The Alchemy of Inherited Anger

She seethed with anger, hissing with a violent soft fury through her clenched teeth. Her tiny tense seven-year-old body shaking ever so subtly, elbows and knees locked, hands in fists vibrating at her sides with her eyes slits of fury and tears. She was trying to hold her anger in but it was like boiling kettle trying to contain steam inside. 

I put my hand on her heart and cupped her cheek with the other hand and I asked her to tell me in words how she was feeling. 

The staccato words she uttered with such sad anger, pure anguish through gritted teeth were “I. Am. So. angry. I. Feel. Like….I feel like…I feel like…I. Want. To…” she didn’t want to say it.

“Hit something?” I asked gently.

She managed to spit out “Hit Someone” before she broke out crying with heaving sobs. 

I poured love through my hands. My heart ached for her. I knew this anger well. It is an anger that coursed through my veins. An anger that was passed onto me through generations. Learned anger that was encoded in our DNA through a patriarchal lineage. 

I grew up watching extreme violence before my eyes. It was a violence that I normalized. In my process healing, I have spoken openly about some images and memories, and yet there are others I fear to admit because it would make them real. I watched this violence. I received it. I internalized it. All of it – the sight, the smell, the palpable change in energy in the air, the hormones of fear. For more than 40 years this anger chained me, bound me, gagged me from myself. From knowing who I truly am.

In the battle of Nature Vs. Nurture, both prevail because our outer worlds are a reflection of our inner worlds.

The code that was transmitted through this violence was internalized self-hate and self-contempt. Hate so strong that it would compel my father to unleash it on anyone around him. It was an anger that he learned, that he witnessed and endured. An anger that ran so deep it bore molecular and psychological scars that penetrated generations. I used to grow up wondering how far back this anger went or was this only something he learned in this life? In the end the answer did not matter because in the battle of Nature Vs. Nurture, both prevail because our outer worlds are a reflection of our inner worlds.

 
All my life I felt that rage inside of me, both learned and coded into me. That hate. That fury. I’d like to think that I had a heightened consciousness of it from such a young age because I was awake even before I knew. I’d like to think that my actions were nothing like his,  that the violence I inflicted was less than his.

The truth is violence is violence, no matter how it manifests. The degree, the output, the magnitude do not matter when any form of violence is inside of us. The anger may have manifested differently, my actions may have been grossly different to his, but it all came from an internalized violence. Fear and all its tributaries of shame, anger, guilt and more, lead to the world we live in right now, where duality, judgement and isolationism rule. Where we shut doors to conversation and isolate those that have done wrong, leaving no room for growth and change, continuing the cycle of violence by behaving in the very same way that led to an act of violence. Hate is hate. It divides, clouds and obscures the truth. When a shred of it lives in our hearts, it has the capacity to hurt ourselves and others.

I argued, I screamed, I held grudges. I blamed, shamed, and hurt myself and others. I did not hit people but a couple of times I threw something just to smash that anger out of me. Only it made me feel worse. I remember my father smashing plate after plate, things after thing. The moment I threw something to make a statement, I hated myself even more. I could see that inherited rage consuming me making me loathe myself. I did not know this angry person and yet she was inside of me, part of me, eating away at me. I did not allow myself to feel her. She was not the true me yet she was a part of me. A disconnected broken part of me that I did not want to acknowledge or feel.

She was my inner child throwing a tantrum. She reminded me so much of the man I learned the behavior from. Every time he erupted into anger he looked exactly like a 3 year old throwing a tantrum. He was demanding to be seen and heard. He felt like he had no control and used force to demand control.

I could be the observer and witness the anger outside of me and within myself, but I did not like to feel it. I did not allow myself to feel anger and over time, I became more numb to emotion as I moved through life. Love was complicated because it tangoed intricately with violence, and sadly death in my family, so to open myself up to love meant to open myself to the dark forces of emotion. I hid myself from it and it simmered below the surface like a volcano threatening to erupt. The fury I felt made me want to punch someone hard. I never felt seen. I never felt heard. I never felt safe or understood. And I wanted to inflict that pain on another so they could feel my pain. To be as bad as I was told I was. To be the bad person I believed I was. 

After my daughter was born I began to see myself more clearly. Really I began to feel myself more clearly. It was that connection between mother and child that opened me up to feelings and sensations I had never understood, never known, never felt before.

It was the feeling of unconditional love.

