THE ANGER STAGE.

You knew it was coming, right? I know one thing for sure about myself when it comes to my relationship with anger. For as long as I can remember, I have never felt safe enough in the world to actually express my anger outwardly towards other people or to take out my anger on anyone externally. The thing about anger, though, is that it actually needs a target or an object in order to be expressed at all. For me, this formula has always resulted in having to turn my anger inward on myself. Directing it at myself has always felt like the only safe way to honor anger. Blaming myself and punishing myself have become a lifestyle for me because they give me a "safe" outlet for expressing my anger.

Sometimes God feels like a safe target for my anger too. If I'm not projecting my anger on myself, then God is usually my next go-to target. God is the only object I've ever felt safe enough to project anger at outwardly. To me, it's safer to project my anger at God than a friend or lover. My subconscious believes, "A friend or lover might abandon me -- but God is stuck with me!" So God has been blamed by me for a lot of things in my life that were probably never God's fault to begin with. Nonetheless, taking out my anger on God has at least helped me get it out.

Why do we project our anger? Why do we project it onto God or other people or ourselves? Why do we need someone to blame or be angry with at all?

Whenever you or someone else you know is going through the anger stage of grief, it's so important to understand that the object of our anger is rarely who or what our anger is really about. It's usually never what we're making it about. Primal rage is a natural, normal part of being human but it lives within us as this vague, nebulous thing. We attach it to people and to things because they give us a way to capture it, make it tangible, and experience it in a way that feels real. We project our anger onto objects because doing so makes it possible for us to express what would otherwise continue to live in us as this unexpressed rage that's constantly looking for some way to be expressed.

All losses, and therefore griefs, contain by default an incredible amount of unexpressed anger, so it's only natural when we grieve, to look for someone or something to blame because it gives us a path for expressing the unexpressed. Asking someone who is grieving to suppress their anger (usually out of a fear of having to acknowledge your own unexpressed rage), typically results in dynamics going even more sideways real quick.

These days I'm feeling my unexpressed anger. There's a real pull to direct it at the usual culprits -- myself and God. But I'm also playing with the idea that maybe my anger really isn't about anything or anyone I could make it about. Maybe all those objects are just placeholders who are giving me a path for expressing the unexpressed. If that's true, then maybe when we find ourselves as the objects of anger (our own or someone else's) we don't have to take it personally at all? Maybe it's not about me, even when someone is making it about me?

All losses and disappointments wake up the unexpressed anger inside us. They trigger this anger because underneath all other losses is our original loss -- the loss of control. Stripping control from a human being elicits deep primal rage. It's instinctual. It's animalistic. There's no way around it.

What if we were able to hold space for and allow ourselves and one another to express the primal unexpressed rage that lives just below the skin of the self-controlled, got-it-all-together robots we walk around pretending to be? What if we had permission to express the unexpressed? What if such an environment eliminated the need for objects of our anger completely? What if we no longer needed someone or something to be mad "at" in order to express the unexpressed?

That's the world I want to help create. That's why I'm writing this series.

Yesterday my anger came to a tipping point and some of it spilled out. Someone asked me, "What are your needs in a relationship?" It was a simple question but not necessarily an easy one to answer. As I formulated an answer, I realized I could only think of one main need I have. I've become so self-sufficient in life that it's difficult to put my finger on any needs I have to look to other people for. Then it suddenly occurred to me, "My only real need in a relationship is to have someone to weather the storms of life with." I need another person to co-regulate the nervous system of my human, animalistic side — the part of me that isn't satisfied by meditation and positive thinking. I really just need a human being on the planet who feels responsible for sitting next to me and holding me when life happens — when I get in a car accident or lose a job.

For a moment that answer felt so satisfying because it felt so accurate. But then, almost immediately, it was followed by an overwhelming wave of anger.

