Last May I received an email from a local moms group asking me to speak in March. I responded saying how sorry I was to have missed their email and the invitation to speak, since March had passed us by. I got their response that day explaining they were planning out their speaker calendar for the coming year and wanted to have me come speak on Anger in Motherhood in mid-March next spring. That left me nine to ten months to ponder, read, reflect, and prepare. I said “yes,” all the while knowing this topic hit too close to home.
photo courtesy of bing images
Bitter Roots
I grew up in a home with mismanaged anger. My dad raged at the drop of a hat. My mom yelled and lost her cool on a regular basis. The idea of controlling oneself when angry didn’t occur to me until later in life. I sometimes attempted to hide my anger – as I stubbornly refused to eat my brussels sprouts or to share a toy with my sister. Most of the time, however, I lost it like everyone else in the home. It seemed the “winner” was the person who could out-shout, or outlast the others in their fit of rage. Of course, anger wasn’t the only temperature in our home. We had lots of laughs, bedtime stories, amazing birthday parties, summer camping trips, and other goodness. Still, unbridled anger riddled our childhoods like pellets hitting a shooting range.
Not Quite Coping
When I moved out of my home to go to college, I no longer had the luxury of yelling and storming around when I was upset. My dormmates were not my family. If I let my rage out of the bag, I knew my social clout would plummet. I took out my frustrations on the pavement, running six miles a day in all sorts of weather. I used an eating disorder to give me a false sense of control, and I drowned the rest of my uncomfortable emotions at frat parties with a six-pack of Budweiser or a pitcher of Long-Island Ice Tea. The only relationships where I felt safe enough to explode in anger were at boyfriends. Lucky guys.
As I entered young adulthood, I stopped drinking, met my husband, and went to graduate school for my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. I started learning tools to help me navigate my anger. Still, the roots of my explosiveness had not been addressed.
photo courtesy of jens johnson
Anger in Motherhood
We had our first child when I was 35. During his infancy, I nurtured him and loved motherhood almost more than anything I had ever experienced. Yes, I was often sleepless. My life’s priorities shifted, never to be rearranged back to the pre-children status again. Then we chose to foster a four-year-old, and not just any four-year-old. She had endured some trauma. Her daily unspoken mission seemed to be to drive me to the brink of insanity. I loved her so very much, but was ill-equipped for all the testing and button-pushing, the temper tantrums, and the vacuous needs she brought with her.
I did my best to love her well. Yes. She also drove me to anger. I found myself occasionally raising my voice at her, and then having to go to her to repent and ask forgiveness. Talk about a humbling experience. I felt I had been called into her life to be a blessing – a safe place to land – and I was. Still, on more occasions than I liked, I found myself letting her down as I yelled or was impatient or irritable.
photo courtesy of lina trochez
Losing my Cool
She moved back with her birth mom one year after we took her on. We had anticipated adopting her. The loss dealt a huge blow to our family. Around that same time, my son turned one. He started exerting his will, which, for the record, is one of the strongest wills God ever fashioned. I found myself in power struggles with a toddler. Seriously. As the years went on, I yelled at him when I wished I would have used my calm, adult voice. Those nights when that happened, I would hit the pillow with such regret in my heart, shaming myself to bits for not being a better mom.
I finally hit a breaking point and I sought out my mentor for help. She lives two hours from our home. We devised a plan where my friend, Amy, would care for my son one day a week. I would wake at 6:00 am and bring my son to Amy’s home. I’d take the long drive to my mentor’s and dig into the roots beneath my anger with her. She would give me an assignment for the coming week. On the weekend, my husband would take our son out to a park or skating rink for a few hours so I could be alone to journal and process. This went on for about ten weeks as God healed my heart of the roots of bitterness and old habits I had acquired as a child.
On a Journey From Anger Toward Gentleness
I’d love to tell you my irresponsible anger management habits ended then and never returned, but we don’t grow quickly or in a straight line. Those weeks with my mentor set a foundation from which I could grow forward. I learned that anger was a “wrapper” emotion – there’s always something under the wrapper: fear, pain, or a perceived threat. When I learned to identify and feel the hidden emotion, I could keep from bursting into yelling.
photo courtesy of samuel zeller
Another key to my growth in managing anger was learning to lighten my load. As I accepted my capacity and learned to live a more reasonably paced life, stress diminished and I was less likely to go off on those around me. I wrote about that journey in my book, Slow Down, Mama: Intentional Living in a Hurried World, and recently released the companion devotional, Slow Down, Mama: 31-Days to Help You Slow and Savor. Both of those books contain inspiration and tools to help you grow into a more purposeful and peaceful way of living.
