East of the Son/West of the Mom: The Day My Hair Turned Green

By Mysti Easterwood

Part I – Saturday

When my son Taz turned 11 in 2007 he had an upburst of testosterone so powerful it rattled the kitchen cabinets. For several days I thought the boy was having an allergic reaction to our early spring, or was scoring steroids in the bathroom at school.

Mysti Easterwood.
Mysti Easterwood.

Taz is a triple Leo – Sun rising and his ruling planet, Venus, in Leo. I am a triple Cancer, with a splashy Mars/Uranus conjunct in my Cancerian eighth house. We do not, by way of understatement, argue nicely.

On this particular Saturday morning, no opportunity to act-out was left unexploited, no door went un-slammed (except the refrigerator’s); shoes, t-shirts, books were dropped in doorways, kicked along the stairs. He raged through brushing his teeth, used the remote by hurling it at the TV and things seemed to break just by being in the room with him. We had gone from zero to 60 before breakfast, and the energy had not yet peaked.

I called my creative partner – a double Taurus with Virgo rising — and described the riotous conditions. He lived 100 miles up the road, in a household of continuous mayhem. His method of dealing with it had been simply to acquiesce. “Let it be,” he said, his bottomless patience washing over me.

I had my eye on a lunar eclipse coming up later that day, and was determined to make a rendezvous with the event. My method would be to meet Taz’s onslaught with the �peaceful answer, which turneth away wrath.’ It would be an experiment, to see how hot and tepid intermingled.

And there was plenty of opportunity to mingle, if not tangle. My consort called back around noon, surprised to find me uncharacteristically serene. The kiddo’s temper ramped and flowed throughout the day. When I offered a homeopathic remedy for anger, it triggered a stomping fit that cracked the downstairs ceiling.

Five o’clock rolled around, and I wanted to be in visual range of the rising Moon. My bedroom windows faced north, and this required eastern sightlines. The living room was the only place in the house that offered this orientation. I dragged my cushions downstairs and plopped them in front of the TV.

“What are you doing?!” the young dragon screeched from the stairwell. “Meditating,” I said, “care to join me?” This invitation – like everything that day — was not well received. The neighbors in the adjoining duplex thumped the common wall in frustration.

“Pretty sure they can hear you,” I noted, “but now I am going Inside.”

I closed my eyes. No yogin* in a cave full of centipedes ever had a rougher launch. Taz started small — throwing pencils, wadded up paper, plastic animals. Most bounced off the wall, a few landed on the side of my head. I sat, breathing, announcing my confidence in the universe and its awakened Ones. From his point of view this was intolerable: I must be mocking him. He stomped upstairs, returning with better ammo. Clothing, rubber balls, a couple of books. But the trance had kicked in. Eyes still closed, I felt my body sway to avoid the largest of these projectiles. After about 15 minutes he gave up in disgust, went back to his room and sulked.

Lunar eclipses often feel very �hot’ to me, not surprising since my natal Aquarius Moon keeps a quincunxed lid on that eighth house pressure-cooker. Eclipses let the lid slide off a degree or two, but this one felt cool compared to the triple-Sun-boy standing above me on the stairs. By 5:30 there was a gust of starry, chill energy sweeping through the room. The physical temperature actually fell about 15 degrees. I opened my eyes and started laughing. Everything Taz had thrown in his rage had formed an archipelago around me. I thought briefly about asking him to take a picture before I stood up, but decided against it. Better to let sulking Lions lie.

Part II – Sunday morning

The next morning, even before opening my eyes, I realized that something was off. Way off. I felt haggard, compressed — as though I had been swallowed by a morose anaconda. It took half an hour to convince myself to swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Feet on the floor, I spent another 15 minutes considering the relative futility of almost everything. Things did not improve when I stood up.

Taz was already downstairs, chatting with his friends online, a bowl of cereal on the coffee table. “Hey Mom,” he greeted me brightly. I grunted something in Mommish, and lumbered toward the kitchen. Standing in the doorway, confusion swarmed me: what was I doing here, and why? Some kind of existential crisis was trying to declare itself, but the inquisitive part of my mind was running diagnostics. This (hmmm), this despair (hmmm), it felt – well, physical.

Moving with the panache of a sloth on Demerol, I pulled out the teapot and filled it up. As the water started to heat, it hit me: this is the product of ignoring aggression. Now I got it. One day of allowing Taz to run over me, and I was in the tank. I had watched my partner take similar blows of abuse and scorn for years; saw it age him, perforate his humor, chew up his gifts. But this desolation – as norepinephrines are told to shush, sit down, be good — would be the real consequence, every fucking day.

