🌱The potent magic in your anger

This week, the Seven of Wands asks us to defend the sacred.

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This week’s seed 🌱: There is potent magic in your anger

The compost 🪱: The Seven of Wands

My toddler is in a developmental stage now where, when he gets frustrated or angry, his first somatic instinct is to bite something. Sometimes it’s me, because I’m holding him and my arm is the closest thing to his mouth. Sometimes it’s his own hand. Sometimes it’s a toy in front of him.

I know we’re supposed to discourage our babies from biting people. And some people in my household get very on edge when he goes in for that bite after a “No, we can’t play with the knife.” But what I’ve noticed after observing this behavior for the last couple of weeks is that his urge to bite is not personal. He didn’t bite my arm so hard it left a bruise because he was mad at me. He’s feeling his frustration and anger so strongly in his body that, on pure instinct, he has to turn it into an action and release. I can literally see the surge of emotion flow through him and find release in the bite. And this feels like an amazing lesson in how to actually feel and move through anger.

I’m not saying it’s OK for him (or any of us) to bite people, but this development has me thinking about how anger and frustration move through my body, and what I do to turn that surge into (safe) action and release. I was never taught how to deal with my own anger, and I think many people who are socialized as women are conditioned to squash their anger before it can actualize into anything—usually leading to an internal combustion or (not so) random outburst. I didn’t even know how to recognize my own anger until a couple of years ago. It wasn’t until I read Rage Becomes Her, by Soraya Chemaly, that I actually started giving myself permission to feel and express my rage and see my own anger through a different perspective.

My biggest takeaway: Anger is not an inherently bad emotion. Sure, it’s scary AF when young, angry white men turn to gun violence to express themselves. But anger isn’t inherently violent. It is, however, disruptive. And that is a blessing. We need disruption to shake our shit up and grow as human beings. It is our responsibility to navigate that disruption in a way that creates room for our own anger without harming ourselves or anyone else. And that’s really hard!

Anger, like every other emotion, is energy in motion. It demands to be felt, first in the body via physical sensation, and then in the emotional body. Only then can it pass through and find release. My toddler models it well: Feel it in the body (bite) + feel it in the emotional body (cry) → move on. No shame, no repressing, no making it complicated, none of that!

The Seven of Cups is an excellent opportunity to explore the ways in which we engage with, or refuse to engage with, our own anger. This card asks: What gets under your skin? What triggers the fuck out of you? What makes you want to scream into the void? All of this information is crucial to getting to know our own anger better. And for me, when I answer these questions in my head, I think of a quote one of my former therapists shared with me (idk who to attribute it to, sorry!): Anger rises in defense of the sacred.