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Spittin' Angry Woman

5/24/2019

 
SPITTIN’ ANGRY WOMEN
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am very familiar with angry women.  My mother was angry.  Spittin’ angry, in fact.  For the uninformed, spittin’ angry ranks high up there on the woman’s rage scale…next step involves the commission of a crime.  Say walloping some annoying shopper across the face in a grocery store parking lot.  That’s where my mother’s anger drove her.  And worse.  Dumb luck and the fact that she just looked like a sweet, little old lady was all that stood between her and jail time.  I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  Last week I unexpectedly encountered another spittin’ angry woman courting criminal misdeeds.  Bodily harm to be exact.  Spittin’ Angry Woman wielded a shovel and threatened to beat me up with it.  Whattttt?????
 
All of us are well acquainted with anger of the messy variety.  But when stripped down to its purity and directed toward improvements and solutions, anger is a powerful motivating force capable of provoking necessary change and propelling light into darkened corners where evil hides.  Starved of emotional reaction to fuel its combustion, freed from accompanying turbulence, anger is a laser beam of potent energy that can drill down to the truth with focused precision.  Used intelligently and efficiently, anger is a magnificent tool. 
 
Unrestrained and chaotic, however, anger is nothing more than a temper tantrum any two year old could throw.  Only the consequences for a toddler are minor.  A few minutes of settling down time.  And the drone of a sensible grownup trying to explain the advantages of being nice.  But with adults, uncontrolled anger can ruin relationships and destroy families.  Angry adults crush their own heart’s desires.  My mother called it biting off your nose to spite your face.  Angry people litter society with seeds of anger that trail in their wakes.  And those seeds take root.  And then you have a spittin’ angry woman and her temper wrecking a beautiful spring day.
 
And that’s what it was, a gorgeous spring morning…
 
Out for a brisk walk, plugged into my own rock and roll world, suddenly I collided with the exact combination of energetic circumstances necessary for a spittin’ angry woman to indulge her rage.  Rage that was primed to explode long before—days, weeks, months, years—I rounded the corner and stumbled into her world.  Her trigger is unimportant.  It could have been anything at all.  I was simply the convenient match that ignited her internal inferno already waiting and looking for a reason to blow. 
 
She was a nondescript, grandmotherly woman laying down mulch, grooming her flower beds.  But in an instant while surrounded by the soft glow of a spring morning, she switched from gardener to mad woman and turned the shovel she was holding into a weapon.  And at that moment in time, for reasons rooted far deeper than she would probably ever acknowledge, Spittin’ Angry Woman set in motion a chain of events that easily could have ended in bloodshed and handcuffs.
 
Anger poisoned my mother’s life—her artistry, her relationships, her feelings about herself.  Supremely creative with an innate sense of color and balance, my mother was so often consumed by inner rage and hatred that it crippled her from blossoming into the remarkable woman she was meant to be.  With age, her anger only intensified, hardening further her heart to love and kindness, keeping her prisoner inside its lies.  My mother’s anger forbid love.
 
A connection exists between elder women and rage that leads directly to underground wellsprings of throbbing anguish and pulsating trauma, and clawing monsters that continue to roam their pasts.  Monsters powerful enough to burst into the present dragging with them chaos and violence.  My mom was a victim of violence and terror.  Trauma and panic controlled her life, protected the small, hurting child huddling in the bleak corners of her past.  Spittin’ angry women lug around unnamed demons ready at a moment’s notice to attack.  Maybe mistaking anger for courage in the way that my mother did.  Spittin’ angry women—hurting child-women—don’t understand that courage constructs, it does not destroy. 
 
Authentic power rises from truth.  True courage lies in generating the energy to go on the difficult quest for the haunting, unspoken truths buried beneath the urge to explode.  Anger is a symptom of pain that intensifies with age as our perceived power to control our lives decreases.  Anger and the trauma driving it are resolvable at any age.  And with the resolution of trauma, anger wilts and a brand new life blooms.  A life where creativity flourishes.  Where love thrives.  And relationships can heal.  Where a gorgeous spring day is pure celebration.  And a lawn is sweetened under the balm of tender attention and the appreciation of a stranger passing by.
 
Dementia finally blunted by mother’s anger and along with it, her capacity to experience joy.  I know where Spittin’ Angry Woman and her shovel are headed.  Remember that shopper in the parking lot?  I’ll be keeping to the opposite side of the road.
 
Namaste
​

What Is Healing?

5/17/2019

 
WHAT IS HEALING?
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
Healing from the pain of emotional trauma is an ongoing, ever expanding lifetime process.  It is not a gift or a destination.  Or a static, contented state of being.  Healing is a path…of growth…an ebb and flow of difficult challenges, tough decisions, and confusing emotions that rise up to be brought into the light of resolution.  Healing requires a constant renewal of patience while self confidence slowly develops.
 
