Reclaiming the fire within

A wild gift that keeps on giving

CARE.CHECK*: What were you taught about Anger growing up?

What do you believe about Anger now?

Have you ever let yourself truly feel your Anger without bracing, resisting, running away or rationalizing?

Have you ever danced through it, sung through it, written through it, GREW through it?

Have you ever let yourself SOFTEN through it?

Can you recall one time where Anger saved your life?

Can you reenter this sacred fire that has the power to rebuild the world when alchemized into Love?

I hope that today’s letter will feel like an invitation to enter the portal that Anger has created for you, to reclaim who you were always meant to be.

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 Hi Care.Friend,

How’s your week been? 

Something big? Something small? Something sticky? Something sweet?

Nothing interesting whatsoever? If that’s your answer, can you maybe look again and check if that’s true? Not one conversation, idea, event that could mean more than meets the eye? Really? Are you sure?

I feel like somewhat of a mystery to myself right now. I have changed deeply this month—I know I have—but I don’t know yet how to read the music of the new song of me. 

Because it wasn’t a 1 degree turn. It was not a subtle shift. It’s an ongoing reinvention from the inside out—and I don’t understand yet what that implies. 

So I question everything, everyday.

Do I even love singing? (YES)

Do I still love New York? (oh, yes…) 

What do I need? What feels good? What feels true? 

And two words keep coming back at the forefront of my awareness:

Tenderness… and RAGE. 

Those are my unmet needs, the parts of me that were stolen from me at birth and that I am ready to reclaim now. Right. NOW. 

But that sounds so antithetical right? To reclaim tenderness and rage at the same time. Yet, I know it’s feasible because that brings me back to my most treasured value: KINDNESS. 

And in kindness, there is so much tenderness!

And in kindness (that is not and never will be niceness)… there is actually so much room for rage.

It’s funny because Life does make us teach what we most need to learn… and one thing that I always end up guiding my coaching clients back to is their sacred anger.

Women and men.

Younger and older souls.

The true shift, the true moment of change, the true before/after of their healing journey is always the moment they reconnect with the divine flames of Anger.

And I get it. Understanding that Anger was the fiercest embodiment of love has been one of the greatest gifts of my own healing adventure.

Understanding that Anger is not my enemy, but my wildest, most devoted, friend…

And then truly grasping why.

Because she will not let me ignore what hurts my inner child, my body or what closes my heart. That’s how precious anger is. It keeps me WHOLE.

Anger is not only keeping me alive, she’s the vanguard of my aliveness.

She’s not only our way out, dear Care.friend, she’s first and foremost the most sacred way IN.

If we’re willing to understand. If we’re willing to sit with her, and to let her burn us back into the fire of love we were sent down here to embody. 

Anger won’t let me abuse myself in order to tolerate abuse from others. Anger is very clear on the fact that we won’t be participating in my family of origin’s tale of what did and did not happen, for one second longer.

Anger is my truest ally on the path to authenticity. SHE’S YOURS TOO.

So I hope that if you two ever got separated, you’re letting Anger show you how to reconnect with your spark—and therefore your sacred dream.

Because heart-centered Anger will never lie to you.

There’s a part of me that is still scared of my anger though.

My anger led my mother to nearly ending me. My anger drove a precipice between my father and me (because my anger and his denial just cannot coexist). My anger says I MATTER to those who are asking me to erase all that makes me me.

My anger ultimately burns every bridge I build out of despair and codependency.

My anger is always saying “we’re almost there, but we’re not there yet honey, keep going.” Because my anger won’t let me settle, my anger won’t let me fit in—my anger won’t let me give up on finding the world that I KNOW already exists, just because those who brought me into this one thought that Hell was the only country one could live in. 

My anger doesn’t believe in people’s words when their actions portray the opposite—no matter how I much I try to hide behind their lovely words.

My anger refuses to stay close to anyone who assumes and appeases, instead of showing up for the uncomfortable conversations, the heart opening questions and the soul infused responses. 

My anger is done with fawning and my anger is FOR SURE done with functional freeze. (I’m not, but my anger is also very patient.)

My anger is determined to save me and will not let go until I’m sovereign again into my inner world.

My anger is messy, unapologetic; my anger despises the word polite. 

My anger looks at me in the mirror, and asks me to look more closely, to look deeper, to see the exhaustion, the cross on my shoulders and the chains around my heart.

My anger is loud and relentless, and it hurts because my body tends to brace against my anger… because my anger turns my comfort zone into lava.

But I am grateful to my anger, because my comfort zone was the kind of jail I wouldn’t wish on anyone. My comfort zone was martyrdom, saviorism, compulsive caretaking that I hoped was proof that I’m worth something, that I'm a loving being, that I belong. My comfort zone was deep self-neglect, military discipline (disguised under the name of self-care), and self-abuse I couldn’t spot within myself—because I had no contrast.

Yet my anger always knew.

She knew when I was a kid trying to survive. She knew when I was a physician trying to matter. She knew when she woke me up that evening and shook me into remembering that “Wait a minute! Dying as an oncologist in Paris will never allow me to live as a singer in New York… That plan will NEVER work. (!)” She knew when I arrived in New York amidst a pandemic and with only two suitcases, still climbing the ladder that I had just set on fire—in order to bridge the gap between the nightmare my trauma had manifested for me and the dream my heart was turning into reality. She saw how scared I was and she said “I don’t care leo, keep climbing, the fire won’t have time to catch you! And the next ladder will appear in a moment.” She knew when, one by one, she made me reconsider all of my partnerships so that I could stop playing the role of “Authentic me” and finally get to work and descend into the deepest parts of myself—where my wounded authenticity had retreated but never died. 

