231 - Anger without Apology

Today I share my newfound appreciation for anger and the importance of allowing it to flow through me. 

Recently, a beloved tree next to my house was cut down and it evoked some intense emotions. Through the experience, I came to understand the power of expressing anger and grief without apology and the value of having a witness who can hold space for these emotions. 

I share reflections on the process of embracing anger, alchemizing it into beauty, finding poetry in difficult experiences, and allowing anger to guide your growth and self-discovery.

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The music for this episode is Threads by The Light Meeting.
Produced by: Grey Tanner

Transcript

Bonnie (00:00.91)
Welcome to the podcast loves. It's good to have you again. Today. I have something to admit to you that I have not shared before. And that is, are you ready? I have decided. I've decided that I really like being angry. I really like being angry and.

that feels funny to say, and it's definitely not something that you would have heard me saying even a year and a half ago. I think anger is one of those things that I set to the side, that that's not something that I touch. And I would say I like letting anger roll through me, to be more clear. Like I am not gonna sit in anger, but to not try to shove it away,

or to push it down or to set it aside, but to let it roll through me.

And you know, perhaps I could go into like growing up Mormon and perhaps I could go into, you know, stories of being a woman and whatnot. But all of that, I kind of don't care about that right now. I really just want to say that everywhere that I have been before now has gotten me to this point and I am happy with that. And now I have enough capacity.

to say, oh, I am angry right now.

Bonnie (01:45.902)
And here's a story for you. Just over a week ago, I was making pictures. It was two Fridays ago from right now. I was making pictures at a place that I rented because I'm writing a book. Super exciting. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. It's going to be a sequencing and flow prompt book for yoga teachers. Something that does not exist. So that's what we do here. We're like creating the things. So I was making pictures for that. I rented a, a,

a studio, I mean, we could go deep into like talking this idea for a book and the process of this, it's gonna take a minute, it's gonna take some dollars. Anyway, I was making this with my lover who's a photographer and cinematographer and he was making these pictures and we were doing that on that Friday, two Fridays ago.

And then we had driven separately. He had all his gear. So he left and I stayed in Portland and cause I lived just outside of Portland. And I stopped at a coffee shop and I was working. I got some lunch or dinner and then I drove home. And the minute I pulled into my driveway, my driveway is behind a front row of houses. So we're kind of like a,

private driveway and my house is behind some of the other houses on the street. And the whole entire, if you're looking at my house, the left side of the entire house is next to the woods. And like, if you were to be looking at me on the screen, there's a small window behind me and it looks out into the forest and there's a bunch of trees, there's a pond down there, bullfrogs are down there and nutria and all different sorts of...

birds and ducks and geese and herons and owls and all different things, less coyotes now. And there's a big tree that is really, you could see it right out this window behind me. And my kids always called it main tree. This was main tree. And I lived in this house for just over seven years. So my kids were quite a bit younger when I moved here. And...

Bonnie (04:09.71)
Main tree was a big part of that because it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful to be right here next to the forest and as I pulled into the driveway two Fridays ago.

there was a gaping hole in the sky.

And that's because they cut the tree down.

They cut the tree down.

Bonnie (04:41.038)
And perhaps you don't have kids and perhaps you don't live somewhere where your kids have named something and you have built forts with them that the fort is still out there partially nailed together. And actually I screwed that with a screwdriver. I helped them build that fort and I threw the rope up into that, into main tree and so they could have a rope swing. And you didn't see them have their

adventure times in the woods with friends and watch them go down and wander in the pond to catch frogs. Like...

Bonnie (05:22.798)
is part of their experience here. And maybe if you don't have kids, you can think of, I think about when I was a kid, there was a really big field right out by my house and it is now our houses and not what it was when I was a kid, but it was the dirt jumps when I was a kid. And there were some big trees there. And then in the one field we would like smash down the grass and like,

call different things, different parts of a house that make up a whole story. And I loved living next to like kind of an open area and, well, that doesn't exist now. And there's a nostalgia to that, yeah. And so I pulled up and I saw that the tree was down and I couldn't park the car fast enough. I threw it in park and my sunglasses in my hand, I jump out and I just start.

crying.

