Anger Is Not the Problem. Silence Is.

We live in a world obsessed with light, love and good vibes only.
Especially in spiritual spaces.

Smile through it.
Rise above it.
Transcend it.

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Here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:
sometimes life isn’t light and love.
Sometimes it’s brutal.
Sometimes it’s unfair.
Sometimes it’s really fucking terrible.

And telling people to bypass that reality isn’t spiritual.
It’s harmful.

Anger has become one of the most forbidden emotions in our culture. No one wants to be labeled “the angry one.” Anger makes people uncomfortable. It’s seen as dangerous, unhealed, un-evolved. Especially for women.

Feeling anger does not make you an angry person.
It makes you human.

We don’t have emotions by accident. Every one of them exists for a reason. Anger isn’t a character flaw — it’s information. It shows us where something isn’t right, where a boundary has been crossed, where truth is being ignored.

Suppressing it doesn’t make you evolved.
It just teaches your body to carry what your voice was never allowed to express.

Men are supposedly allowed anger, but even they aren’t. They’re taught to fear it — afraid it will make them seem violent, threatening, out of control. So what do we do instead?

We repress it.
We swallow it.
We store it in our bodies.

And it eats us alive from the inside out.

I never thought of myself as angry.
I rarely lost my temper. I didn’t blow up at people.

I thought of myself as happy. Calm. Grounded. Steady.
I didn’t believe I was carrying anger in my body at all.

A few years ago, that belief was tested.

There was legislation passed that made me furious. I live close to the Capitol, and there was a protest happening. Jason and I walked up, and I stood there surrounded by people shouting, chanting, waving signs, expressing their anger freely.

Inside, I was raging.
Absolutely livid.

And yet I stood there completely silent. Frozen. Unable to yell. Unable to move. Unable to express a single word of how I felt.

That moment shook me.

Why could everyone around me express their anger, while I couldn’t even open my mouth?

Around that same time, I was introduced to breathwork. If you’ve never experienced it, it can be intense. Energy moves. Emotions surface. In a room full of people, that energy has to go somewhere. Sometimes the release is crying. Sometimes shaking. Sometimes a scream.

When the facilitator said we were going to scream, my eyes practically popped out of my head. I see that same look now when I teach.

When the moment came, I surprised myself—I screamed. Being in a room with thirty other people gave me permission. No one was focused on me. I could disappear into the sound.

What surprised me more was this:
I didn’t feel angry.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t wail like others around me.

That made sense. I had never expressed so-called “negative” emotions in front of other people. I stayed composed. Controlled. Calm.

But over time, as I kept practicing connecting to my body and my emotions, something became very clear:

I had been carrying anger in my body for a very long time.
Long before Connor died.
His death didn’t create the anger—it compounded it.

That’s when my physical symptoms exploded.

Here’s what I’ve learned:
emotions are energy.
And energy has one rule—it must move.

Life is hard. Sometimes devastating. When something painful happens, we don’t always want to feel it. So instead of acknowledging our emotions, we stuff them down. Over time, they become trapped energy.

Our bodies need flow to function. When energy gets stuck, the body suffers. We get sick. We disconnect from our bodies so completely that we stop listening—until the body gets loud. Until it has no choice.

I see this every day in my FootZoning practice. People come in with symptoms and ailments that have no clear explanation. And slowly, with time and trust, we begin unraveling the emotional history their bodies have been carrying—anger, grief, fear, shame, sorrow.

As those emotions are finally allowed to move, the body begins to heal.

There’s no coincidence that women make up roughly 88% of autoimmune disease diagnoses. We are taught to endure. To smile. To sacrifice. To care for everyone else first. To never express anger. To carry shame—for our bodies, our motherhood, our worth, our needs.

Those expectations live in our bodies.

In my opinion, that statistic tells a story.

Healing requires reconnection. Listening. Trusting intuition. Using our voices. Letting anger exist without turning it into violence or self-destruction. Anger isn’t the enemy—it’s information.

So much violence in this world comes from unexpressed, unprocessed anger. Energy with nowhere to go eventually explodes.

This is why I’m on a mission to get people to feel their feelings.

Here’s a simple practice I give every client:

Close your eyes.
Take a slow inhale through your nose.
Open your mouth and make an audible sigh.
Imagine stress leaving your body.

Do this for a few minutes.

Then place a hand on your heart and ask yourself:
How am I actually feeling?
What emotions am I carrying with me today?

You might feel nothing at first. That’s okay. Disconnection takes time to unwind. This is a practice.

When an emotion arises—anger, grief, fear, shame—acknowledge it. Don’t fix it. Don’t judge it. Breathe through it.

I promise you: if you let it move, it will pass. And it won’t lodge itself in your body.

Our bodies speak constantly.
Constipation asks: what are you holding onto?
Digestive issues ask: what aren’t you processing?
A backed-up liver asks: where is your anger?

This work isn’t easy. I’ve been at it for years. I recently realized I was deeply stressed about something—while appearing completely calm to everyone around me. Even Jason had no idea. That calmness is a skill I learned early. It kept me safe. It also kept me disconnected.

Telling him how I actually felt took courage. He joked that it only took me fifteen years to figure it out how to share my feelings.

Baby steps.

I spent nearly fifty years disconnected from my emotions. This doesn’t change overnight. But as I’ve practiced feeling, expressing and releasing—my body has healed.

No more panic attacks.
No migraines.
No heartburn.
No mysterious rashes.

Your body is not against you.
It is extraordinary technology.
It is always trying to heal you.
Always trying to protect you.

Your emotions are not the problem.
Ignoring them is.

I’m continuing to share this journey on Threads of My Heart if you want to follow along.

Another thread from my heart to yours.