She knew then and she knows now!

And as usual she’s so far ahead of me, I can’t see anything of what she sees… and so I can’t fully understand why what seems to be working needs to end or know what is supposed to begin now.

So I’m trying to slow down, to surrender, to show up, to follow.

How do you treat your anger? How do you receive it? With wonder, reverence and awe? With a full body commitment to understand the message, to feel it, to let it out? Or with a stubborn NO? With terror, with exasperation, with shame, with disbelief? Hiding behind a wall of denial? Holding a projector so that it can just be everyone else’s fault? 

All of it is okay. All of it makes sense. 

We’ve been taught that anger only destroys, but Anger is just fire. It’s destructive when mishandled and life giving when cared for.

We’ve been told that Anger is ungodly but I don’t believe in a God that would create anger as one of the most universal experiences and then decide that anger is a sin or divorce us when we embody our most primal emotions. I don’t believe in a God that would create actual volcanoes but get mad at us for erupting when the pressure shatters our shallow defenses.

My anger turned my comfort zone into lava.

Because God did create volcanoes… And volcanoes' beauty, power and gumption are incomparable. Volcanoes are one of the most extraordinary forces of Nature. Volcanoes, unleashed, recreate the world anew—and we know that we owe them so much in how our planet was shaped, we owe them so much in allowing our planet to become such a nurturing home. We also know how fertile the ground becomes after fallowed by a volcano. 

Now yes, volcanoes can also kill and destroy, but it’s never personal. Volcanoes don’t know that there are other beings around… and as far as we know volcanoes do not have a beating heart able to alchemize their fire into love. 

But WE do. 

Aggression does not stem from embodied anger, it stems from anger avoidance. It stems from an energy we refuse to love and know, and that we therefore project onto the world, onto others or onto ourselves. You’ll know the difference by the way anger feels within you.

I’ve learned that embodied anger feels extraordinary, empowering beyond words, joyous almost in an erotic fashion. Anger turns us back into Humanity’s advocate, into the advocate of Life. Anger says “Not under my watch, not if I can help it, not if your intentions are not as pure as water and if your power is not as supportive and nurturing as the Earth”. 

Renounced anger is what makes us sick. What turns our words into weapons, our healing hands into hurtful fists and our sacred energy into airpoison. 

We need to build capacity for our anger. To embody it slowly, in a way that feels safe and enlivening. To let it rock us, shake us and dance us into being. We need to blanket ourselves in tenderness when anger arises, so that we can let that sacred fire take and warm us INCREMENTALLY. We need to let that fire burn, until the ice of our uncried tears can thaw and flow gracefully through our eyes, back into the soil that carries us. Until the unspoken words we’re choking on can find their way onto the page, into a trusted friend’s ear, into a healing container, into a song. Until we can let the lava melt our chains without burning any life-giving tissue in the process, because what’s alive in us is coated in and therefore protected by love.

We need to rewrite the narratives around anger until we can tolerate, welcome and celebrate one another’s—until anger can be reclaimed as a portal into being and unseen as a path of destruction.

We need to talk about anger so that compassion and admiration can replace the shame and taboo that lock our hearts.

We need our anger. The world needs our anger. YOU need your anger, and I need mine. 

Anger is the doorway to tenderness because once felt, anger will leave us deepened, expanded, emboldened and spacious: the perfect soil for our dreams to blossom. 

Anger is the doorway to tenderness because when I listen to what my anger has to say, she shows me how free, miraculous and kind I’ve always been.

Even when weathering the darkest storms, anger was the fire leading me to the eye of the hurricane—so that I could find shelter within the tornado until I could find a way to escape it.

I don’t know how to combine rage and tenderness yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s because there’s a sequence to it. That I must feel my rage TENDERLY, and that THAT’s what will lead me into the batch of tenderness I feel such a strong yearning to dive in. OR maybe I need tenderness to build capacity for my rage to turn my ashes into gold.

I’ll keep exploring, dear Care.friend and I’ll report back from the trenches of my inner world. Indeed, I’m ready to descend even deeper in the dark forests of my psyche and to find the minefields that still stand between me and me. I’m actually taking two weeks to do so, and to start September with this sacred reentry into those exiled parts of me I had not found a way in before. Before today. Before Anger could light the torch I needed to know that it’s safe to revisit me… because all of me is love! Love to reclaim. Love to awaken. Love to embody. Love to untame... Love to burn back into life.

I’ll cleanse myself in the ocean, I’ll cut my hair, I’ll pray fiercely.

I’ll surrender into meditation, I’ll bring rage and tenderness on my yoga mat and I will let them build an avenue between the world and my heart.

My heart’s ready to reappear and take the lead even more thoroughly.

I’ll devote myself to my dream even more deeply, I’ll write my inner love cave into a temple of light—and I’LL SING. I’ll sing, I’ll sing and I’ll sing… until I feel like me again. That “new” me. That real me that was there before I was even here.

I’m looking forward to reconnecting after my break, and until then, my dear Care.friend, I wish you all that your heart knows you’re ready for—whether your mind is ready to agree or not.

With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not need to fear anymore.

leo