Bonnie (06:25.678)
because they cut the tree down and I knew that they ever had some trees they were gonna cut down. They had told us, it's not my land, it's the city land, but our neighborhood helps take care of it. And so supposedly there was some limbs on the tree, it was like giant trunk where like a whole bunch of like main tree trunks were growing out of this big giant trunk. And there was a couple of those that it is true that they had some.

potential rot in some of those, but there was like six or seven large, like really large, big tree chunks coming out. And they cut all of them down, not just a couple. And they've just pushed all the branches over to the side. So they're like piling up in a weird, very abnormal way. And then there's just nothing. And this tree was giant, like giant. And all I can see now where we would go down.

and where the kids would swing. It's just empty. And it looks so unnatural. You're not like, oh, a tree fell over in the woods and it's just like falling over. It's like sawed and like pushed aside and like, it's gonna take several years for this forest to like absorb it and make it feel like it's part of the forest. And right now it just looks like people went in there without care.

And, you know, for liability of, you know, if this tree falls, the ones, the branches that were, had potential rot were the farthest away from the house. They wouldn't have fallen on the house. But I get it. I get it from like a liability from like the neighborhood. But like as the person who lives next to this tree, whose tree is main, like his main tree, this is the tree that I watch get its lease last in the spring.

and the tree that loses its leaves fast or last in the fall, it stays around the longest. And...

Bonnie (08:36.462)
as my favorite.

And now I'm crying about a tree.

Bonnie (08:45.742)
and...

In regards to anger, I stood on there's like this retaining wall next to my house and I stood on this retaining wall and I just cried and I yelled like I yelled, it was still alive. It was still alive. And I yelled so loud and I yelled, why did you cut it down? And it was still alive. And I was so angry and I was so

sad and there's such grief in that and I just...

did not apologize for any way that I felt and any way that I was expressing. And I walked down to the tree and I touched the places that it had been chopped off on the stump. I put my hand on it and I crawled up into like the bowl and the belly of it. And I just cried with it.

Bonnie (09:55.406)
And tree trunks are still alive. I don't know if you know that, but they are. I remember, I don't know if it was a documentary I was watching and they were talking about, I think it was a documentary about trees and they were saying how even when a tree is cut off and if the trunk is like that stump is left there, the stump is still alive. And I love that.

Bonnie (10:20.75)
Yeah. And I, anyway, I came back in eventually I came back in the house and my lover is in here and I just cried to him. I said, they cut it down. And he's like, I know. And.

And it's really cool to have somebody witness you in anger and in a sort of rage and it's not directed towards someone. And I think that that's like an interesting piece of this. And not that it can't be and not that it always isn't, but that it's towards a situation and letting yourself and me, letting myself process that.

and let it move through me and not get stuck in me, but say, I'm gonna feel this whole thing and I'm gonna let myself feel this whole thing and I'm gonna let it move through me and let it finish the whole cycle and not block it. And I think I haven't always felt safe enough in myself or trusted myself enough to let it roll through me. And maybe I haven't had the people around me always.

that I felt like I could do that without having to explain myself and I feel done explaining myself and I'm going to be around people where they can hold that kind of space for or with me or I'm going to be by myself. And so I went back outside and my lover came with me and he just, and I just, I was in it. I was, I was, I was yelling and I don't want to say screaming. I would also want to say holler into like the wild, like,

I was yelling from my belly and from inside of me, even I'm in a neighborhood, like neighborhood people, they would definitely have, they would have heard me and I don't fucking care. They cut down the tree. They cut down the tree and they don't see it because they don't live right next to it. This is like such an insular experience for the neighborhood, but just for me and my neighbors that I share a driveway with. And...

Bonnie (12:25.678)
And I walked down there and I just, they had cut out another tree that was further down that was dead, that was good that they had cut down, but they're blocking the whole path and this whole little area that we have sat on. And now like the whole landscape has changed and it'll be really hard to actually get to the pond now because of how that tree was cut down. And I just sat with them all. I sat with the trees.

and I sat with a pond and my lover sat off to the side and.

And it feels so powerful, I think, to have a witness of somebody who's not trying to change anything.

but is just seeing me and being with it and being like sad in it with me. Somebody who I feel like understands. I feel really grateful for that piece and for him, but.

Bonnie (13:25.294)
I was angry. And now, you know, it was really that day, the next day I woke up and I went and I had brought my coffee out and I had drank coffee with the tree. And...

the phrase that came to me that next day as I'm sitting with a tree is that the anger was gone.