The anger sounded like this: "Last week I had covid and there was no one to turn to for warming up my chicken noodle soup. I had to warm up my own damn chicken noodle soup like I've had to do my whole godforsaken life. Wow, I really don't ask for much at all -- I just want someone to warm up my chicken noodle soup for me when I'm sick! Conceptually, that doesn't seem like too much to ask for? I know I'm not high maintenance. Truthfully I don't ask for much from other people at all. Yet, apparently it is too much to ask for! I know it's too much to ask for because thus far in my life I've failed to find a single human being on the planet who has been capable of meeting this minimal need for me." (And yes, I already know what you're thinking. The answer to your question is: I do ask people for what I need without expecting them to read my mind. I still haven't found a person capable of meeting minimal needs for me.)

(Take a moment here to sit with anger -- mine as well as yours -- without moving to fix or change it. Exercise your grief muscle here. Remember the point of this series.)

There are so many people I could blame for this reality in my life. There are so many people who abandoned me. There are so many people who disappointed me. The objects of my anger have had so many faces and so many names -- too many to recount. I can make them the objects of my anger if I want to. But the longer I sit with my anger, the more I realize there was really only ever one anger. It was really always the same anger just directed at different objects. The real names of my anger are: the human condition, the loss of control, and primal unexpressed rage.

These are the angers I'm committed to sitting with and expressing until they no longer feel like enemies any longer -- until they feel like friends.

(If you haven't read the previous posts, be sure to check them out 👇so you can better understand the intention behind this series.)

NEXT STAGE -- DEPRESSION.

Remember what I said about the stages showing up out of "order?" Traditionally, anger comes after denial, but what's hitting me hardest next is the depression. Honestly, that word has become so clinical in recent years that I feel more comfortable re-naming it "sadness." I don't need a diagnosis -- I just need a good cry!

Sadness is another one of those emotions we don't give ourselves, nor each other, permission to feel. We think, "I shouldn't stay sad for too long," "It's not right to stay sad," "I need to shake off these sad feelings." And then these internal messages become the source of all the pep talks we serve up to one another. We tell each other to "Find the silver lining," "Think positively," and "Never give up hope." My personal hell is the outright, blatant spiritual bypassing: "You'll never attract what you want with that attitude...be happy so that you can attract what you want into your life."

Pep talks in the face of sadness are all the evidence we need to become aware of how far our inability to feel hard feelings actually stretches. Sadness happens in the moment you don't want to give or receive anymore pep talks. This is the moment I'm in now -- I can no longer pretend I'm not suffering. The truth is:  I'm suffering. And the emotion attached to suffering is sadness. And it's ok to feel sad. And it's ok to cry. And it's ok to have no clue if or when I'll ever feel better again.

It's common in this stage of grief to find little comfort in people -- unless they're ones who know how to keep their mouths shut. In Parker Palmer's book, "Let Your Life Speak," he describes a period in his life of great sadness and grief. He tells the story of how there was only one friend he could tolerate visits from during that time. It was a friend who would come over to rub his feet... without ever speaking a word!

The only thing bringing me comfort these days is an octopus -- specifically, the octopus from the documentary, "My Octopus Teacher." I saw this film for the first time a few months ago. I cried then too. I remember texting a friend afterwards saying, "I felt like I was watching my life story. I felt like she was telling my story with her own."

This week I've been watching it again and again. When I watch it, I feel this overwhelming sense that there's another creature somewhere in the world who understands what it feels like to be me. Watching her life has helped me identify, feel, and express my sorrow without the aid of any words.

Just like me, this octopus in the documentary was born to no mother or father to teach her anything. She was born an orphan. Like me, she's incredibly creative, very fragile and soft, and tremendously intelligent (she has 9 brains, 3 hearts, and 2,000 fingers that each function independently). Two-thirds of her cognition is actually outside of her brain, in her arms. Like me, her entire being is thinking, feeling, and exploring. Like me, in a dangerous world, she's come up with the most incredible methods for surviving. It's a hard road she and I have walked. We have lived a type of life unimaginable to most people.