I turned back to the stove; my dulled reflexes did not see the sleeve of my robe in the fire. I raised my arm, wreathed in flames. “Uh… hey, Taz…” I turned toward the living room, trailing my waist-length hair across the burning sleeve. “Could you come here a sec?” Flipping my hair over my shoulders, it set fire to the back of my robe. Taz rounded the corner, making a perfect Homer Simpson scream when he saw his mother standing in a fiery nimbus. I pulled the robe over my head and onto the floor as he scrambled to fill a bowl with water. He hesitated, wondering if he could get away with dousing me in the middle of the kitchen. I cocked an eyebrow and pointed to the smoldering robe: “Fire’s on the floor, dude.”

The tableau couldn’t have been more vivid. Unrequited anger, turned away at the gate — even under color of mindfulness — had triggered the cascade of stupefaction called вЂ?depression’. After I crawled through the aftermath and scored this insight, life brought a quick reveille — so loud my hair caught fire. It might as well have been spontaneous combustion.

The next day I picked up a late appointment in my neighborhood salon. After Saria had trimmed away the toasty bits, I said, “While I’m here, let’s go ahead and light it up.” “You’re finally going blonde!” she crowed. The day was westering, and a rare green twilight hovered on the horizon, somewhere between the sun’s auratic gold and a shadow of lunar blue. “Only on the way to that color,” I said, pointing to the phantom light. “I doubt that comes in a bottle, but we’ll see what we can do.”

*practitioner of yoga

34 thoughts on “East of the Son/West of the Mom: The Day My Hair Turned Green”

  1. Morning All… I discovered that the David Barash article (I mentioned it way back at the beginning of this post) is no longer available online. But I archived a copy of it on one of my w/sites.

    This is the researcher who came up with hard data on referred aggression about six months after the ‘peaceful answer’ day and its subsequent hairflare. I don’t agree with most of his conclusions, but it was a very interesting study, and I am using it to write my way through another essay that answers his view and incorporating your responses.

    Here’s the address for the archived copy. It’s a bit long, but the first 2/3rds may be worth your time. www dot humandala dot org/targets_of_aggression dot html

  2. Morning Patty et al, thanks for sharing as usual. Yes, this is a reach from Mystes article, however – I find it hard to separate out the varying strands of the anger/lust theme…so to me it’s all a fit.

    Love the ‘blip’ moment – have experienced it many times!! H.

  3. A lot of illness results from child abuse. I could tell a lot of stories, but I can tell you this – the taxpayers have to pay for it so it is in their best interest to root it out and get rid of it. I know a lot of people on social security and medicaid who were abuse victims. They are not able to work because of mostly mental health problems that lead to physical problems. The young man I mention above has a serious health problem that costs 5,000 a month to treat. His mom is on social security and medicaid, and so are his other 3 brothers and sisters. The man who committed the crime against his mother is no longer in prison, but that’s all I know about him. So out of just this one family, and the criminal, you can probably tally up millions in care and supervision over their lifetimes.

    I know this was a reach from Mystes original article, but sex and anger taken to the extreme are really the root of so much evil. I see the blip as being the moment you recognize yourself in the situation. Then you love and forgive and heal all relationships.

  4. patty, the victim abuser rescuer triangle came up with the end of the year holiday unhappy celebration of the mideast conflict.

    When it comes to this sexual abuse stuff, I am at a loss. I don’t think I was sexually abused as a child, I have no memory of it, I was too busy screaming at people to quit picking at me. Lot a good that did.

    The only way I could find to forgive those who have done this to you is once again a story. It’s a small town where I was raised and once again reside. A young woman left for college and had what they called a nervous breakdown. In counselling, she found the sexual abuse by her father. She talked to her sister and her sister related the same had happened to her. The father’s response was, I didn’t hurt them, I used vasoline. What a caring guy, huh? The abused would say he was out to lunch. I don’t know where the hell he was. It was another time and space.

    Anyway, I want to do something that’s maybe crazy here. I want to thank all the abused children of this generation for coming out and saying enough. Apparently child abuse is nothing new and has been going on for generations. To all of the abused out there, you have empowered the generations to come to say no. Children are now educated on the abuses. You move humanity forward as we advance our experience of each other . It was a dirty job, but you are the brave that have done it. Your stories have made a difference.

