Anger, rage, frustration has been arising for me recently and I see how this has shown itself to me in the experiences I’ve had with others. Yesterday I realise that a lady who I knew from where I used to live had killed her husband. This woman was a lollipop lady where my kids went to school. She was shy and quiet and was also the rainbow leader of the group that my youngest went to. When she wanted to retire from this role as a leader I took it on and learnt from her. She was not like most mums in the area, but she is definitely not a murderer. I imagine that the rage within her towards her husband and the abuse that she had had to live with for over 50 years eventually made her kill him. 

It saddens me deeply, I feel tears and my body is slightly shaking just feeling into this. And I know that this rage is also something within me. For most of my life I’ve had a lot of fear around male anger. My father was angry, it hurt me and I still feel that deeply in my body, just sensing into that again the tears want to come through and my body tenses. So for most of my life I’ve had a lot of fear around particularly male anger.  When my ex partner went into states of rage I totally shut down and turned into four-year-old crying Lisa, because I knew the crying or I hoped the crying would stop him from hurting me and stop him from being angry. I realised this in a clearing conversation I had with someone within the radical honesty community. I said to him I’m frightened of you getting angry at me and I cried. Later during the call he said I’m angry at you for saying that you were frightened of me getting angry at you and then you cried. And in that moment I realised how I was unconsciously using that to stop him getting angry at me, if I showed that I was frightened and I cried maybe he wouldn’t get angry at me. So I do see my own patterns more clearly, and it’s a continuous journey of opening, releasing and bringing the unconscious to consciousness. I have met and processed a lot of anger and there’s always deeper layers to explore.

So now in this moment I am feeling deep, deep rage within. This morning when I breathe I feel into the anger that my mother, my father and my grandparents were holding. I normally tune into my grandmother on my mother side and the anger, confusion and rejection that came from her mother dying in her arms when she was six, but today I connect to her father witnessing his wife dying in his daughters arms. I feel his emotions too. I have also recently had a sense of being the male sexual predator. I know that all this wounding is collective, all genders are struggling, we carry a lot of ancestral wounding.

So my friend arrives today and pleasure definitely doesn’t want to be the agenda, I know that the rage needs to move through me first, this is what I need in the present moment. I need to be heard by him, I need to be witness in my rage and I need to be held. So I ask him for that and I also give him space to be heard with whatever is moving through him which funnily enough also was around the topic of anger. 

When it comes to moving the rage through me I get down on my hands and knees, I put  my rage playlist on, I have pillows nearby that I can scream and hit and I ask him to witness all that. He experiences me growling, getting on my hands and knees and crawling around him, he witnesses me crying, screaming and my body move in a way that no one can predict. He witnesses the wild animal in me, the embodiment of truth, the embodiment of anger and the responsibility of it. I am in no way trying to project it onto him I was just want to be witnessed in it. I notice a feeling of fear of being ridiculous, of being too much, being judged to be mad. I know this is a fear that many of us women have and I see within myself the part that judges this in other women. I still continue to process, to feel, to move, to sound and I allow that feeling to move through me. Later my friend tells me that it was ridiculous and it was ridiculous in a good way. To him the experience was very beautiful, unique, raw, real and also very sensual. To me I was present in the moment moving, feeling and expressing which felt so good in my body. I knew when I was complete, I knew that I needed to be held and I asked for him to do that for me. We had a laugh –  I tapped his mouth when he was holding me as I needed him to be quiet. Sense of humour is absolutely needed in this journey of life. I notice that some things I can do on my own and some thing I need other people to support me with.  So I tell him: I appreciate you for being here when I need you, I appreciate you for supporting me and appreciate you for holding me.