But none of that is the part that makes me sob when I watch the documentary. The part that opens me up to my own sorrow is the part where she risks going into the shallow water to play with fish, dance with the sunlight, and connect with her friend Craig. That's the part that breaks me wide open. Because I know that feeling. I have woken up with that feeling every morning of my life for as long as I can remember. It's this paradox of living every moment of every day with the terror of needing to protect myself, and yet somehow finding the inner resources to dare to play and dance and connect anyway. I know what it feels like to be driven to come out of your shell -- no matter the risk -- no matter how horrific my past traumas were. Just like her, I've risked living every day to the fullest in spite of all the traumas I've endured.

Through her unbroken spirit, she showed me the face of my real sorrow. My real sorrow isn't that my life didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. My real sorrow is that the loneliness I had as a little girl never came to an end. For as long as I can remember, I felt all alone in the world. As a child, I would dream about some day being a grown-up and having a family of my own so that I wouldn't have to be alone anymore. I always thought I'd grow up and create for myself the family I never had as a child. I never imagined in my wildest dreams my adult life would be full of the same loneliness my childhood was made of. The loneliness nightmare never came to an end. Usually we think of suffering as eventually coming to an end. But mine never did. I'm still all alone after all these years.

I now realize this midlife grieving process is not just about the sadness of 40 year old Anna-Victoria. It's the sadness of 4 month old me, and 4 year old me, and 14 year old me. It's the sorrow of failing to get her what she wanted most -- belonging. I know there are people in the world who value me, respect me, appreciate me, and even admire me. But being valued, respected, appreciated, and admired aren't the same as being known. I wanted to be known.

As strange as it may sound, I could also relate to people being fascinated by the octopus just for being herself. I too know what it feels like to be admired by people instead of known by them. The last man I dated was recently divorced. When he ended it with me he said, "I thought I was ready for a date...but you weren't really a date...you were like an entire phenomenon!"

The irony is that same man gave me an octopus stuffie on Valentine's Day, even though I'd never shared with him what she meant to me or about the film or anything. I asked him, "How did you know?" He replied, "I saw it and it reminded me of you somehow...I can't explain it."

(If you haven't read the previous posts, be sure to check them out 👇so you can better understand the intention behind this series.)

First Stage — Denial

FIRST STAGE -- DENIAL.  Maybe you've heard of the 5 stages of grief? They are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Decades ago, experts thought these were progressive stages we moved through in the grief process. But now, most agree, it doesn't really work like that. They aren't linear. Sometimes you think you've already moved through the anger stage and onto depression when suddenly your anger returns with a vengeance. So it can be more helpful to think of these stages as flexible moving parts rather than some fixed, predetermined recipe. Denial is very often the first stage we go through in grieving. It's the feeling of, "No! This can't be true! It cannot be happening to me!"

Facing realities in our lives is often so hard for us because human beings are trained from a very young age to become masters at self-deception. We learn as little kids to experience ourselves and the world through the filter of our thoughts/stories, but (the problem is) our thoughts/stories about who we are rarely align with the reality of being who we are. Take a moment to ask yourself, "When I think of who I am, do I immediately think of an image of who I think I should be, or do I feel a direct experience of simply being/existing?"

This disconnect between thinking about who we are versus being who we are is at the root of all the self-deception in our lives. Our thinking about who we are is all about "Who I/they wanted me to be," "Who I wish I was," "Who I was supposed to be," "Who I should have been," etc. All these thoughts/stories about ourselves are shitty substitutes for the experience of actually being ourselves.

We learn to deceive ourselves in our most basic relationship -- the one we have with ourselves -- but that's just the beginning of self-deception. From there, we develop all sorts of stories about the world and god and other human beings and life. We develop stories that, most of the time, aren't actually in alignment with the reality of letting all those things be Who/What they are. After all, if we aren't in relationship with our own existence, then how can we allow anything else to exist as it is either?

The stories we think about everything (as opposed to just experiencing everything) are called expectations. Expectations are what create the false reality we live in. And most of the time, we're so sold on our expectations that we have no conception we're even living in a false reality.

