I have diligently been “uhum…attempting” for the last few weeks to put together my dyslexia speech for toastmasters. I admit it hasn’t been going well….my biggest struggle is the 7 minute cut-off time that I have to make the speech in. (FYI that’s only about 2 pages of writing. TWO!😤 ). Needless to say, Gayle, Roxy (and Weezer) have all been (not-so-silently) raging against this atrocious restriction of their God-given talent. ‘Brevity’ and ‘conciseness’ are both swear words in their dictionary. (I mean if we were doing a Ted Talk we would get a whole 20 minutes you know!)

As infuriating as this has been I am aware that it’s often those things that anger and irritate us the most in life that are simply sign-post. 🆘 towards some of our bigger life lessons or emotional blocks. As a result, I have been thinking quite a bit about anger these last few weeks. When I look back over the last couple of years it is encouraging to see how much my awareness of my own anger has grown. Five years ago if you had asked me if I considered myself an angry person I would have emphatically said: “hell no”. 😳(Depressed maybe…but definitely not angry.) I remember once commenting to Konrad, my psychologist, way back when that I never got road rage. (I secretly felt a ‘well done 👍⭐was in order….. he said nothing) I was so proud of the fact that I had learnt to contain all my fury and no longer shouted at the wankers…..oops sorry….I mean the ‘lost souls’ who would just cut me off on the freeway. For most of my 30s learning not to express anger had been my ultimate goal. (Thy shalt be ‘cool, calm and collected’ = ultimate sign of a healthy soul.😇)

What I seemed to miss was the fundamental fact that anger is part of the human spectrum of emotions. 😱 Simply training myself to suppress my angry words did little good if my underlying vibration was still one of anger. (You would think that much would be obvious.) I didn’t realize that ‘my experience’ of depression simply emphasized anger turned inwards. Angry or frustrated thoughts and words that were swallowed down for sake of being a kinder, more loving, more ‘likeable’ person only made me more self-critical and judgmental of myself. And can you believe it…..even more, angrier in the long term? I think Martha Beck’s phrase ‘the approval whore’ just summed me up perfectly. 🙈Feeling the need to be ‘persistently agreeable’ can be exhausting work. These last few years I have begun to understand how anger is simply the symptom of a whole host of underlying emotions that are so often not even looked at, such as sadness, fear, loneliness, shame… It took losing my mother in 2016 and the experience of grief to eventually ‘push’ me into my very own ‘rage pool.’💦 It hasn’t always been pretty, but hell it feels so liberating to finally realize that I am strong enough to actually start swimming through it. So this is what I have learnt.

1. Have more compassion and empathy for myself. (It’s ok to feel angry, its called being human)
2. Try to understand the underlying emotions, thought patterns and inner critical dialogue that are so often hidden in my anger. 
3. Learn to find ways to express it that are kind and loving.
4. Should I fail at point three, (inevitably it happens😰) learn to own it and be gracious enough to apologize. 
5. Accept that some days I just need to yell at the ‘wankers’ that refuse to let me into their lane. (Well not directly ‘at’ them of course😂) But then drop it, let it go! Don’t spend the next day, week, or month talking about the idiots of the world….they really and truly don’t deserve that much airtime in my life.

(For the record: I am still a looooong way away from receiving a Noble Peace prize❗)

This brings me back to my speech…..What the fuck….7 min????

So I had to stop and ask myself why this was pissing me off so completely…😤😤😤?

It just linked into the biggest insecurity that I have had about my writing. It tapped into shame and this feeling of just not being good enough. For years I have berated myself for not being able to cut my somewhat lengthy posts down to the “less-is-more” ideal. Well, during these last few weeks I finally decided that this needs to stop.

Random story: I once had a boyfriend comment on how I seem to physically touch so many things that I pass in the shops. He thought it was sweet….it was a rather arbitrary observation but it stuck with me. I guess I write in the same way….dipping in and out of various stories and life lessons. Leaving nothing untouched.

Some people enjoy this meandering way of writing.👣👣👣

Some people can’t bare the incessant waffling 🙉

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, I can’t please everyone.

….so I have decided from now on to just please myself. (Oh my God, I feel so grown up😂).

So I have been feeling ever so enlightened by my newest realization. That is, until I climbed off my soapbox and suddenly realized I had 4 days left till my speech and that yes, it still had to be 7 minutes long.😖😵 Numerous attempts to ‘hacksaw’ down my dyslexia speech to this awful allotted time were simply just not working and I was starting to get slightly panicked. 😱So I did what any responsible writer would do. I completely abandoned that ship (for now) and decided to write about something completely different….something that has helped me significantly soothe my anger in the past. Meditation.

Of course, I wrote way too much for this one as well….but I managed to successfully butcher🔪 it down to 7 min and 17 seconds for my speech! (whoooo hoooo I was proud!! ) Giving the speech I was so nervous I practically read the entire thing……but I live in hope that the nerves will eventually dissipate. 🙏

‘Persistent’, ‘determined’ and ‘tenacious’ are all highlighted, underlined and circled in my dictionary.💪

Thanks for listening

Much love
⭐💐🌈🍄🐝💞💕

Ps Speech to follow shortly😂