And I, I gosh, like that loud yelling, like I just, I hope you yell loud. I hope you yell so loud. Like truly, like yell it like you mean it. Yell it like, like your life depends on it. Yell it like that, where you really feel it from like deep in the bowl of your pelvis up and through your body and like let it crackle inside of you.

and let your emotions do the same thing where they move through you. Let them move through you. Because that is the only way they can move out and beyond and where you can move into different ways of being. And truly, truly, and y 'all's I did not begin like this. So let's just make that clear. So it's not what I've always been able to do, but you know, the next morning I'm sitting with a tree and the phrase that comes to mind is.

I will find beauty in this too. I will find beauty in this too.

Bonnie (15:03.566)
I will find beauty in this too.

Bonnie (15:14.798)
You know, my kids are all gonna be growing up and leaving. My oldest is leaving this fall.

And in five years, I will be preparing for my youngest and five might sound like a long time. It's not a long time. And there's just be a lot of change between at this very current moment and then that it will go very quickly. And I think part of the tree being cut down as a reminder of passage of time.

Bonnie (15:49.614)
and...

that is okay too. And I sat with that tree saying,

find beauty here too.

And I was not mad. There was some sadness, but I just, I kind of just sat out there.

I didn't feel overly emotional. I just touched the tree. I found a branch that broke off one of the bigger branches and brought it in my house, but.

Bonnie (16:27.918)
I have found beauty.

Bonnie (16:32.27)
I have found beauty there too. And one thing, actually there's two things, two things for sure. One is there are some small little windows on that same side of the house that go into my living room. And I have noticed, because it was kind of cloudy and whatnot after that, but the sun has come back this past weekend and the sun is shining through those little windows.

And I don't remember ever having the sunshine like that. And it's so beautiful. And it hadn't shown like that through those windows because of the tree.

And when I'm upstairs in my house, like all these windows, like there's so many windows that face the forest. So I loved looking out and I could just see so many trees out of all these windows. It's like truly like this was a, this was the reason why I moved here. And now because the main tree is gone and you see it when you look out very, it's very, it's very apparent, but I can see the pond and I couldn't see the pond before.

and all the trees around it on the other side. There's just so many pine trees, deciduous trees, and everything's green and popping right now, and I can see the pond, and it's really beautiful. And even standing up in my front yard, where a main tree would be, I can see the pond now, and it's been beautiful.

And not everything in our lives can be alchemized, right? It can be, I don't know if I necessarily, I don't really use that word very much, but alchemy is like taking one thing and then it changes into another thing, right? So alchemy of like alchemize something to look at it as a growth point of like, how can we change this into some sort of lesson? Like I'm not trying to do that, but there is a part of this that is,

Bonnie (18:38.542)
taking this experience and quickly finding an anchor, a mantra phrase in me that I didn't mean to find. And I think that's important. It's like, I'm not trying to do it, but as I sat with that tree and the phrase, I will find beauty here too, came into my brain, came into my body.

there was a whole sigh and that transition from like this anger that is really, was really sadness to, I mean, I let that move through me, then I'm able to find the beauty that still exists. And I think that goes for a lot of different situations in our lives and not all of them can be alchemized so quickly or easily.

or even at all in our lifetime, depending on the thing. Because there's a lot of trickiness in being human and a lot of experiences that we might each have that are very different from each other. And I just know that as in this past year and a half, and I do say that I wouldn't have even said the word anger at all.

before this time, but it was because of human design. And my friend, Rocky Heron, who introduced me to it and he has guidance in my chart and reading and I'm a science, like I really love science. And also, I mean, I grew up in the Mormon church where I believed a 14 year old saw God and Jesus Christ hovering above the ground talking to him. So like there's an amount of woo.

and magic really that I believed in my life. And I think religious people don't want to think of it as magic, but it's unexplainable sort of situation. So it's a little supernatural, right? So there's a bit of magic I've believed in my life, but having left that and now saying like, okay, let's like look at science. I love like with, you know, even when it's teaching yoga, I'm like, let's bring movement science and like this experience of dance and bring them to traditional yoga.

Bonnie (20:51.374)
And so I like this blending of things. And so it's interesting that I really was like, oh, human design, like it is a little bit more on the woo side of things, on the magic side of things, on the side that like is, how is that possible in the things that lends on the I Ching and astrology and the chakras and, oh, there's one more thing.

