In 2018, a little girl, residing together with us in a beautiful house in the Australian forest, likened me and my two friends to the bears in the story about Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Where my two friends were anointed as the sad bear and the happy bear, the girl very confidently pointed at me and exclaimed: And you… are The Angry Bear.
It was a tough observation to take. I had never expressed my anger out loud around this little girl: She was just naming my energy field.
Anger is a fuel for transformation
I don’t want to look angry to little girls. But thinking four years back, I realize I had a lot of anger running in my system this period. And I also realize: that I needed it!
In 2016 I started flipping my life around. Initially, I just felt extremely frustrated: frustrated that I hadn’t been able to create a life for myself that worked for me. The frustration was depleting - it seemed to suck the life force energy out of me.
But at some point; my frustration turned into anger. And as anger: it prompted me to take action.
My anger became the very gasoline of a huge personal transformation process. It threw me out of home, and kept me going from place to place for three years, desperately seeking someone or something that could help me upgrade my way of living. My anger nearly forced me giving life a second go! It pulled me out of fetal position when I wanted to give up, and refused to leave me alone until I'd found my way back on track.
My anger was a tough master - but it also fueled me forward. Whereas a softer me would probably have just laid down and given up long time ago, my anger gave me the energy and courage to go as deep and dirty as I needed to; to resurface.
Embracing our anger – and our inner defense army
I'm still reading “Women who Run with the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés this month. And in the fairytale about Bluebeard and the naïve young woman who marries him, the symbolism of heroic men - and what this symbolism points towards within ourselves - caught my attention.
Cause heroic men of fairytales… are intimately connected with our anger.
The fairytale of Bluebeard tells that one day shortly after their wedding, Bluebeard has to leave his castle, and leaves his young wife home alone. While Bluebeard is out, the young woman opens the door to a forbidden room – and discovers the skeletons of all his earlier wives. Upon seeing these skeletons, the young woman knows she´s in great danger. Then Bluebeard returns home, and upon learning about his wife’s discovery, he prepares to kill her too.
Luckily for the young woman, her brothers come to her rescue right in time – and kill the evil Bluebeard.
In the fairytales it´s often like that: The men rescue the women. But what do these heroic men represent?
Can you guess it?
They are our fighting force!
According to Pinkola Estés, the heroic men of fairytales represent our inner masculine. If we were to interpret the Bluebeard story as a healing or maturing story, the brother’s arrival symbolizes the young woman mustering up her inner aggression: to get herself out of a situation that isn’t right for her.
Writing about masculinity and femininity seems like a bit of a mine-field these days. But personally, I always found the binaries of inner masculinity and femininity helpful to understand different aspects of our psyche. Whereas our inner femininity typically represents the soul; our feeling world; our depths and our intuition - our inner masculine is responsible for stamina; clarity; stability; structure… and with setting boundaries and changing course when we´re walking in the wrong direction.
The inner masculine represents a crucial support to our inner feminine. Without our inner masculine, womanhood is… crazyhood (I say that from personal experience).
A healthy masculinity helps us stay on track
Actually, I think mastering the balance between our inner femininity and our inner masculinity is the very key to our healthy and happy life! Because when we forget nurturing our inner femininity, there is no soul, no love, no juice. Without our inner masculinity on the other hand, chances are our feelings will be a great mess, and we´ll tend to feel overwhelmed or overruled by our surroundings. Also, although we might have a great intuition about what is right for us to do – we´ll likely get in trouble FOLLOWING our intuitive direction.
A healthy inner masculine supports us in putting up boundaries, to take action on our inner knowing, and to adjust when we are out of course.
In the myths and fairytales, this support might be represented as outer knights in shining armour (or strong brothers). But really: The quality of claiming our own path in the face of obstacles – and the responsibility to do so – resides within OURSELVES!
I Have an Army of Knights in Shining Armor Inside Me - And Chances Are You’ve Got Them Too