It is not dark magic
About one of the most underrated source of Love & Beauty.
CARE.CHECK*: What is your relationship with Anger?
Do you fear her? Do you listen to her?
Do you tame her, run away from her, celebrate her?
How does Anger feel in your body, when you let it vibrate freely?
Where does Anger lead you, when you let it be?
Have you ever truly opened the door of your heart to Anger, to understand what she came her to teach you?
Are you willing to explore a new way of relating to her?
And if not, why?
There is no right or wrong answer here—there is no right or wrong answer, EVER.
I hope this week’s letter will offer a new paradigm that feels inviting to you…
I love you.
In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)
IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by a Care.robot.friend :)
Hi Care.Friend,
How have you been since my last letter?
How is your body feeling?
How is your heart softening, opening, waking up?
What parts of your experience are in need of some contraction in order to then expand from a better place in the upcoming months?
So much is changing within and around me, as I witness my heart claiming back leadership over my experience.
My posture, my choices, my reactions.
My friendships, my partnerships, my willingness to truly rest and deeply nourish myself.
The music I’m listening to, the teachers I give my time and attention to.
My singing—of course—and as I was writing last week, my anger!
Anger seems to be there to stay. And surprisingly, I’m in no hurry to watch her go away.
I’m so curious about what she’s here to teach me… And as I mentioned HERE, it has become the opposite of an unpleasant experience! That anger feels freeing, joyous, BUOYANT.
That anger wants me to dance and laugh and expand.
That anger wants me to stop underestimating myself and to let myself shine—especially in the darkest corners of my own mind.
That anger is saying: “You were never a problem to solve! so you can STOP trying to mold yourself into a solution!”
That anger tells me that I’m a woman whose dreams are coming true and that this season calls for some fierce grieving of what can never be again, and for some exquisite celebration that it is over: FOR GOOD.
“You were never a problem to solve!
so you can STOP trying to mold yourself into a solution!”
I love that we say that. For good.
Because endings can be good (I wrote about it HERE).
Endings can be good indeed. Even the tragic ones. Even the ones that close chapters that felt needed and useful. Even the ones we would never have wished for. Even those that came too soon. Even those that came way too late to spare us from abuse.
Endings are the most crucial part of any commencement.
I always marvel at how Anger is uniquely designed to show us our limits. This is why I love Anger so much.
Anger tells me who I am. Where I end, where I begin.
Anger KNOWS me.
Anger knows what I won’t let myself remember or what I didn’t consciously notice.
Anger knows how things FEEL like—no matter what my mind has to say about it.
But interestingly my coach also reminded me that Anger also shows us that we matter. That we exist.
Anger says “Not on my watch” AND Anger also says “I am HERE.”
Anger will get us seen… By everyone else if that’s what it takes for us to finally see ourselves!
Anger will find a mirror so big we cannot avoid it anymore; and anger will destroy that mirror in front of our eyes if we still choose to hang on to our denial. Anger will throw the broken glass into our core until the pain shocks us alive.
* Endings are the most crucial part of any commencement.*
Anger can be inconvenient, wild, wreaking havoc within our comfort zone, until there’s no comfort left to hide behind anymore. Anger can be all encompassing, deafening, uncontrollable… Especially when we’ve run too far out from our center or when Anger sees that we’re in danger to lose ourselves, to exhaust our bodies into oblivion, to forget about our dreams or to drown into someone else’s expectations.
Anger recenters us, if we’re willing to listen. Anger is unapologetic, she has a mission.
She is fierce, she is tactless, she doesn’t give a damn of whether we finally felt ready to have conversations that are ten years overdue—be it with someone we love or, more importantly, with ourselves. Anger will put her foot on the ground and pull the brakes of our life without thinking of the consequences, because Anger is not afraid of chaos.
Anger doesn’t care about keeping the peace, if the peace doesn’t serve. If the cost of peace is denial.
Because Anger knows something our culture seems to have forgotten: Peace is created through the oneness of our souls, not in the shallowness of inauthentic human interactions.
* Anger is uniquely designed to show us our limits.*
Recently, I notice Anger spark in incomprehensible moments. Incomprehensible to my mind that is… I read a text message that my mind greenlights as fine, safe, irrelevant or even sweet! and suddenly Anger is flooding my inner being.
Two of those messages especially, I've been rereading for a week, and I’m still not sure what the problem is! But there is a problem for sure. Anger won’t let me ignore it.
Anger is not interested in subtlety. She wants me to know she’s here. Anger is not interested in the subtext, HER job is only to warn me! I’m in charge to figure out the rest.
Anger doesn’t care that it feels mesmerizing to me, Anger is not there to help me understand! Anger is here to help me feel.
The wisdom will come if I let her fire burn me alive. The wisdom will come from complete surrender… I’ve learned that, so I let Anger rock me gently back to my center—and I trust that this agony will soon feel like a much needed rebirth.
And the most fascinating part to me is that I don’t feel anger towards those who sent me that text! If anything I feel more softness and love towards them that I have in weeks.
BUT I also notice that I don’t want any more contact with them any time soon.
It’s so interesting... I have no idea what’s going on—and I witness how Anger is speaking to me in the background right now, saying “Of course you do, you just refuse to know that you know.”
And I believe her.