Usually it takes something quite dramatic like a health crisis or the loss of a loved one or some other tragic event to wake us up from our delusions.

Grief is what happens in those moments when our expectations are not met. Grief is the symptom that arises as a result of our expectations having never been based in reality to begin with.

The Denial stage of grief is the ego's last attempt to hold on to its stories. To the soul, grief feels like relief, but to the ego, it feels like defeat. Denial is the ego's final attempt to avoid facing things the way they ARE rather than the way I would have them be. It's the ego's final attempt to find refuge in self-deceiving stories that aren't based in reality.

Here comes the vulnerable part friends. This week, I was faced with a loss that was impactful enough to wake me up from some very deep layers of self-deception. One of the stories I've been telling myself for a long time about life was: that I am meant to have a husband and children and belong to a family and to spend my life raising said children and growing old with this imaginary husband. The problem is: this identity I've wanted so badly for myself for as long as I can remember is nothing more than a dream -- it is not reality. Am I saying it's never ok to have hopes and dreams for yourself? No. What I'm sharing with you is my grief -- the moment that holding onto my expectations has finally become more painful than facing reality.

Denial is about holding onto expectations for dear life, but truly grieving is about confronting our Denial with fact-finding and fact-facing. Our Denial -- our resistance and struggle -- is actually an invitation to let go of stories/thoughts about ourselves and to just BE ourselves instead (and to let others do the same).

The facts are: I'm going to be 40 in a few months and I'm still single and I'm still childless, despite the fact I tried everything in my power to avoid this outcome. (And yes, I already know what you're thinking...I also tried "not trying").

(Pause) This statement is a very painful one. Notice the empathy rise within you in this moment. Resist the urge to say or do anything to fix this pain for me. Instead, breathe and expand the capacity of your heart here to hold empathy, grief and pain and just sit with them. This is how you exercise your grief muscle.

It's important to note here that any attempts to move to alleviate pain in others is also coming from your own ego (no matter how altruistic you think your motives are). We not only deceive ourselves with stories but we also deceive one another every day by enabling one another to continue buying-in to these stories. The technical term for this activity is called "co-signing each other's bullshit." No but seriously, the reason we try to fix each other's pain with stories is because if one person gives up her stories long enough to live in reality and feel the pain of grief, then the fear is the other person will have to do so as well. Ego loves company. So egos tell each other nice stories that put bandaids on pain, but they're never based in reality.

I'm finally finding the courage to admit my life did not turn out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to spend my 30's raising children with a partner in a little family. I can assure you that spending my 30's going on 200 first dates was not my 10-year plan a decade ago. I never could have imagined how difficult it would be to get love. And for those whose instinct is to tell me there must be something in me blocking love from coming into my life, please know that after years of therapy and shadow work and all the things, the one thing I'm certain of in this moment is that I do not need to do MORE WORK to get love. It should not be this hard for a human being to get love.

I'm finally finding the strength to give up my stories, grieve, and live in reality. And you know what my soul longs for the most in this moment? My soul longs for the other souls in my life to stop telling me more stories. There is no way your mind could even begin to fathom the number of times I have been told, "God has a plan," "Trust the universe," "It will happen when you least expect it," "I'm certain you won't be alone forever," "Have you tried online dating?" "Have you thought of adoption?" And a thousand more versions of these attempts to get me to avert my gaze from myself and reality and look at a story instead. Do you have any idea how patronizing these sayings become after listening to them for so many years?

I'm not blaming others for my denial. Trust me, there isn't anything anyone has ever told me that I haven't already told myself. I can future fake myself better than any man ever could. I can fantasize about someone lovingly caring for me while in reality going through the motions of daily life desperately lonely. What I'm saying now is that I've reached a point where I'm tired of believing in delusions. Grief happens when the pain of believing in delusions finally becomes greater than facing the pain of reality. That's where I'm at. It only took me 40 years to get here!