Let’s Grow Together
As I spoke with the moms in the group who so graciously invited me to share on anger, I learned once again the gift of vulnerability. We can either hide our shortcomings and failures and feel shame and distance from others, or we can bravely step out to share our imperfections. As usually happens, I was received with love. Even better, the moms in the group where I spoke shared their own struggles with anger following my talk. We considered the impact of passive aggression, stuffing anger, and blowing our tops. We discussed solutions to help us become more gentle.
If you want to move from anger to gentleness, I can provide a safe place with support and tools. Check out my coaching page for details. You don’t have to continue in a cycle of anger and guilt. It’s possible to let our gentleness become evident to all. Hope exists for us to grow out of old ways of reacting to our anger. I’d love to walk alongside you.
Such an encouraging post. Thank you for your vulnerability and honesty. Blessings!
Thank you, Gwen. It’s such a blessing to be freed up enough to feel safe to share the deeper things we often don’t speak freely about. I pray it blesses moms to read my words.
Loved this!! I definitely need to do more to lighten my load to remove some of the overwhelm and emotions that often stir me up in a negative way.
Ayanna, I hear you! It’s so good that you are self-aware and can see what triggers you. My recently published devotional might be a blessing to you. It’s Slow Down, Mama: 31-Days to Help You Slow and Savor. On each day I give a brief, relatable story, questions for reflection, a prayer, and a “just for today” application to help you grow into a more peaceful and purposeful way of living out your motherhood. You can find it on Amazon.
It’s always a journey of growth. I have made progress, backslid, and come forward again. My children tell me about how I have come a long way – that is both humbling and encouraging. Thanks so much for coming by and sharing with me. Blessings!
I first saw this in the Facebook MT group and for some reason, couldn’t comment on it so I’m commenting here. I grew up in a mess of a broken home. My parents divorced and both remarried before I was a teen and I mostly lived with my mom and step dad. I had major anger problems and so did my stepdad. Part of my difficulty with it is that I feel my feelings very strongly and very deeply. My stepdad, it later turned out, was just manipulating my mom, sister, and me into hating each other so that we couldn’t band together and get rid of him. (Cause I guess he was afraid of that) I was never taught how to deal with my own anger. After I moved in with my dad at 16 (who had divorced his second wife and was engaged to another woman that he was living with) I had yet again another parental figure who couldn’t control their anger either. She would throw and break things. Life got really messy for a while as I struggled through my last 2 years of high school, just trying to get through it so I could move to college. Fast forward 4 years or so into college and 1 year into marriage. Life got hard and I didn’t even know if I wanted to finish college or even do anything. I went through a nasty bout of depression that I decided to just take the meds for instead of facing my problem. Fast forward 5 years to having our first child… we decided (or really, my hubby decided and I just agreed that I’d try) that we would not yell or fight in front of our son… I can’t even count how many times I have broken this and feel like such a failure… I’ve become this intense person when my anger builds up and I can’t figure out how to direct it. My fuse is probably the shortest there ever was and sometimes, I even have every right to be angry. But most of the time, I don’t let that anger out in a good way or even sometimes, I need to just let it go. This is a very hard thing that I want to work on, but don’t even know where to start. I feel like if I don’t gain control over this, I’m going to ruin my family.
Sammie, I’m in tears as I read this. I want to take a trip to sit with you. Seriously. I feel this pain with you. Your deep feelings – the capacity to feel much is a GIFT. Yet, that gift got broken by people who didn’t shepherd you well and teach you by modeling and encouragement how to engage in your emotions without them leading you. Instead of establishing trust and safety, your family (because of what they were capable of) tore at the foundation. They modeled explosive anger and dysfunction. I so relate!
Your depression doesn’t surprise me – and it sounds like it didn’t surprise you either. It’s a buildup of anger turned inward. I’ve been in depression as well – not for a long time, but all it takes is the mention of it, and I remember the darkness and bleakness. You didn’t want to explode, so you imploded. Helpless, feeling hopeless, you turned the anger inward. I’m so very sorry for all you lived through.
I know to the depths of my heart that God has a promise of hope for you. He is the God of freedom, of restoration, of healing. He wants that. It’s not an instant thing. We endured much. You did. I did. It takes a long time to overcome the residue. God WILL restore the years that the locusts have eaten. It took me years of working with a mentor, some time with a therapist (a good, Christian therapist), and I slowly overcame and learned new ways.
When I saw what my anger was doing to my family – the one where I am the mother and wife – I was willing to make changes, to get real help, and to do whatever it took to overcome my anger. God was waiting for my willingness – to face the pain of my past so I could move into the freedom from reliving the cycle. A very helpful bible study has been the simple, yet powerful, Distorted Images of God: Restoring Our Vision by Dale and Juanita Ryan. It’s not a “fix” but a great place to start. God’s will is that we cultivate gentleness. He is working toward that. We can work with Him. It’s a bumpy, irregular, imperfect process, but we do move forward.
I am here for you any way I can be. You are in my prayers today.