    I feel much the same way about our dead boys in uniform. To all the drunken guilt ridden vets, it was a dirty job, but you showed us what war does. If only the vet administration would honor the vets for peace movement.

  5. Mystes – there’s no question for me, just simply digestion and understanding. Though find it interesting the alternatives you offer – rejection/craving for example. That rang a bell for me. That dance plays out often, rarely noticed by those in the dance – what people do to get what they crave and what they reject in the process…

    Thanks for your thoughts. An intense adoloescence preceded by an intense childhood – it is the life. Love to you, H.

  6. Sometimes I think I’m here to help the people who need help through their own past life atonement too. A spiritual healer told me I had abuse injuries from a past-life, which I believe to be true seeing as how he was able to help me heal. He said that this thing cycles through some families generation after generation. I believe it I think.

    My sister in law and her younger sister were both assaulted, knifed and raped as teens by a neighbor. The sister in law lost a lung and ovary, but she seems normal except for the fear of knives. Her younger sister never really recovered. The worst part of it was that their mother blamed them for the attack. Sister in law was 17 and younger sister was 15. The attacker was a neighbor. Wish there was a way to look at the astrology of everyone to see where they are connected, because the whole family has been in and out of abusive situations. The younger sister (later in life) sent her kids to foster care, and her oldest son ended up with a child molester. He was raped every day for 5 years by the man who took him in.

    How do you stop the abuse cycle is the question. Does your spirit cry out, ‘hit me!’ ?Seems like we had this discussion before on PW, but I don’t remember the situation. The victim/abuser situation seems to run on a continuum within the same families.

  7. mystes, sex and aggression. Do you think we will dissolve if one day we move beyond our monkey behavior? Just curious.

  8. Hi Hazel…Pretty intense adolescence you had there! And it sounds like you have been working your way into a useful reckoning. I read and re-read your letter a couple of times, and forgive me, but I can’t make out if you have a question. In other words, I don’t understand what you don’t understand. ~8ВєD

    If lust doesn’t make sense to you as the other face of anger, then try on rejection/craving, or frustration/demand. The crucial (literally) issue is the spot or blip or erasure in awareness that splits them, so that it looks like you have the one, someone else has the other.

    It’s almost a metabolic trick of consciousness. Well, let me not be coy. It is *the* trick of consciousness. If we didn’t have this me-here/you-there tension in our sensory array (coded principally through Vision — thank you, Ma Kali) we wouldn’t be conscious at all. We’d be lichen growing one-notefully upon our rock.

    There’s more, but I need to step back to my other work. Bobos, ho!

    ***
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    *

  9. I got color on the brain.

    I asked the wise woman secretary at work if she noticed a crankiness in the group that day? She looked at me and laughed and said, haven’t you read the dress for success book. Well, no I hadn’t. Apparently the coral orange shell auntie had knitted for me, was not a color to wear for success. It agitates. Okay, then.

    A gal pal said, it was the only time I saw red. I said that’s an expression right? People really don’t see red. Oh no, she said, I saw red. I asked one other about it, and she saw red once too.

    I remembered I had seen white once. It was like a blazing star, kinduv like venus when it hangs low and close to the earth on a clear night. I don’t know if it was death, or a bright idea, or the person was a taurus (I’m weird like that sometimes). It was a turning point when I did lose control of my senses (for what that’s worth, what does that mean anyway) and I did make a decision. And looking back it was one of those “sign” things. That’s best as I can do.

    My healer and guy pal used color energy. He saw energy from a young child on. He told me he drowned when he was four. But another energy came in, I believe people who believe this stuff called him a “walk in.” He did not talk much of color except when he was in a room and there were red streaks moving through the air. It made him uncomfortable.

    I know that some healers balance chakras and use colored stones. And they have a chakra color system mapped. It must follow the theory that we are beings of light. For white is all color.

    There is a great movie The Girl With The One Pearl Earring. And as I think of color, I think of the blending to make color.

    When I think of you, mystes, and your leo son. Well, the leo is just something else aint he? There’s nothing quite like the leo. (that doesn’t mean the leo is any easier to live with). If I were to buy on to the chakra color system, the color green would tell me heart energy.

    I really don’t know what all this means, except that I am puzzled by the orange creative agitation. Oh well, so much for color. Aunt Alice is calling. Another adventure waits. A new lunch date with an old wise woman.

