasurable things as punishment for imaginary infractions; I’m the judge, jury and executioner of my own life. I don’t admit this cycle of punishment out loud. Instead, I blame other things, like time and money, but I know those aren’t the reasons I stopped going to yoga.

The reason I stopped going was because I couldn’t handle the emotions that were coming up for me while I practiced. I got confused. I had many more questions than I was prepared to answer and like so many of us do when facing difficult emotions, I simply made excuses; created distractions.

On that first day back I went up into a wheel pose. A wheel pose begins by lying on your back and raising onto your hands and feet into a back bend while your soft belly exposed to the sky. It’s difficult. It requires a flexibility and strength I do not believe I possess and it leaves me feeling weak and vulnerable. It’s a pose that sends immediate pangs of frustration and anger through my body because of my lack of strength to hold it. These moments, they happen frequently whether in yoga or emptying the dishwasher.

Prior to this yoga session I set the intention of peace. At the time, I was just becoming aware of my anger and I wanted to squelch these tendencies for a mere hour and a half to find the much-needed peace that’s missing from my minute-to-minute life. When I got up into the back bend, or wheel pose… I started to cry. I do not pretend to know the complexities of chakras and such, but my deepest self tells me it had something to do with surrender. I had fought mightily against these urges the whole class and in a most vulnerable, weak position, I surrendered. I stopped fighting for a moment, I let it be… and the tears came.

Letting things be is hard for me and in Yoga, you must let go of everything. This is why I walked away eight months ago. Eight months ago I had a six-month-old, a two-year-old, and dreams I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t feel like I could let go of anything. How could I let any of these precious balls drop? No, letting go is not what I do. I force, I push, I strive, I worry, I attempt control. All of those adjectives carry with them a certain weight of aggression, and aggression has no place on a Yoga mat. The yoga mat is for surrender. So I walked away.

When the class was over the lady next to me turned and said, “You were such a calm and relaxed yogi to practice next to. Thank you.” I didn’t know what to make of that then, and I still don’t. I laughed at the irony. I was struggling mightily to suppress the anger so either I succeeded, or I’m really good at hiding.

Either way, I don’t want to struggle and I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to have to suppress anything, either. I don’t want to be friends with rage. I want to step out of my anger armor. I want to choose a different solution and for me, that means accepting what is, surrendering to the moment, letting it be, stop hiding and be vulnerable and yes… weak.

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you’d chosen it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

This is so much easier said than done for an habitual control-freak like me, but this is why I’m writing this, to be free. Now, when I feel my body responding in anger, the above statement is my mantra.

I know there will always be conflict. Stories are made of conflict and life is made of stories. But it’s time to find a better way to live mine and as the poet Robert Frost so wisely says, “The best way out is always through.”

So here I am. An angered, shameful, broken, human being trying to understand a better way to live… and to love.

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Wild Impulses

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Right now I am on vacation with my two children, husband, my parents and in-laws. The eight of us rented a house for seven days near Mt. Rainier National Park which is roughly two hours from my house, door-to-door. Mt. Rainier is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States rising 14,409 feet above sea level. On clear days, it stands like a sentinel ghost in the distant Seattle skyline. It is massive and magnificent.

When we got here we quickly found that our sleeping quarters weren’t as advertised. The room my children, husband and I are staying in looked more substantial in the pictures. As an added benefit to our cramped cozy bedroom, the baby isn’t sleeping well. He is crying in the night waking up our toddler who then also cries. Last night we had a rousing, hour-long, cry-fest, party of two! in our sardine can of a  small-ish bedroom. So far, we are all tired, but still trying to enjoy ourselves.

I’m not going to lie, it feels more like work than vacation.  I’d much rather sit on the deck and take in the view while enjoying a quiet, reflective glass of wine, but instead I am feeding, bathing, playing with, or soothing someone to sleep just like every other day accept I’m even more tired. I am the mommy; this is my choice, my life, and I love it, but there is never a shortage of sacrifices being made.

