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Women are raised to care for others, to be nurturing & sweet, and unless you enjoy being called a bitch, you should never raise your voice or be aggressive! Above all, never show anger, which is unacceptable behavior for a woman whether you’re raised to be a Southern Belle or not.
In my writing workbook Wild Women Write: Reconnecting with the Wild Feminine, one of the first topics to be addressed is the forbidden expression of anger. The section “Claiming the Full Power of Our Instinctual Natures” teaches us that we possess both the power to destroy and the power to create. Disowning or repressing our dark, wild side leads to our projecting it onto others. By learning to recognize and be responsible for our own disruptive or cruel energy, we are able to release our rage and fierceness without harming ourselves or others.
Kali Spirit Mask to Elizabeth Prosapio from art exercise in Wild Women Write
Once our “nice girl” persona begins to melt away in recognition of the heat and passion of these “raging” creator-destroyer archetypes, there emerges the possibility for an integrated wholeness of the self to take place, which requires us to recognize how powerful we really are. Our words and actions can destroy as well as create and there are times when we must speak out; to remain silent means we are accepting of the situation.
One of many writing exercises in this section of the workbook asks the question “How was anger or its expression treated in your family?” Most women’s written response was two words: Not Allowed. I was one of those women trained to swallow my anger as you will see in the following excerpt from my memoir A Southern Belle in Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob.
Today’s Excerpt:
WHEN IT’S TIME TO SPEAK OUT!
I sat waiting on a hard bench in front of Dr. Weinstein’s office, the visiting psychiatrist from El Paso, anxiously wringing my hands and watching the minute hands on the hallway clock tick by, hoping to god I wouldn’t see anyone I knew because I was so embarrassed and ashamed to be seeing a psychiatrist. Thirty minutes past our appointment time, a man opened the door and stuck his head out.
“Are you Mrs. Canto?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Come in. Have a seat. I’m Dr. Weinstein,” he said in an unfamiliar accent I soon would learn belonged to a New Yorker. “How did you feel about having to wait thirty minutes past our appointment time?” he asked, jumping right in, without any small talk or get acquainted talk, something we Southerners always do.
What kind of question is that? I thought to myself.
“I didn’t think anything really,” I stammered. “Maybe that you couldn’t break away from your client?… I mean, I didn’t think anything,” I said, my voice trailing off. I felt like a six-year-old.
“You didn’t feel any anger?” he queried, staring hard at me.
“Anger?” I asked as though I’d never heard the word. In fact, it wasn’t a word in my vocabulary or a subject I knew much about. Anger was forbidden, wrong. It was unbecoming to a girl or a lady of Southern Belle origins.
“You mean you didn’t feel any sense of being disrespected or disregarded?”
“No, I guess I didn’t. I just thought you had something important you were doing or, well, I don’t know what you mean really,” I stammered again. This was even more horrible than my obsessive and vivid imagination had imagined it would be. This man was a monster!
“Why are you here?” he asked, relenting on the question of anger that apparently, I hadn’t been able to answer to his satisfaction.
“Because Doctor Middleton said I should see you.”
“Anything else?”
I hated this man! Why had Dr. Middleton suggested I could benefit from seeing and talking to him?
“I’ve been having anxiety attacks and sometimes I get so nervous I can hardly function,” I blurted out, reaching into my handbag for a tissue.
“Tell me about yourself. What’s your life like? What do you do every day? Are you happy?”
“Dr. Weinstein, please. I can’t answer all those questions at once. You’re going too fast,” I responded, a hint of irritation creeping into my voice.
“Good!” he yelled.
“What? What’s good?” I asked, my voice getting stronger at this man’s incessant pushing me towards something I didn’t understand. His pushing for something felt mean, making me feel I had to fight back.
“You had a real response just then. You didn’t like what I said and you pushed back at me. That’s what was good. So, please go on and tell me about yourself, your life.
I rattled off some basic details. “I’m a wife, mother, full-time college student, no longer a church person, have a few friends that…”
“Whoa! Back up. What’s a church person?”
“I was raised in a very strict religious faith,” I said, ringing the already damp tissue in my hands into tiny pieces, not sure I could explain something that was growing less clear to me every day. “It emphasized rigid adherence to church doctrine and Biblical scripture for morals and values. Since my husband’s tour in Vietnam, I’ve been questioning the church’s relevancy, especially how everything is interpreted and run by men.”
“Go on, go on,” he said excitedly, as if he’d finally struck pay dirt.
“I’m in university now, completing a B.A. degree and I’ve met a few professors on campus who have radically different ideas from any I’ve ever heard.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like women have a right to choose what they want to do with their lives, like they don’t have to be only housewives or mothers if they don’t want to, and they don’t have to ask permission all the time to do what they feel is right.”
“Have you ever told anyone to go to hell?” he asked out of the blue.
“What? No! Never!” I replied, absolutely stunned at his question, flinging my words back at him as vehemently as someone might who’d just had a dead rat dropped in their lap.
“It might be a good idea for you to assert yourself once in a while and tell a few people to go to hell.”
With that outlandish remark, he looked down at his watch, then his appointment calendar. “Let’s make another appointment for next week,” he said.
“Okay, I guess.” As I stood to leave, he made another riveting remark.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Mrs. Canto; and I’m not here to make you into a better Lt. Colonel’s wife. Thank about that until next time.”
Be the end of the shortened session, I was more confused than ever, but mysteriously I’d begun to think that just maybe Dr. Weinstein might not be as big a monster as I’d thought. Although I’d been completely shocked at his radical statements and questions, a part of me had felt heard, had felt seen for the first time in a long time and, like an emotionally starving person, I wanted more.
What happens next? Does our heroine rush out and tell someone to go to hell?
Or, does she retreat back into her safe place of being a “nice girl”?
Click HERE to order A Southern Belle in Paris and find out!
Do you have a copy of my writing workbooks?
Wild Women Write: Reconnecting with the Wild Feminine
Wild Women Write takes you to the core of your instinctual feminine essence by familiarizing you with tales & stories of women who walked in their power, providing archetypal models to reclaim & reconnect to that sacred place within ourselves that is both wild and powerful. Writing & art exercises help you to dive deep into your own unique self & to express what you find there!
Writes of Passage: Writing Through the Seasons of Your Life
Have you been wanting to write your memoir… tell your life story but don’t know where to start? Writes of Passage is the perfect book to help you get started. For each of the four phases of your life: childhood, young adult, mature adult, & elder, there are writing & art exercises that will give you all the material you’ll need to begin your memoir!
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Aloha! Marjorie