Lesson Two -- deaths are not the only losses in life that require grieving. I don't know what you're dealing with today. Maybe you're going through your midlife crisis too! A midlife crisis is really the loss of a dream -- a dream of how we hoped our lives would turn out. Or maybe you're going through some very different kind of loss. Whatever it is, I hope reading this series inspires you to trade in a story for a direct experience of actually being alive. I hope you feel invited to exchange some expectations for reality. And I hope you feel validated in knowing when the ego feels defeated it feels like very deep pain and anguish.

In my experience, this moment of unbearable emotion is the exact moment to profoundly FEEL the pain. It is only through fully digesting the grief that it can be transformed. But more on that later...we still have a few more stages to go through. For now, please know if you're in pain then you're in good company.

For those who haven't read the first part of this series, please read it first 👇so you can better understand the intention behind this series.

*The description of the relationship between grief and expectations was inspired by the teachings of Dr. Zach Bush

Grieving — I'm Going To Show You How It's Done

This is my midlife crisis or, as I'm calling it, my midlife grief process. I'm going to be sharing my process with you in a very vulnerable way. By it's very nature, this grief process will consist of emotional pain. It's natural and normal for human beings to desire to avoid pain -- in ourselves as well as others. Still, today's American culture has taken the art of escaping pain to a level no other cohort in history could have ever dreamed of before.

If you want to follow along my journey,(even if all you can handle is peeking between your fingers like a kid watching a scary movie), here's what I hope to show you: 1) Thinking about feeling pain is way worse than actually feeling it, 2) Feeling painful feelings will not kill you, 3) Pain is the only catalyst for transformation.

Lesson Number One: unless you are a psychopath or narcissist, your first instinct at the sight of another person's pain will be empathy. Empathy is good. It's part of our humanity. It's actually a big part of what has given our species advantages in the animal kingdom.

However, empathy can also overreach its proper use when it is imposed on a person and impedes their personal growth process.

If you want to follow along my journey, it will provide you with a safe space to practice feeling your own empathy without actually moving to impose it on someone else. Maybe you've been to a funeral before and as you approached the bereaved, you thought to yourself, "I don't know what to say." Or worse, maybe you've said things to grieving friends that you later regretted saying. Or maybe you've been on the receiving end during your own time of grief when you listened to friends offer platitudes that never quite sat right with you, even though you knew they were well intended.

All these scenarios are the result of having little to no practice with feeling your own empathy without moving to impose it on the other person. This capacity does not develop overnight. It is a muscle that must be exercised in order to become strong.

Exercising this muscle will payout in exponential dividends throughout your life. It will broaden your bandwidth for handling both your own grief as well as the grief of those close to you (and even the grief of strangers). Grief is part of life. It isn't disappearing any time soon, no matter how much we collectively keep trying to wish it away. Wouldn't it be nice if we were all better equipped to emotionally respond to one another's grief in ways that are actually helpful?

That's one of my main goals for sharing this journey with you. If you want to follow along, then you are invited to intentionally practice feeling the empathy that arises within you when you witness my pain and then resisting the urge to impose your empathy on me. You're invited to expand the capacity of your heart to feel empathy and then to sink deeply into allowing my personal process to unfold.

This ability is called "being present" and "holding space" for a fellow human being. Because deep down, that's all human beings really want -- to be witnessed and to be held.

Expand the boundaries of your heart. Build up your capacity. Exercise this muscle. You can do it. Let's go!

The Intelligence of Nature

Many months ago, through the teachings of Dr. Zach Bush, I gained new insights about the source of what we refer to as "intelligence" and "knowledge." Prior to these new insights, like most people (I assume), I believed it was the human brain and, specifically, the prefrontal cortex of the brain that made humans so distinct, smart, unique (some might say "superior") to other species. Dr. Bush presented me with a different narrative. The story of the fingers of Nature typing on the guts of humans to input information into the CPU chips of our brains. What if Nature is the source of intelligence? What if the source of intelligence is not the human brain? Here's how Dr. Bush explains it:

"What makes the human species so unique is: our capacity to hold ecosystem diversity within a single organism. The human colon is now recognized to hold more biodiversity -- more species of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and other microorganisms -- more than any other ecosystem on the planet. More than a coral reef or the Amazon jungle! Cubic centimeter by cubic centimeter, it's the biggest density of biodiversity that the planet has ever invented.

