The above passage is an excerpt from page 98 of Julia Cameron’s The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice. Get the free PDF here. (You’re welcome!)
Now I don’t know about you, but I do know a few things about anger:
- From a psychological/ studied/ educated/ classroom/ theoretical and yet undoubtedly very practical perspective, anger is a secondary emotion. Anger comes only after something else. Abuse. Neglect. Hurt feelings. A wound. A boundary crossed.
- I forget how angry I used to be. It’s no surprise emotionally immature people are angry. Now I’m not saying you’re emotionally immature, I’m speaking for my own self. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child…” When I was an actual child, I was angry because I didn’t have the language or the tools or know how to express how I had been betrayed. So I yelled, I raged. I did what those around me did. I behaved as those around me behaved. I was angry and I expressed it as rage because… Well, how was I supposed to know anything different? How was I supposed to become what I didn’t see when I didn’t know there were other ways of being and responding? I reached for the closest way first and that was anger… And rage.
- “…When I became a man, I put aside childish things.” I was mostly angry at my family because they were the ones who had the power– who I gave the power to? who innately have?– the power to hurt me the most. For the record, this quote is a whole entire bible verse:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a [wo]man, I put aside childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Let me be real clear: growing older is required, but maturity isn’t. Emotional maturity. Spiritual maturity. You name it, it ain’t required.
Getting older is, however, required. Physical growth is required. Emotional maturity is not.
The only prerequisite to emotional growth is the willingness to grow. Physical growth is painful– “growing pains”, anyone? And growing pains are true for emotional growth, too. It hurts to change. The wanting and longing for change doesn’t hurt, but it’s emotionally painful to have to choose to do something that you haven’t done before. Kudos to those of us courageous enough to change!
I knew I yelled compulsively. I *couldn’t* control myself. My genius brother used to take me to public spaces to have *ahem* difficult conversations with me so I wouldn’t yell at him. And that was just smart! That taught me that I could actually control my response to my anger, although not what made me angry. I was still pissed. I was still angry. But (and?) I learned to at least control my response.
And now, even still, I attempt to control my anger. To assuage it. To talk it off the ledge.
And then here come this book telling me that anger… Anger is an invitation?! A boundary crossed?!
I’m angry about some ish! And you know what?
I 👏🏾 deserve 👏🏾 to 👏🏾be!
“Life isn’t fair.”
The (actual!) bible
Sometimes I’m surprised by the words hidden in plain sight in the Good Book. Okay, what it actually says is:
“Life isn’t fair” and in that unfairness is anger. That unfairness is home to the betrayals. The hurts. The emotionally immature people who drive me to therapy to work through ish because they hurt me. Not like a paper cut hurt. No no no! They said things about and did things to my body and damnit I am mad. I am seething. And over, with, and in time, I’ve convinced myself I shouldn’t be. That I don’t deserve to be. I’ve convinced myself to side skirt it. To move past it. To “sweep it under the [proverbial] rug”. To “let sleeping dogs lie” and all the other dumb*ss sayings we keep saying but don’t actually mean because they don’t serve us. They never did!
But this? Oh baby, this excerpt on anger is an invitation to let myself be angry. Permission granted.
John Lewis called it “righteous indignation”. (And apparently the bible, too?!) This anger that I have buried– that were buried? does it matter who buried them??– in my heart is deserving and worthy. And not only that, but it deserves to come to the light. It deserves not to be brushed away, but to be invited to the table. Not the overflow room. Not the kiddie table at family dinner. The anger for the pain that was inflicted upon me deserves to be noticed. I deserve to be noticed. I deserve to examine and look and work through things that hurt me long ago, and hurt me still.
Unaddressed wounds don’t heal. And anger unaddressed also remains unhealed.
Tears stream down my face and blur my vision as I angrily type these words. Not angrily but… No, I said what I said. I’m angry that old people who are emotionally immature wanted me to do and experience what they did. I’m angry people wanted me to hurt like they hurt and said wicked things to me. And that they would be audacious enough to want me to forget the pain of their words as if they, too, don’t know the pains.
Wars have been started by words. Because words mean things. The bible calls words (well, God’s word, not just any old words) a “double edge sword”. Sharp. Swift. Lethal.
I’ll end with this: I am angry. I am Black. I am a woman. However, I am not an angry Black woman.