  10. Still trying to make some sense of this anger/lust theme. It’s percolating…
    From 13 onwards, I was the target and victim of some full on sexual abuse of a kind (not parental). Almost any male I met, and they were usually older, decided that I was a girl that would have to ‘git some’. Sometimes these were people I knew, other times these were strangers in the street who came for me, when out walking my dog, for example. When I should have been safe, I was vulnerable as hell. I actually didn’t know what I had (what was bringing this to me).

    I ended up keeping ‘shush’ about this for the most part as my family were not receptive to my cries for help. They had their own shit going on – and it’s true, they did. I finished up ‘blocked’ in every sense of the word, but fought through, and alone. Sadly, up until I was about 39 I suffered from chronic panic disorder. On the surface you would not have known. I was a very successful businesswoman. However, in order to keep it together, I had suppressed every known feeling I had from 13 onwards and that was what I did to myself. Thankfully, I kept seeking solutions, I knew there was a way out and I found it. However, anger, which had always lurked in violent spasms within me, eventually found an outlet which was safe. With that coming out, so did a whole load of other emotions I had blocked in with the anger. My creative side blossomed for a kick-off (my family wondered what had happend to that girl and her writing, her humour, her ability to wander about her head and deliver another view). Well she arrived again. I left the corporate bollocks a long time ago. I also kept up my inner child work, and kept up my connecting with people. Something I avoided for years as I lost who I was, through protecting myself.

    So this anger thing is curious for me. Residues are there, and as I both study and teach self-awareness, I watch, listen and feel. I express anger very well now, I recieve it well too, though occasionally if I meet a male with a lot of that anger going on, I still struggle a bit. I can still feel sick with that.

    I don’t have a particularly busy 8th house, but saturn and chiron are both there in pisces. I mention that given what I have read of abuse and saturn in the 8th. I do, however, have a packed 12th house.

    I also learned that despite what I thought, I am a very strong, resilient person who has quite a bit to share. So that’s what I do now. With love, Hazel.

  11. Mystes, Yes that was sort of what I was referring to. I looked at the sabian symbols too, and for the situations I’m looking at, it fits. We are sometimes angry for reasons we don’t get, and some of it is sexual – from a past life even. All pain I’ve experienced in this life is sexual. I must have been a son of a bitch last lifetime.

  12. Patty writes: “Letting someone’s anger wash through you like water over the dam is one way to do that, but most people react with equal anger.”

    Patty, fineheart, you are talking about the path of morality. Yes, very Buddhist. That (and most religious systems) use what one perceives to be a ‘good’ emotion to control what one perceives to be a ‘bad’ one. Both arise from perceptual frameworks over which you have very little conscious control. The “blip” as I call it, between one framework and another is about ye ” ” wide according to the emotive self, but deepdeepdeepdeep once you get a toehold.

    Again, anger and lust arise together. They are bound, like a Janus-head, facing away from each other. In a “tantric” moment –through wrath or through profound desire– you see the *whole* head, the point at which they are bound and have a BFO insight into the *particular problem* that keeps each side unaware of the other.

    Then –with the last tiny bit of energy– you *release* the problem. It’s a kind of detonation, but very funny, very friendly and in the end very ‘soft.’

    Haven’t you ever had a breakthrough in the middle of an argument, and wound up laughing your ass off?

    Like that, but bigger.

    Kissies,

    M

  13. Mystes, I thought of another person who is probably conjunct my nessus degree who was a problem for me in the past.

    If you can figure that out early on you can work on the self-forgiveness angle too, and make the whole problem go away. That’s what happened with both people that I’m thinking about. Sometimes the anger is too large for both of you and you have to change it in to something you can live with (love?). Letting someone’s anger wash through you like water over the dam is one way to do that, but most people react with equal anger.

    I should be buddhist monk.

  14. Mystes, You have stumbled upon something that is profound, the root of madness even.

    Riding the blip doesn’t quite sink in for this bobo though. Expansive vision of what we hate – I think it might be right there in nessus. The one who rapes you omight be someone you raped in the past life (or harmed in some way). After reading Eric’s note yesterday, I thought about the person who most injurred me and my husband, a person that I suspect is conjunct my nessus and my husband’s 2nd house. Oh yes, he’s someone we both hated with passion, and who caused the most life-altering change in our lives – which ultimately blessed us.

    Astrology can drive you crazy too.