My consolation prize is waking up to see something breathtaking out my window. The natural beauty here is stunning, ethereal, ENERGIZING! (Thank goodness). Every detail from the worn, rock-laden trails to the violet Lupine in bloom is reminding me of the book I just finished, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

If you’ve read my blog, you know I have a bit of a crush on Ms. Strayed. You will also know that I have a bit of a life-long love for Oprah Winfrey. Several weeks ago Oprah picked Cheryl Strayed’s book to revive her book club and it felt like a natural, cosmic, menage et trois that I willed into existence. Naturally, I was on board.

Wild is about a 26 year-old Ms. Strayed and her three-month, 1100 mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail starting in the Mohave Desert in California, to the top of Oregon State. Strayed’s decision to embark on this journey came because her life was heading in a dark direction. Three years prior, her mother died suddenly from cancer. This shattered her small family sending the people of her life spinning in different directions, away from, and without her. She ended her marriage to a man she still loved partly because she became a prolific, impulsive philanderer, and partly because she no longer knew what she wanted. She also became a heroin user and got pregnant by a heroin addict. She had no money, no plan, no prospects so walking for miles, alone, in the wilderness, seemed like a grande idea.

The book follows her journey switching back and forth between the struggles of the trail and the struggles in her life. It is filled with deep insights and profound realizations about the correlations between wilderness and life; their harsh realities, relentlessness, and inherent beauties. While there are a myriad of lessons to glean from these pages, there is one that resonates with me deeply. It is a truth we all must face in the name of maturity; the value of learning impulse control.

Every day (my life, really) is a teeter totter of choices. At its fulcrum lies the question at the heart of every choice; is this what I want? Or is this what I need? Each side of the teeter totter holds the consequences of that choice. According to many philosophers and schools of psychology it is the ultimate division of the brain’s functionality, left vs. right, feeling vs. reason, want vs. need.

When I was younger, my wanting won the teeter totter battle most of the time. I wanted that boyfriend. I wanted to eat that bad thing. I wanted to smoke, get drunk, stay up all night and do whatever the hell I pleased. Over the years I became a master at masquerading my wants around as needs. Even now I say, “I need to write! I need time to myself! I need a new outfit for this occasion!”

But there comes a point in everyone’s life when you are given no choices. The only option, is the one that needs to be done. The decision is made for you and it stands like a boulder on the need side of the teeter totter; unmoved and unmovable. Everything is tipped, sometimes irreparably, in a direction you would never choose if you had a choice. These are the moments that offer our greatest lessons.  They teach us how to hold on, persevere, have courage and strength of character. They make us grow up.

This is what Strayed discovered while out in the wilderness, alone, hungry, in pain; her only option, to move forward.

“…the thing that was so profound to me that summer–yet also, like most things, so very simple–was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay.”

The most profound, harsh and enduring moments of being forced to do things I have no desire to do, have come into my life as a result of being a wife and a mother. When both of these things happened, my teeter totter tipped wildly, unexpectedly, radically into a position that I chose and simultaneously didn’t want. I was 27 when I married and 30 when I became a mother and admittedly, holding on to many selfish, impulsive, childish ways before entering both arrangements.

I want sleep. I want to dedicate a good portion of my time to physical maintenance. I want it my way, always, and I want my children and husband to just leave me alone for a little while. I want to travel unencumbered. Like right now.

And yet none of these things are part of my reality. They sit like the mountain out my window in patient defiance, irreverent of my wants. As much as I may want, there is no escape, no denial, no numbing down my children and spouse and their needs with bad food or wine or any number of unhealthy options that call from the other side of the teeter totter.

And yet…

In the reality that has become my life, in spite of, because of, in both fear and love of this mountain, I developed a determination, a perseverance, an internal knowing, a solid bedrock of confidence born of realizing that I am capable of doing what I need to do, when it needs to get done. They call me mommy with love and devotion because I have done this. I do this everyday–the things I least want to do.

This is the message that resonated with me most in Cheryl Strayed’s memoir. That life isn’t always about what you want or feel. It’s about building an internal strength, proving to yourself that you can do what you need to do, when it needs to be done.

