EMBRACING YOUR FIRE (PART 2 of 5) 

Benefits of Anger – How it serves:

🔥 It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, injustice, and moral disorder

🔥 It begets transformation, manifesting passions and investments in the world

🔥 It bridges the divide between what is and what ought to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility

🔥 It warns us viscerally of violation, threat, danger, and insult

🔥 It challenges actions and behaviors that are not aligned with love and compassion

The differences between how men and women are conditioned to express anger are astoundingly different:

Men (Masculinity):

💥 Boys are taught about anger; validated and vindicated if they mitigate their aggression with acceptable distribution, disruption, loudness, and physical expressions.

💥 For men, anger is seen as a virtue, and men are celebrated for their leadership, protection and authority.

💥 Men are viewed as powerful and respected for asserting their voice. Seen as a hero.

Women (Femininity):

✨ As young girls, when a boy crushes our sandcastle or tears down our lego fort, we are met with statements like, “Oh, he’s just being a boy. Boys will be boys.” We’re crafted to be nice girls. “Pretty girls don’t throw temper tantrums.”

✨ Throughout a woman’s life, she is given sequential labels; first a “cute princesses,” then a “drama queen,” then a “high-maintenance bitch.”

✨ As women, we’re told that we are bitter, crazy, emotional, irrational, scary, demonic, and mad for expressing our feelings and points of view.

✨ We’re viewed as needy, unattractive, selfish, imposing, or burdensome for having or expressing our needs.

✨ We figure out ways to tolerate, modify, and ninja our needs and priorities to put others at ease; adapting, filtering, masking, and minimizing risks that might jeopardize our relationships, reputations, and livelihood.

✨ We’re encouraged to ignore, hide, minimize, repackage, divert and transform our anger; calling it frustration, irritations, exasperations…anything but stating, “I am angry.”

Goals:

#safeexpression

#harmony

#balance

#masculineandfemininebalance

#embracingfire

Photo cred: Marne Semick