  15. Jlo… Goddess knows I *tried*. I called him Taz while he was in the oven. After Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone. What can I say? I was in grad school.

    Then we called him GlowBall for a while (global). He’s still glowing.

    Solace. Whooo.. that’s a name!

    M

  16. Hey love, names don’t matter, unless you’re taking …. 🙂 [Eric and I have already been through this shit!] all smiles… Cat’s got it pretty right on…. (outside of externals…. I’m absorbing the free-clear realm right now) .

    Of course you didn’t name the kid “Taz”, that would hella suck for him! I named my kid Solace Ethereal Ash. Now that’s a bad-ass name. But the story is still the same… 11 years old dude…. that is so freakin’ young,…. so far to go in this world, but, you’ve oppurtunity to meet an open friend, so close, so… there.
    I don’t know how you all run but, peers are cooler than wards and we’re all in this one together….

    Love Ya cat Myst,

    Jere

  17. Victorious,

    The consort’s ‘let it be’ was not transcendental. It has pulverized him, on every imaginable level. That day in 2007 I decided to completely surrender to his technique and see where it took me. For the first time I understood the roots of depression. It was formidable.

    Men (women too, but differently) need two things: sex and aggression. From those, oddly enough, they can build compassion, insight, power, joy. Destroy either one, and the other can compensate (to a certain extent). Destroy both, and the abyss opens.

    ***
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    *

  18. The creative partner, let it be person. He’s got it. It will be until it ain’t no more.

    Thank the person for reminding me of dear old dad. It was his all-time best line, let it be, just let it alone. Now that’s faith. How many times I’ve repeated that line in situations of unrest with my nerves rattling. Sometimes I just cannot fix it for others or even be helpful so I just have to let the process take its course. I just can’t make it any different than what it is going to be. Hard acceptance lesson for me. And there are times when helpful advice does me no good either.

    I love your fire in the kitchen picture. We humans are so amusing. We all take our turn slipping on the banana peel I guess.

  19. Jere… thanks for the love, doll. Taz (not his real name, btw) is, hmmm… a phenomenon. One of my doubts about this article was whether was okay to reveal this day and its oddball, cataclysmic energy. We talked. He’s fine with it, and we both learned a few things in the writing and discussion.

    He is *always* in the loop with me – in an age-appropriate way. Ditto with his dad.

  20. Sara writes: “it’s valuable for me to “respond” in some way to something coming at me,”

    Yes! Engagement is *huge*… as much for you to discover when and how to use that heat as manage the more ‘aikido’ techniques.

  21. H’azel, (you Islamic angel, you) “this up and coming book of yours Tantra for Bobos – what are bobos exactly? This could be one of these вЂ?across the pond’ usage moments”

    First : Not a book. Set of essays, bite size. My friend Jade is writing a *book* called Tantra for Bubbas. That is a book. A real book about how Good Old Boys in Texas have a new way to Roll Holy.

    Bobo means ‘simpleton’ in Spanish. I’d’ve gone to Tantra for Dummies: how to have tantric sex with your inflatable doll… but you know, market’s kinda blown (groooooaaan).

    I love the word Bobo. I *am* a Bobo (on my good days).

    So. Tantra for Bobos.

    Thanks for asking!

  22. Mystes and everyone else~

    It’s great to read your entries on this subject. This karmic anger wheel is very interesting. I think what I’m learning is that it’s valuable for me to “respond” in some way to something coming at me, in a clear and strong way. I need to remember the important of “responding” for me so that I don’t take in/on an attack/assault and have my own voice go underground.

    I’ve under-estimated the important of giving myself “permission” to react or respond. After a long and painful death like- experience this winter I am more clear about needing to support my own voice power, especially when others won’t.

    Thanks for the reminders..

  23. Mystes,

    ::::koff:::

    Uh, yes…..I do know.

    ::::laughing:::: Now I get what you were working at.

    Thanks for clarifying.

  24. Beautiful forum… so, what the fuck do we do about kids and that damned growing in to their own state!? I say have a cusion and a smile, and let them grow in the ways that will expand your perceptions within the universe…. AHH, you have found THAT though. You have ALSO found the reality where you cannot allow anyone else to Fuck with you!

    NOBODY, EVER, DESERVES SOMEONE ELSES ABUSE!!!!! (Got it?)