When you keep putting one foot in front of the other, like Cheryl did–in spite of your impulse to numb yourself, to bend to your emotions, no matter how sad and miserable and tired and self-pitying you may feel–when you summit that mountain, which you will, you will find a greater, deeper, more grounded part of yourself that you didn’t know existed; a part that you truly need, a part born of needs, in spite of wants. And it is that part that will carry you the rest of way, over every mountain, through your entire life.

So instead of enjoying my reflective glass of wine, I will be playing Lincoln Logs with my toddler and trying to get my son to sleep until the wee hours of this night when I, too, will I fall into bed. Because there are more mountains to climb tomorrow and I need my strength.

I participated in a Twitter chat with Cheryl Strayed on July 17th and I asked if impulse control was a major lesson she learned while hiking the PCT. I told her that becoming a mother has taught me that. She said:

Isn’t it though?

Human Reflexes

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My toddler daughter is still trying to figure out her baby brother. Most days she gives him a wide berth, eyes him suspiciously and ignores him completely. When he gets close enough to grab her dress or pull her hair she repeats (at a high volume) one of my stock phrases, “He’s doesn’t know!” And, “No! He’s just a baby!” Just recently she has wanted to help with Brady and has even showed signs of unprompted affection.

Brady can sit very well on his own. It’s a skill he learned early due to his wide base (re: a chunky butt). But sometimes when he’s tired or hungry or for no damn reason at all because he’s just a baby and lacks reason, he violently throws himself backward onto the ground. Wherever he sits, we have to put pillows behind him so he doesn’t bang his head in one of these backward dives. Every time he ends up on his back he immediately wants to sit back up again and you can see him straining and flexing his little body trying to get back to sitting. I have to sit him upright at least 20 times a day.

The other day my daughter, Brooke, wanted to sit Brady upright. First, she tried pushing his head from behind at which point I intervened explaining why we don’t do that because, “He’s just a baby!” So then, she tried grabbing his hands and pulling on them. Each time she did he recoiled his arms and resisted. She was getting so frustrated because she couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t sit up and just like every toddler everywhere she kept saying, “No! I do it!”

Together, we figured out how. We figured out that if you just reach out your hands in front of him, palms up he’ll grab onto them himself and you can easily pull him into sitting position.

And I’ll be damned if that isn’t the truth about every human being, everywhere.

At one point or another we’re all laying there in a position we don’t want to be in straining to get up. If you notice, there are usually plenty of hands pushing our heads and pulling our hands trying to get us up against our will. It isn’t until someone offers one, palm up, without expectation and without force, that we decide we’re ready to move because it’s compassion and non-judgment that inspires us.

I have decided this is how I want to raise my kids. I know they are going to fight me, my daughter fights me everyday and she’s not even three. They are going to say, “No! I do it!” over and over and over again and I’m going to have to sit back, knowing better, and let them. I don’t want to be the force that they resist. Instead, I want to be the open hand they grasp when they’re ready to get up. I believe it’s an ingrained human reflex to want to do it all ourselves, to figure it out, to make sense of our world; it’s how we grow stronger, wiser. But there will always be times when we can’t do it all ourselves and we need help. In those times, we want love and understanding to pull us up again.

It’s hard watching your kids fail or get hurt. I’ve already found it to be one of the hardest things to do as a parent. I also know there will be plenty of things to fight about as they grow older. In the moment when they need help and are ready for it, I don’t want to be the one they resist. I want to be the outstretched, compassionate, open hand they reach for because open hands are so much easier to hold.
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Hmm? Maybe I’m not giving Brady enough credit? I believe he knows more than we think.

Multi-tasking Master, Got Schooled

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I am a stay-at-home mother of two small children. That means, whether I like it or not, I am a master at the art of mult-tasking. I have cooked macaroni and cheese while breastfeeding a baby and doing the hokey-pokey. I have sung nursery rhymes while composing grocery lists. I have written blog posts in my head while running, pushing a baby in a stroller and listening to audiobooks. If I don’t do at least two to three things at once, I’m not sure I would accomplish much of anything.

