The Sacred Wisdom of Anger

I’ve been sitting with the wreckage of the past week. In the wake of these terrifying, racist, misogynistic murders in Atlanta, enacted against working class Asian women, some of whom were sex workers. Women who have known decades of lived objectification, fetishization and commodification. Who were living the intergenerational trauma and damage of US Imperialism. Women who were living, breathing human beings who understood joy, liked to go dancing and always sought to care for their families. Who have people who remember and love them, whose friends and families will always hold the pain of these losses. 

(8 of Swords)

I was raised to be an endless well of giving. I’ve started to see that in the past year, when I was cut off from my most immediate abilities to give (at work, in relationships, in community). It is a painful place of comfort for me, to associate my value with what I am able to give. When I’m unable to give or don’t want to give, shame arises. I’ve been tracking my resentment and anger around this, because it is leading me out of the haze I’d been in. I have been doing the deep work of reckoning with that in the past year, uncovering my own patterns of co-dependency, love addiction and enmeshment. 

(The Tower)

And then last week hit. Some say it hit them like a wave, for me it feels more like I’m in the middle of a raging fire. I’ve been in massive Tower energy all week, which should come as no surprise, it being Aries season and all. And I’ve been sitting with my discomfort at this burning, this seething rage that feels like it’s engulfing me at times – and I’ve had to see past all the gaslighting that I had internalized about anger and the power of my own anger. 

(Six of Cups)

I’ve been working with The Artist’s Way over the past year, which is a workbook of sorts for artists who want to get into creative recovery. Julia Cameron, the author and an AA member herself, modeled the book after 12 step recovery programs. The thing is, I’ve realized, I’m always going to be in recovery. I’m on my 3rd read right now, and this week, of course she writes to me about anger:

Anger is a sign of health.

When we feel anger, we are often very angry that we feel anger.

It tells us we can’t get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that old life is dying. It tells us we are being reborn, and birthing hurts. The hurt makes us angry.

Anger is our friend. Not a nice friend. Not a gentle friend. But a very, very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. It will always tell us that it is time to act in our own best interests. 

I’ve done things this week I never would have imagined myself doing 10, even 5 years ago. I’ve had fierce and direct conversations with artistic directors at prominent theaters about their silence around the AAPI violence and held their feet to the fire. I’ve called in friends and community members I probably wouldn’t have said anything to before.  

A sentence I’ve said to my employers, word for word:

You will no longer benefit off my labor without seeing me or hearing me. The time to do better was yesterday. Fix this. 

And in all this, I have felt giddy, abandoned, liberated, powerful, sad, vulnerable, lost and purposeful. 

I sat with my cards yesterday, I asked them to tell me about my anger, what the lesson is for me here. And the Six of Cups leapt out. At first, I was confused. And then it became clear to me that in all my fighting, lonely and exhausting as it feels, that I was fighting for my younger self, my inner child. Who was told to stifle my anger, told that it didn’t matter and that it was a bad, useless feeling. I am fighting for my younger Asian artist self, who would never have thought I could say anything about my pain, who would have thought I should gratefully accept whatever opportunity or attention was sent my way. I am fighting for all the young Asian artists who do not yet know they can say anything, who are too scared to, who are still unbinding themselves from a legacy of silence and invisibility. 

I am fighting for myself, I am fighting for us, and it is healing me.