* Anger also shows us that we matter.*
Denial is no small feat. Denial is incomprehensible for anyone who’s never experienced the coming out of it. That sometimes sudden surge of clarity that changes everything in a fateful heartbeat. That sometimes excruciatingly slow process that demands years of excavating, before we can reclaim the truth that beats our heart, as our own.
I have learned that Anger is our best ally on the way to uncovering what our inner protectors buried in places within us, that they rendered out of reach. I have learned that Anger is not impressed.
Anger knows how to burn to the ground those forests of beliefs we train ourselves to hide behind, until all that remains are the ashes of the years we sacrificed running away from ourselves and our trauma.
* Anger will throw the broken glass into our core
until the pain shocks us alive.*
Something happened to me (somethingS actually) in the summer of 2001 that would change the course of my entire life. And I stopped singing as a result. That’s how core shattering that summer was.
I also stopped dreaming at that moment. I stopped believing in who I had always known I was. I started fading away, and I would free fall into that downward spiral for the next 15 years. I got lost in Medicine, moved to cities I had never ever wanted to visit, and into arms I was never meant to be touched by.
We talk a lot about that dark night of the soul (that is actually the dark night of the ego of course), that starts when we finally decide to travel the journey back to our essence! But there’s an even darker path before that.
And that darkness is not a nursery of stars that allow us to become. That darkness is not a mere absence of the light we’re meant to recover. No.
That darkness overcomes us, while we’re standing in bright daylight.
That darkness is caused by those torturous beliefs that we inherit from a world wired in a scarcity mindset and plagued by the pull of external validation. That darkness comes because the density of our fears creates walls around us that slowly, but surely, cuts us off from all that nourishes us.
That darkness is similar to the cloud of dust that killed the dinosaurs… It drains and suffocates us—and so many of us call that dark path a normal existence.
* Anger tells me who I am.*
I remembered that summer. Of course. I remembered most of the pivotal moments that happened! How could I not… But I had never realized that that summer had been such a crossroad on my journey—until last week.
And I had not realized that I had taken as a result a VERY wrong turn, thinking I was following the secure path without realizing I was putting a knife in my own back—shattering my connection to all that matters most in the process: my voice, my creativity, my core, my heart, my soul energy.
In hindsight, it’s laughable that it took me this long to make those connections, but I know better than to judge myself.
Of course, I couldn’t see it before... My armor would have melted immediately! and I didn’t know that I didn’t need my armor until very recently.
I knew I had stopped singing “one day”. Obviously. I just couldn’t remember when. All I knew was that I stopped doing the thing I loved most and I was blaming myself harshly for it.
I was making it mean that I had abandoned myself, that I couldn’t trust me, that I wasn’t worthy of my dreams… But now, I know WHY I stopped singing, and so I can understand, and so I can finally heal.
I will never forget last week.
And I have Anger to thank for it!
Anger danced me back into that summer until I could watch each and every domino fall after the other, and witness, in awe, the cohesiveness and underestimated beauty of the movie of my life.
* Anger knows how to burn to the ground those forests of beliefs
we train ourselves to hide behind, until all that remains
are the ashes of the years we sacrificed
running away from ourselves and our trauma.*
I had never thought that my journey would make me such an advocate of Anger. I had never witnessed Anger that served. I had only witnessed outbursts of rage that kill.
But thankfully one day I started reading.
There is something so safe about anger put in writing. You can witness it from a distance, you know you’re shielded from it. It’s like watching a thunderstorm from a window. It is grandiose and awe inspiring.
When laid out on a page, Anger feels unthreatening and awakening. Untamable, sacred even. That's because it is rooted in one’s heart when embodied by someone’s writing.
That’s when you can witness that Anger is full of power and beauty.
That’s how I started realizing that Anger is LOVE.
That’s how I first could feel what shifts within us when Anger is fueling our awakening.
That’s also where I could understand that everything changes when Anger spurs from the divine feminine—instead of being thrown into the world by the wounded masculine.
* Denial is incomprehensible for anyone
who’s never experienced the coming out of it.*
Another turning point on my journey with Anger was watching Nanette, and how extraordinary Anger could become when shaped by the voice and heart of Hannah Gadsby. Something within me woke up that day, and I have never feared my anger ever since.
That doesn’t mean I knew how to honor, feel, free, or embody my Anger in a way that serves and heals. When angry, I still felt like a girl who didn’t understand her power; parts of me still feared Anger was dark magic.
That has changed for good (HA! Here it is again).
That has changed forever.
As of right now, I am officially a woman devoted to harnessing that power, wholeheartedly.
I have let Anger overcome me, and I’m here to testify that there’s no such thing as dark magic.
There’s only magic led by one’s heart OR by one’s psyche. And when your heart is in charge, there’s nothing left to fear. Because our hearts are made of love—and love is the answer to EVERYTHING.
* Anger is LOVE.*
So I’m inviting you to join me on this journey dear Care.friend.
Let us all rewrite our narratives around Anger so that we can wake up to what we came down here to be:
Fires of love that enlighten, warm, enliven and enchant every being, every thing, every dream.
Fires of love that heal.
Fires of love that burn our walls to the ground—and allow us to finally truly live in peace.
* When your heart is in charge,
there’s nothing left to fear.*
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo
I just finished writing a journal entry on anger..how all I feel is anger coursing through me and seeing no clear way through it…and then I get an alert notification on my watch with your post. It felt like something:) Thank you for that.