Anger
I was told that the fire inside me was burning me alive.
I prayed, I chanted, I cried, I bowed, I practiced forgiveness.
“Please, be tamed,” I begged.
“No,” the fire answered, unfazed.
“Until you stand up and learn who you truly are.”
When I was working at a mental health clinic serving victims of domestic violence, I encountered some of the nicest clients. They were all so polite and soft-spoken. In the therapy room, they would cry, sigh, panic, and sometimes lose their breath. We would pause, breathe, and calm down—only to go through the cycle again. At the end of each session, they would look into my eyes and smile, saying, "Thank you." But as each session passed, I couldn’t help but wonder: where did their anger go? I could see they were too scared to voice their needs to their abusers, too disillusioned with the police system, and too exhausted to fight through the justice system. I saw a lot of helplessness, fear, and frustration—but I rarely sensed any outward aggression toward the overwhelming injustices they had endured. I began to wonder how many of them had become so helpless that they had swallowed their rage and aggression, much like I once did.
For the longest time, I didn’t know how to be angry. I would feel a burning sensation in my stomach and chest, but the fire that tried to rise up would always hit a block around my throat. Tears would well up, and that fire would retreat back into my body. It wasn’t until that suppressed fire manifested as an autoimmune disease and chronic GERD that I began my journey to understand it more. I learned that this fire had another name: healthy life force energy, and the tears had a name too: helplessness.
As women raised in this industrial society, we are conditioned to be “nice,” sweet, and docile. We are taught to suppress our raw emotions and behave in ways that others deem acceptable. In doing so, we often forget that the archetype of the wild woman is vividly alive inside all of us—the untamed, instinctual, and primal aspect of the feminine. Symbolized by the animal totem of the Jaguar, she embodies the full range of human emotions and is unafraid to express her feelings wholeheartedly and without shame. She embraces her raw, unapologetic power and stands up for what she believes in—not only to protect herself but to live authentically.
When I first learned to channel my rage in a healthy way, I saw erupted lava transform into rich soil, and giant flower petals bloom from that warm ground. In that moment, I saw Lady Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes—goddess of both destruction and creation. She is untamed, beautiful, and powerful. It was through her energy that I realized I had created my own predicament and that I had the power within me to create a life that is true to who I am. That’s what my rage was teaching me: it was urging me to act so I could be more fully myself.
Not all of my clients at that clinic confronted their anger, but one clearly did. Week after week, as we worked through layers of her rage, her depressive symptoms began to lessen, and she became more vibrant. She found a better job, moved into a new apartment, and filed for divorce. “It’s the feeling of freedom,” she told me. “I feel like myself again.”
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