    I don’t personally know your bags, but…. I’ll comment none the less,
    “KID knows what’s up. You have to adjust (I’m aware of the external provocations that adjust our DAILY beings), to the INDIVIDUAL that is….. YOUR FREAKING PEER!!!
    But, it aint so fucking out there for anyone to think that relation matters. OR that it can be adjusted on the soul level.

    Yeah, Don’t ever put up with shit or be abused by the boy….. Keep it real and keep the boy in the know…. Boy needs to be elevated, don’t overshadow, and don’t pomp out…… cat will appreciate your substance……
    damn, I love you beautiful
    Jere (Me);)

  25. Hi Mystes – not related to article, but have been meaning ask you – this up and coming book of yours 🙂 Tantra for Bobos – what are bobos exactly? This could be one of these ‘across the pond’ usage moments…, Hazel.

  26. Hi CareCare7,

    Yes, those are all sane, sensible responses to children’s out(up)bursts. We did and have done all of those management techniques, communication techniques, to good effect.

    The lunar eclipse/hairgreening day was a different category of experience. Taz and I (and my consort) all *needed* the insight that would come with unrequited anger. It was worth every broken dish, 8 inches of hair, a bathrobe, and a full day of watching the process.

    Anger and Lust are pair-bonded. At another level, the iteration is want/don’twant; at another it is here/there; at another it is in/out; at another it is (inhaling sound)/(exhaling sound).

    In Between is the key. Right in there, in the ‘blip.’ It has a cognate in the ‘blindspot’ of stereoscopic vision, in the turnaround emptiness between inbreath and outbreath. Getting down into that disjunction takes a certain amount of energy, which can come from impassioned love (*come ‘ere, ya big lug!*) or impassioned hatred/anger (get the *fuck* away from me!).

    There are other methods of penetrating that disjunction, but they can take years and years and year to activate.

    Using anger is fast; using lust is even faster. As you well know.

  27. Mysti,

    I have three teen daughters. When that same kind of thing hit them (the hormonal rollercoaster volcano) I stopped them from hurling anything or breaking things by sending them to their room to “think about what is bothering you.” They stomped and slammed the door but they stayed and even though they were still angry when they came out, I made it clear that throwing things, slamming things and any other destructive behavior was not acceptable because damaging things is costly. I said feelings are normal and ok, destructive actions are a choice and not acceptable.

    When they calmed down, I would go into their room and talk with them, ask them what they are feeling, try to get to the bottom of things and give them some ideas when they could not even express what they were feeling. They would reject some but inevitably they would accept one of two and grab on to these like a lifeline. I could see them thinking “you mean I am not bad or weird, or crazy or wrong to feel this way?” They needed reassurance that what they were feeling was perfectly normal and that I loved them regardless. I made sure they understood the difference between having a feeling and the actions they were choosing to express it. Destructive actions would not be allowed but I gave them ideas as to safe activities for expressing their pent up emotions so they had tools to use for expression. I told them they are right to have their feelings, but they just needed to make the right choices about what actions to take with those feelings.

    Somehow things have been a lot easier because of those conversations. I don’t know if boys are different and I will have to wait until my son is older and goes through that to know if the same methods will work for him. Maybe having my son do something physical while I talk to him, something not harmful but that is physical to burn off the hormonal steam, may help. Even now, when my daughters react with anger to me, I remind them that they cannot speak to me disrespectfully, that I don’t speak to them that way and that they can rephrase their anger in a more constructive and respectful way. They actually (and amazingly) do apologize, rephrase, and then we discuss. I have made them know they have a right to express their anger to me as long as it is done in a respectful way. This is good training for them because when they eventually are adults and relating to others, they will be able to express themselves respectfully yet get their anger across in a constructive way.

    As for dealing with anger and not reacting, I remember something the late Robert Anton Wilson once said that I was instinctively doing before I read it: the wheel of karma is in the anger; I can choose to ignore it to my own physical detriment, I can choose to react to a third party (the old “shit rolls downhill” method where you spread the anger) or I can stop the wheel by reacting with compassion and empathy with clear limits. I chose the latter and found I was healthy AND it helped the angry one to be validated. Instead of spreading anger, I stopped it and spread calmness, compassion and caring. I still made the limits clear by letting the angry one know that I would not allow or tolerate abusive behavior, but an honest angry outburst often could be diffused by validating the angry one and then giving compassion.

