Anger
Today was my first Soulmatic Renewal session, and though I had been explicitly instructed to prepare myself for the descent, nothing quite readies you for the vertigo of radical vulnerability. Give yourself space afterward, she said. Expect aftereffects. Fun.
Despite my mental rehearsals, I didn’t entirely know what I was walking into, though my intuition had already validated the necessity of the trip. Intuition, after all, is the compass that brought me here.
I manifested Ingrid into my space. For several consecutive nights, I woke up at precisely 3:33 AM with an unshakable, electric urge to reach out to her. Finally, I surrendered to the synchronicity and sent the email.
Ingrid is my guide, my spiritual architect, my coach. She is the founder of Bhava Spiritual Mission. A non-denominational sanctuary and school for those seeking an active partnership with the Divine. It is a space designed for the cultivation of spiritual gifts, the shedding of expired narratives, and the deep, alchemical work of healing so that we might eventually hold the lantern for others.
I know how it sounds.
I know.
It carries the faint, aromatic scent of a cult. (Insert side-eye here). But I am reasonably certain it isn’t.
The practice began with a descent. Ingrid guided me back into the theater of a past experience. A specific, recurring trigger. The objective, however, was entirely counterintuitive: to fully submerge into the emotion while completely severing myself from the plot. The details, the who, the what, the heavy geography of why were to be placed gently on a shelf. We were searching purely for emotional resonance, locating where these stagnant feelings had physically calcified within the body, so we could finally dismantle the anchor of our own histories.
We opened with a memory that left me vibrating with a desperate need to prove myself, a phantom hunger for redemption. Without letting me wallow in the specifics, Ingrid steered me toward the physical epicenter of that ache.
My power center. The solar plexus.
Instantly, my stomach tightened into a hard, constricted knot. It was heavy, unyielding, blocked. The deeper I leaned into the sensation, the more my shoulders involuntarily tensed. I felt an ancient instinct to hunch over, to curl inward, to shrink into something small, soft, and unnoticeable. Resist the contraction, she urged. Breathe through it.
So, I sat in the fire of my own shame. But as the smoke cleared, the layers began to unravel, exposing a complex, internal architecture:
A biting irritation. The maddening duality of feeling like my life was entirely my fault, while simultaneously knowing I had simply been dealt an incredibly unfair hand.
The realization that even if I clung to the narrative, it wouldn't make sense. I was trapped in a perpetual oscillation between radical responsibility and total victimhood, never quite knowing where the truth lived.
The distinct sensation of walking a tightrope, permanently a single misstep away from a freefall.
The absolute absence of the luxury of a breakdown. If I break, the entire infrastructure collapses, and everyone falls with me.
And then, beneath the sorrow, we struck bedrock.
Anger. Rock-solid, immeasurable, and utterly impenetrable.
When Ingrid pulled me back up to the surface of consciousness, we spoke, and a sudden, hot wave of embarrassment washed over me. It wasn't that the anger surprised me; I have always known it was there. The shame stemmed from the fracture it caused in my self-image. To the world, I am charismatic, lighthearted, perhaps a little reserved, but fundamentally joyful. I am not an angry woman. I am passionate, sure. Sometimes that fire spills over the margins, but anger? Anger felt ugly. It felt like a failure of grace.
It’s just an ego story, I told myself. Just a protective construct. Except it wasn't. It was entirely valid.
Ingrid didn't flinch. She held the space with a rare, non-judgmental clarity, reframing the rage in a way that felt deeply liberating. To her, my anger wasn't a character flaw or a spiritual deficit; it was the baseline proof of my own power. It was power that had been trampled on for a very long time. The work, she reminded me, wasn’t about dwelling on the tragedy of the story, but about transmuting the energy, channeling the lightning so it works for me, not against me.
Even now, hours later, the fire is still humming under my skin. My stomach still aches with a dull, physical discomfort. Acknowledging this rage makes me deeply uncomfortable because, in our cultural lexicon, anger feels distinctively masculine. I sat with that realization for a long time, watching the ink dry on my notebook:
It is socially permissible for men to inhabit anger because society grants them an inherent sense of agency. Women, historically, have been denied that sovereignty. To preserve my femininity, I realized I had unconsciously accepted the softer, safer role of the sad, silent victim. And I am simply not available for that.
The realization pisses me off even more. I had to set the pen down just to breathe.
I have homework now. I am supposed to sit with my anger for a few minutes every day, to introduce myself to it without fear. Maybe we’ll hit the gym together. I don't want the story anymore; I am entirely finished with the exhausting luxury of the narrative. I just need to move the energy out of the marrow of my bones. I went online and ordered a heavy punching bag.
I know, intellectually, what lives beneath the rage. I know there is an ocean of fear, disappointment, grief, and bone-deep exhaustion waiting for me. But the moment I try to wade into those softer waters, the floodgates of fury slam shut to protect me.
Because the questions waiting in the deep water are too heavy:
I was just a child. Why wasn’t I protected?
Why am I still carrying the unfinished emotional labor of the adults around me?
Why did I have to become an expert at decoding everyone else’s emotional weather before I even knew how to name my own?
Story, meet the shelf.
Lina, meet anger.
Anger, meet your new punching bag (Expected delivery: January 25th).