I'm not the person who's a human design expert. So, but it's like this weaving together. And anyway, I learned about it and learning about it. I'm a manifester, an emotional manifesto, emotional, like I kind of, that's how I can help process the world and make decisions, but I am a manifesto. And if that doesn't make sense to you, that's totally fine. But one of the things about being a manifesto is when things aren't in flow.

when I'm not moving and letting myself like exist and be and create in the world in a way that is my design, then I will feel anger. And when I learned that, I thought, ah, no, no, no, no, no. I am not an angry person. I don't like anger isn't something. And I was like, kind of like, no, I don't think that's who I am. And...

After learning that, I started to listen to myself tell stories and I would tell the story and say, oh, that's made me so angry. And I never realized that I said that. And it wasn't until it was pointed out that I would feel anger that then I started hearing myself. And that's why human design started to land to us. All the things that were said, I could line them up with my own personal experience without, without any force. And.

It's a tool. It's a tool to know myself and I appreciate that and a lot of other kind of personality test type of tools. But I think my experience with anger, I have befriended it in that way. In a way since learning about human design because it is a teacher for me and it helps me know myself when I pay attention to my anger and when I let it move through me.

Bonnie (23:14.286)
and when I help it focus me or move me to a new place. And that feels like a really big gift. And it's a really conscious sort of thing to step into a space where I can do that rather than just like a continual volcano or a suppression down where you're trying to put a lid on a volcano. Like neither of those are great situations, but how do we?

How do we let it flow? And so I feel really grateful how, you know, I think that the, since I'm not a baby and you can't see me grow from like a zero year old to like a one and a half year old, but you're saying, okay, a year and a half ago to now, I can see this sort of growth in myself. And, and I feel really grateful that I know when I'm angry.

Maybe that's like a funny way to say it, but like it's kind of true and I know when I have been angry for and I can feel when it moves through me and to allow myself to give myself permission to feel and to experience and to walk with it is.

is such a gift I've given myself and I am grateful for it.

because I will find beauty here too.

Bonnie (24:49.518)
I've also been thinking a lot about the poet, Ursa Daly Ward. I did a creative, six week creative workshop with her and Jesh D 'Rox back in like probably like August, September of 2020. And Ursa Daly Ward, I love her poetry and her book, The How. Look up her book, The How. Ursa, Y -R -S -A, D -A -L -E -Y, Ward, W -A -R -D, Ursa Daly Ward.

But she says in one of her writings, she wrote how this will give you poetry. This will give you poetry. And you don't have to be a poetry writer to appreciate that. I mean, poetry, good poetry transcends sort of the author and gives us a different experience as readers to put into words the feelings that we have.

And so I really think it's words that move you. That's what poetry is. And it looks like a paragraph. It looks like one line. It looks like stacked lines. It can look like anything, but it's words that help translate feelings or share feelings or give an explanation of something that helps you feel something. And I love that phrase that this will give you poetry. This too will give you poetry. And...

And I've been thinking about that with all the experiences that I have, that we have as a collective. Not that we necessarily want them, right? Not that I want the tree to be cut down. Not that I want to have to find beauty in like the very human, like unnatural sort of feeling that's in the forest right now next to my house. Not that I wanted that, but I will find beauty here too. This...

Two will give me poetry.

Bonnie (26:48.878)
and

and I'm okay with that.

Bonnie (26:56.494)
I'm okay with that. And...

Bonnie (27:03.534)
Yeah.

Bonnie (27:11.95)
Thanks for being here with me, friends.

Thanks for going on this emotional journey of a podcast where we've laughed and cried.

If you are interested in more human design things, it's very, just Google it and look up yours to daily ward and maybe write on some sticky note, I will find beauty here too. Because you will. And maybe just like I heard that, you know, something about anger and it started to help me pay attention.

Right? That's what we're here. This is podcast about, this is the practice of paying attention. This helps us, what do we need to pay attention to? And so maybe, maybe you write this on a sticky note and say, I will find beauty here too. And maybe that will help you start to see beauty. Where maybe you realize you were recognizing it all along, you just weren't calling it beautiful. And maybe you'll see something and name it beautiful because you're thinking of it. And it is front of your mind. And even when it is a hard, and even when you have to let anger,

or fear or sadness or grief or any of these things that fill us up and light us up in a way that we have to let them move through us so we do not get stuck and frozen in that moment.

Bonnie (28:37.198)
Maybe as you find yourself in those places and processing life, you'll recognize where you can find beauty too.

Hand to heart. Thank you for practicing paying attention with me. Till next time.