    The huge power there is in stopping that karmic anger wheel is amazing; I have seen it work every time. I walk away with a feeling of accomplishment and they walk away feeling like they solved something instead of them walking away feeling ashamed for their outburst. LIke Dr. Phil said, I am teaching them to treat me respectfully but as a confidant who will offer them validation and compassion. In short, they treat me like I am a healer. Not everyone is supposed to be that but it is my calling.

    I hope I made sense with all this. ::::laughing:::: I write books sometimes when I should just write a few sentences.

  28. Yes – kindred spirits don’t usually hurt each other intentionally. A less evolved spirit might get an ass whipping.

  29. So Sara, I guess Pat’s remark: “My mom always said that some people don’t know what nice is, so you have to tell them off. ” is really the practical answer.

    Depending on how volatile your character is, ‘telling ’em off’ can be a sensible solution. Especially if you can stay centered (in touch with your humor, curiosity, affection) during the feedback.

    But when anger is *really* raising anger, I hop on and ride it, aaaaalllll the way around the rodeo until it bonks up against its “opposite” (desire). This step is usually skipped by my more contemplative friends, who tell me that you can get insight on what’s bugging you without actually investigating it.

    Hmmm, I say, that’s some tasty theory you got there, but to understand *that* anger, and *its* specific karmic info, you have to strap on the asbestos underwear and hop on. Inside of each push is a pull. Aim for the spot between them and the whole heartscape opens up.

  30. This is very interesting! My son is a leo too, but he holds in anger (or did as a kid) to the point of real danger to himself. Even when he was a little kid, we could say ‘no’ to something he wanted to do, and he wouldn’t ask a second time or beg! But we discovered that he would go to his room and be depressed or cry. I finally had to tell him it was ok to disagree with us, and that if he explained why he really wanted to do something we could give it more consideration. That was how I tried to help him handle disappointments and frustrations. He is in the generation that has pluto in scorpio – they are a zealous group, and passionate, and their anger runs deep.

    But also, I have experienced that repression of anger too and the illness that goes with it, especially at work. My mom always said that some people don’t know what nice is, so you have to tell them off. There are nice ways of telling people off that don’t get you into too much trouble (I guess, but I am a Mars in Aries so my way usually involves gesturing and yelling). My little brother (a cancer) used to say “you are disturbing my wa” which stopped us, because we had to ask what he was talking about ( Japanese harmony). He can talk the blood out of a turnip.

  31. Hey Sara… Well, there’s always the hairdresser.

    I am looking through my archives to see if I can find a groundbreaking study by David Barash on redirected aggression – published about six months after my own ‘findings’ on this question. The gist is that incoming anger/aggression has a momentum that cannot be handled by passive resistance. The studies were carried out on a number of species, and every one of them registered higher, self-destructive levels of norepinephrines when exhibiting submissive behaviours. The animals who fared better were those who referred their stress to third party, pecking-order behaviours. Under exactly the same duress, they registered 30% or less of the adrenaline surges of their hapless cohort.

    Straight-up, I actually have no problem with anger. The way I understand it, consciousness is a waveform, composed of come-here/go-away. Attraction/Anger. The energy between them is dynamic and can be — once you get catch them upwelling from the root of your attention — expansive.

    So clearly, aggression invites response. But what kind?

    One can respond indirectly –using morality and ethics to attempt to ‘be good’ — and ignore the fact that your endocrines are churning out a nice batch o’ whupass. Or you can work with it directly; I’m not saying amplify it, but use the surge in your body to look *right* into the fact that anger/desire *always* arise together. What holds their disjunction is this weird little ‘blip’ – a little non-moment that allows them to seem different, when in fact they’re on the same continuum.

    Riding the passions back and forth, you will coast over that blip several times. If you hit that spot just right, you’ll have this sudden, expansive vision of what you hate and what you demand as inversions of one another – the karmic specifics you are dealing with will suddenly become a perfectly-balancing algebra, written in dust. The last little bit of grrrrrr energy will go to blow that equation off of the mirror.

    And then there’s Light.

    Your mileage may vary.

  32. This is a great piece~ thanks for sharing this story. I had this experience several times in the last year where I though not reacting, staying present and calm in the midst of other people’s storms and lashes at me would be the way through. It seemed so until I realized all those judgmental attacks really had hurt me and hadn’t come through the other side of me; they got stuck in me. And my not reacting but trying to be a zen presence of some sort, actually connected with losing a sense of my voice or it being locked in.
    So my question to you Mysti, is what have you found to be the better, healthier way for you in these kind of situation with your son or others who go on the attack?

    What do you recommend?

    S

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