Today, I woke up to a surprise gift– my mother-in-law was taking my toddler for the day which left me with just one child. Huzzah! If you’re not familiar with Mom Math, it works like this: take the number of children you have, subtract one and you can multiply your productivity by two. Subtract a toddler and you multiply it by at least a thousand. Subtract all your children and after your brain recovers from a temporary state of shock, it will be overflowing with an uncomputable amount of bliss. Anyway, upon hearing this news my mind was racing with all the things I wanted to accomplish today.

First, I went to the post office, then the craft store. Next, I got the car washed, picked up groceries and carried on a metaphysical conversation with one of my girlfriends via text. After that, I geared up for a quick run with my infant son and BOB… the jogging stroller. I had planned to listen to my audiobook and get my zen on while burning a few post-Christmas calories.

Just like I try to do before everything I do, I set out my intentions for this run. I’m a strong believer in intentions. I believe our intentions are what creates our experiences and if we’re conscious of our intentions, we can create the kind of experience we want to have. To me, it’s just a quick check-in with myself and what I hope to get out of an experience. It’s a reminder to pay attention, to become aware and present to the moment; to stop, listen and be grateful– to say, at the very least, thank you. Even with all I had going on, the running, the baby in the BOB, the book… in true multi-tasking fashion, I added one more thing to my list. To take a moment and be present in the middle of all that. Well, God had a different plan for me this day.

The run I take is a quick 2.2 miles through a wooded trail, around a small lake, through a blueberry farm and back again. It’s quite lovely and I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful resource just outside my doorstep. On Christmas Day I did this same run and I took this picture with my phone.

It was a typical, overcast, Seattle, winter’s day, but it was also Christmas, and so there was an extra-specialness in the air it that I felt needed to be immortalized by cell phone photography.

Today, God wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing anything but paying close attention to this world. On another typical, overcast, Seattle, winter’s day I rounded the familiar corner of my run and stopped, breathless and it wasn’t because of the running. It was because there was the most brilliant beginning of a rainbow the I had ever seen. I not only saw the red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple; but I saw the color that is often forgotten in the spectrum, Indigo. I stopped, took out my ear buds and took it in for a moment. Alrighty then I got my zen, now… moving on. I put the ear buds back in and kept running because I had an extra helping of whipped cream to work off, too. Multi-tasking master here! what! what!

As I got closer to the rainbow, my view expanded I saw that it was a DOUBLE rainbow. Suddenly, I felt like that guy on YouTube  that starts crying hysterically when he sees a double rainbow.

I immediately wished I had my phone because I wanted to document that shit. A DOUBLE rainbow? On an overcast, December, winter’s day in Seattle? No one would have believed it. But I left my phone at home to charge so I just kept running and listening to my audiobook because calories aren’t going to burn themselves.

As I rounded another corner, I saw ahead of me, the end of that rainbow. Okay, that’s it! This. Must. Be. Documented. I remembered that my iPod had video camera function that I have never used. I pulled it out, hoping to get a decent shot of this awesomeness.

And then… I kept running because the clock was ticking and I had to get back home and shower and start dinner and feed the baby…. and….fill-in-the-blank of any menial task that needs to get done.

Then God brought me to my knees. As I rounded another corner I saw a man coming toward me pulling a child’s wagon. It’s the same wagon I bought for Brooke last summer. It’s a plastic radio flyer with the canopy. Just so you know, those things are like $100. As I approached him I saw that he didn’t have a child in that expensive wagon; he was pulling a very elderly Jack Russell Terrier laying on top of brocade pillows. The look on that dogs face DID turn me into the guy on YouTube that cries hysterically over the double rainbow. It was one of the most profound displays of complete love that I have ever seen.

I stopped running. I stopped listening to my audiobook. I walked the rest of the way and stayed in that moment because I realized that God was trying to tell me something. He was trying to say slow down, stop rushing, take this in because it doesn’t get any better than this and because I am the greatest multi-tasker of all time and I have a few things to teach YOU woman.

And you know what I saw just before I got home?

It is not likely that I will stop multi-tasking anytime soon, but when it comes to God and this Universe, there are too many amazing things to be missed if I don’t stop and set my intentions so He can hear me. To slow down and remember to be present and at the very least, say thank you. Think of what I would have missed today had I not?

I might not have lost those calories in my body, but I filled my soul with so much more.