However much we want it to, healing does not automatically happen, not even with time.  It won’t happen in a regimented program with strictures and time frames where “success” is celebrated by a group hug.  Nor with a slap on the forehead by a sweaty man clutching a damp handkerchief and a makeshift crucifix shouting, “You’re Healed!”  Healing certainly doesn’t occur because of a celebrity bellowing about an “aha teaching moment” no matter how convincing she sounds.  Even a big-hair psychic waving crystals and telling you that your father loves you does not possess the power of instant healing.  (Oh wait…I am the big-hair psychic waving crystals.  And your father does love you!)  Anyhow…while instant healing may be an illusion, a shift in personal energy is possible as a result of any experience.  And that shift will provide an opportunity, an opening to receive life-giving insight, not unlike a tightly bound rosebud unfurling to receive the waiting sunlight.
 
Startling, intense incidents can serve as catalysts to motivate you to pay attention to your yearning for relief and to finally act on your own behalf and commit to your emotional wellbeing.  Strange coincidences and unsettling events that occur seemingly out of nowhere—like a message from that big-hair psychic—are always connected to information about you and your life.  Should you listen for the underlying meaning, you will recognize that you are being offered powerful validation and encouragement at the precise moment needed to foster your growth.  And that includes opportunities to progress along the road of healing.
 
When you truly understand that healing is not a superficial, fixed state of happiness but rather an unfolding pathway to ever increasing emotional freedom, you liberate yourself from the artificial cultural rules that demand of us the humanly unachievable goal of bliss.  Every time you support yourself with compassion rather than condemning yourself for perceived failure, you are building inner strength.  That strength will continue to grow and continually propel you to progress and develop in a way that is natural, healthy and sustainable.
 
Healing, though, is not magic.  It does not erase traumatic experiences from memory or remove visceral reactions to imbedded pain.  Profound soul healing does not…does not…involve exoneration for those responsible for despicable acts.  Presuming that a militant abuser must play a role in your healing process is a dangerous misconception.  Every frozen smile, every automatic birthday greeting, every perfunctory invitation to a family celebration you extend to a militant abuser under the burden of duty is battery acid injected directly into your tender, healing heart.  Healing is not la-la land: it does not imply a happy place where all is well and everyone is wonderful.  Healing is breath and light--breathing and seeing.  An expansion of understanding, of learning to acknowledge and manage reality as it is, not as we wish it was, or as others insist it is.
 
Healing is our luminous, intelligent energy—our forever self—blossoming, gaining power, developing deep inner peace.  Healing is not a place.  It is not a finish line with a trophy.  Healing is a path.  A road full of potholes, twists and turns, and slippery slopes.  Healing is an ebb and flow of rising inner strength.  A constant tiptoe toward brighter and brighter horizons.  
 
Healing is not passive.  It is not a miracle.  It will not fall upon you like fairy dust.  Healing is personal action.  Healing is doing.  It is your deliberate act of attunement with the resonant forces of harmony that surround you and live beneath the darkness of entrenched trauma.  Healing teaches power while gaining power.  Through the on-going process of healing, you learn how to shift your precious energy from feeding emotional pain and focusing on all that cripples your life, to listening to the quiet whispers of your longing heart. 
 
Healing is opening your mind to all that is possible, allowing the mystical to guide you along the radiant path to clarity where you will find your untapped potential.  Healing is available to anyone who makes the personal, courageous decision to commit to themselves and to seeing. 
 
What is healing?  Healing, of course, is you.
 
Namaste
​

Are You Repressing Trauma?

5/3/2019

 
You may never think about TRAUMA. But TRAUMA always thinks about you. TRAUMA never resolves itself. Female. Male. Young. Old. Trauma Hurts. AN UNOBSTRUCTED PATH: A practical approach for understanding and managing trauma. Over 20 years of dedication to trauma resolution. Are you repressing Trauma?  Take our quiz. 
http://www.anunobstructedpath.net/repressed-trauma.html

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    About the Author

    In the provocative spirit of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Gloria Anzaldua, and Mary Daly, Kathleen Hoy Foley expands and deepens the voice of female experience.

    Raw. Uncompromising. Compassionate. Deliberately antagonistic. Kathleen writes to awaken the courage within the reader.


    TO THE SURVIVOR
    If you are a person who was victimized as a child or as an adult, I am so very sorry you ever had to suffer at the hands of a predator. 

    I am sorry you were abused, sorry no one protected you, sorry you have felt so alone, sorry you have been so afraid then and in the now. I am so sorry for the loss of your innocence. 

    You were and are entitled to you life. And you had a right to inherit your own body. And no matter what you did or what you think you failed to do you are not to blame. Sexual abuse is never a victim's choice. Sexual abuse is something that was done to your body not something you wanted. 

    This is an excerpt from: 

    http://web.archive.org/web/20130101063123/http://true-perspective.org 

    Kathleen and I encourage you to visit this site for perspective on your ordeal. Live happy and whole. Claim you power! 

    You are your own authority.

    Question Everything.  Including social, religious & political authorities

    Learn to listen and respond to your intuition.  It is never wrong.

    Learn to be impolite.  It must be part of your defense system.

    Nothing is unspeakable.

    Stare truth in the eye and speak it.

    You name abuse.  Listen to your body.  It will tell you.  It is never wrong. 

    Stare abuse in the eye and speak it.

    Stare abusers in the eye and name them.

    Use your voice.  Use your words. 

    BE LOUD.  Violence against girls, boys, women and men hides in the silent shadows.

    Know that you are powerful.

    KNOW THAT YOUR VOICE IS POWERFUL.   USE IT.



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