As a result, our neurological system developed the ability to listen to that biodiversity. Billions of afferent nerves poke through the intestinal membrane to communicate directly with the bacteria, fungi, protozoa etc. Our brains are listening to all the data streams coming from thousands of species and then our brains, as CPU's (central processing units), are making pattern recognition based on all the information coming through all of Nature.

Humans are the CPU chip of this planet.

We have the most exquisite keyboard that Nature has developed. The keyboard of the computer is how information is input into the CPU. The CPU itself has never input information into a keyboard. And the keyboard has never input information into the computer either. It's really the fingers on the keyboard that input the information into the computer!

The keyboard of Nature is the neurologic system listening to the ecosystem. And the fingers on the keyboard are: bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. Nature is typing on the keyboard of the human colon, which receives the inputs of information and sends them, through the neurological system, to the CPU (brains) to be perceived/ processed/ interpreted/ decoded/ understood/ known."

Ever since these insights were presented to me, I've become more aware of Nature's inputs into my system and less concerned with needing to be a source of knowledge myself.

My re-alignment back with Nature has been beautiful and healing and full of wonderment. But today's experience was truly something special! It was a direct experience of Nature as the source of intelligence and knowing.

Earlier today, I was having a conversation with a man I plan to hire to facilitate a very specific spiritual experience for me. During our conversation, he began to describe himself as someone who does wound care. When he used this metaphor to describe the work of wound care, it struck a very deep chord in me.

You see, several months ago, a friend was telling me the story of the time one of her horses had a terrible wound on her leg. She explained how the wound had to be "debrided" regularly for a period of time. She told me what an extraordinarily painful process it was for her horse (debriding requires the scraping off of old, dead and infected tissue). She told me how she was too empathically connected to her horse to do the debriding herself and how she had to hire a professional to come in each week to do the wound care. She told me how it was a painful yet necessary process for the horse to go through in order for the wound to heal.

I was so moved by this story, that I decided to adopt the imagery and the energy of that horse in my own personal emotional "debriding" process over the last several months. In a very intentional way, I ask myself, "What feelings are preventing me from being present with myself because I don't want to feel them?" When I carve out the time and space to allow myself to feel these uncomfortable, painful feelings, I literally take a moment first to imagine I'm that horse about to have my wound debrided. I brace myself, I acknowledge it's going to hurt like hell, I remind myself it's for the purpose of healing the wound properly, and then I allow the emotions to flow. This ritual has been incredibly powerful for me. And I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to that horse for empowering me to do this inner work.

So here's the thing...there is absolutely no way the man I was conversing with today could have known what his metaphor of doing the work of wound care would mean to me. He knew nothing of my ritual or my friend or her horse.

As he was talking, I suddenly became acutely aware that it wasn't really him talking to me. He was saying the words (as a CPU does produce outputs), but his consciousness wasn't the one typing on the keys!

During the conversation, he also shared with me his story of building a relationship with Nature over many decades. Once I heard this story, any lingering doubt was cast out. I am certain the relationship he has cultivated with Nature is what allowed him access to intelligence and knowledge beyond his CPU brain. He was channeling information you could say. But it wasn't information from an angel or spirit guide or interdimentional energy. It was information directly from Nature herself. I have no doubt it was Nature who was speaking to me through him. And I believe his relationship with Nature is what made this possible.

This kind of relationship is what I aspire to build with Nature. It is something we all have the capacity for.

Dr. Bush's insights showed me what's possible. But his ideas became real for me today when I saw and heard and felt Nature typing on the colon of a human being in front of me.

Wow.

(“Cannon” pictured above 🐎)