I was not a hate filled demon incapable of love. I was not a cold-hearted closed up shadow of a person. All my life, my friends, family, teachers, colleagues and strangers did not see me that way, but I did. In my minds eye, I was a shadow that wore a mask. I had no feelings because feelings were scary. And now it was impossible to hide from the feelings of love. All I wanted to do was shower this beautiful light being with love.

After she was born, I could see myself as something other than this darkness in human body just trying to survive this game of life. I was this devoted mother who was compassionate, vigilant, loving and nurturing.

And yet there was a young child inside me, my younger self, who was frazzled by such a strong willed little girl who demanded so much attention and a mother she deserved.  The frazzled little inner child buried deep in me who had never learned how to soothe herself, who had never learned what it meant to to be loved, couldn’t handle this new baby who needed my attention and demanded my attention. My inner child wanted throw tantrums, run away and hide. 

I had opened myself up to love. Which meant the floodgate of emotion came pouring into me. I felt that anger inside me. I felt it eating away my cells killing me from the inside.

I did not want my inner child to rule me. I refused to let her rule me. I wanted to be united, one whole self. I no longer wanted to be one person on the outside and a different person on the inside.

I took a sledgehammer to my psyche with the aid of loving medicines and numerous guides and I found her, my inner child hiding deep inside me. She was alone. She was scared. She did not know what she wanted or needed.

She needed to be loved.

So I loved her.

She learned that she was safe. She learned how to self soothe. To set boundaries. And to express herself. 

I was terrified when I found out I was pregnant. I had a relatively stable life, married, income and a home. However, I had doubted my abilities as a mother. I did not have role models so how could I set a good example? I had never learned what it meant to be a good parent. I was scared of myself. I did not know if I was capable of this type of power – guiding a human through the journey of life to be the next generation that would take care of us and the Earth.

The universe in all her creative wonder showed me the magic of nonlinear time. In having a child, I was learning how to mother myself. I was raising my inner child. I acknowledged her and spent time with her. I told her she was seen and heard. I was with her all the time.

Through the experience of mothering myself I was learning how to mother my daughter in new ways. I was also learning from my daughter, an awakened light being who came in knowing what kind of mother she deserved with her boundaries firmly set in place. Of all the people who could have taught me what it meant to set boundaries, I never imagined that it would be from a baby that came from my womb.

It has been an exceptionally hard period of time with my daughter’s emotions running high. Homeschooling is as hard on her as it is on us. It is a job I never wanted but when we entered into lock down in the Global Consciousness Shift, it was time to do life differently. To move at her pace, while still honoring ours. So without the aid of a school, we are navigating new waters and so there is so much for me to learn. She has a love hate relationship with it. She is angry at me about it because change is hard, especially in a world filled with uncertainty that knows no end. Despite the fact that our lives have become more certain and stable since the lock down and we have grown closer, more compassionate and understanding as a family, everything I say erupts into her blaming me for something new. She wants to blame me for her feelings. And yet she loves the time we have together and showers me with love and cuddles all day. Truthfully my little light worker keeps me on my toes, making sure I hold true to every word that I speak, picking on nuances that bypass most conscious adults and makes me question the very core of my being and my ways, forcing me to upgrade at every moment. It is exhausting for both of us.

I see her. I hear her. On more levels than she can know.

It is difficult for my loving, open, social little one, being an only child. She is a star and her life is a grand musical that we all have roles in. It is hard being in the same space together for this extended period of time. She wants to spread herself out while we want to contain her creative genius/ madness from invading every nook, pathway and doorway of the house preventing us from moving from one space to the next. She knows that both her parents have a lot going on in life and can feel overwhelmed. I have been beyond busy by enrolling myself in two intensive mystery schools being asked to put my leadership into practice in real time while taking additional courses for work, starting a business, clients and more. I have taken this on for myself, and with the lack of space in the day, she feels all that I have to do. She is extremely sensitive to the energies. She also feels the stress the the times with smoke in the air, masks to be worn, a tense pet rabbit that needs soothing, and the need to do her extracurricular activities virtually. She wants to be carefree like she was just last year. Growing up is hard with the added responsibilities that come with age. Once she was coddled through life and now she must take responsibility for a lot of basic actions. Once she was read to, and now she alternates between reading to us and being read to. Reading is a harder learning curve for her compared to her peers. This frustrates her and she feels less than while we walk the tightrope of letting her go her own pace without letting her fall behind.

There is so much going on in her own personal world. I see her transitioning from child to young girl. I see and hear her hours of play and imagination transforming into new forms with new story lines and more complex emotions. Her changing biology increases the complexity of her psychology and she both loves and fears it.

Since she was a baby she has spoken of the other worlds she has seen, her dreamscapes, her night visions and they frighten her. She has developed systems in which she can navigate her dreams. She is sensitive and does not know how to reconcile the waking world and its rules with these other forms of reality, especially as she begins to encounter more children that have not held onto their magic. She is learning to navigate her own gifts and doesn’t know what to make of them in a world that is only beginning to wake up. She holds her gifts back so she can fit in with her peers.

She doesn’t know what she is angry at. She is little. But she is growing fast. New aches and pains. She wants to be cradled babied and yet she wants to show she can handle it like a big girl who can care for herself. That transition is hard and she is angry about it. 

And then she has that anger inside of her. An anger that she does not want to feel, coded into her, passed down through the generations.

I see her. I hear her. On more levels than she can know.

However, perhaps it is the words I use or my actions at times that convey that I don’t understand her because she wants me to do what I did when she was a baby: read her mind. She does not understand her emotions and needs are more complex and now it is not as easy for me. She storms away often in frustration and anger. I am left stunned not knowing what happened, exasperated by yet another tantrum.

And somehow, from the infinite well of the universe, I find that endless reserve in me, that never ending calm and love and go to her, enveloping her in womb-like love.

Overtime she has learned to self soothe. I encourage her to feel the emotions, express them and let them out rather hold them in. I talk to her about my emotions and my life. She watches me meditate and breathe and at times will join me. And she continually shows me how she grows from this. There are times I find her doing breath work in her bed when she is emotional, or reminding me to breathe when I start to feel flustered. She will hold me and gently tap my crown and my third eye and tell me everything will be ok. She has undeniable magic in her. From a young age she learned how to apologize very clearly and gracefully.

After an episode of storming away in fury and anger, painfully seething from every pore, she came to me, cupped my cheeks, looked in my eyes and uttered a beautiful heart felt apology admitting that I was not to blame, that she had cast blame on me and it was not my fault. My heart was deeply moved. I asked her “who taught you how to apologize like that”, truly blown away. Her response choked me up. She said “I learned it from you, Mama. You always apologize when you are wrong.”

In my mind I hear my mother’s voice “you are not a good mother.” It speaks so strong to me that sometimes I forget to get out of my head and observe myself in action. My daughter witnesses who I am in action, even when I don’t see myself. That person who gives money to every homeless person that asks and speaks nice words to people even if they are grumpy. The one who practices self care, apologizes, calms herself down, eats healthy, cares for her body, talks to plants and strangers, grounds herself outside, helps her friends and family, and more. That person is me. I have always been a good mother. And I’ve been getting even better at the role. 

I kept my hand on her heart and the other cupped against her soft tear-stained cheek as she lay on the floor seething in fury daringly admitting that she wanted to hit someone. I poured love in through my hands and I told her I knew that anger. I used to have that anger inside me and it was a painful anger that tore my heart apart. I held her and I told her it was not her fault she had that anger. I told her I understood that she felt she had not been seen, she had not been heard. That she felt alone. I told her it was OK to feel it. That she could surrender to that feeling because she was not alone. That I did not understand exactly what she was feeling but that I saw her and her anger and I was here for her. I would hold her until she was ready to let it go.

I had tears in my eyes as I spoke to her. I truly felt her pain. It was mine.
She looked at me and started to sob. She cried through muffled cries that she just wanted to be understood, that she felt lost, confused, that she did not know what she was angry at, and it hurt. She gripped me as I gripped her and we held onto each other for dear life. She cried it out in my arms and then as she calmed down, I felt her shudder, surrender and release it.

After some time in silence and a loving embrace, she took my face, cupped it in her hands and kissed my cheek. With her puppy dog eyes she looked at me and said “this is why you are my Mama.”

This is a little girl who knows her higher self and embodies it every day. This being lives in a body that is alchemizing a lot of pain for the world. And she chose me to be her mother. 

This is why I am her mother: Together we are breaking generational trauma passed down through unconscious programming repeating itself generation after generation. I used to question myself as a mother but I have learned the secret of it all. It is to be the parent to her that I needed for myself. It is to be that parent to myself so that I may parent her. To be the source and example of unconditional love. To show her what it means to love those that could not show us love, those that hurt us or could not parent us. So that we can break those bonds to the past and forge a future with new patterns of love.