The Shape of Fire

I’ve come to believe that anger is the most talented shapeshifter on earth. It can slip through the cracks of a quiet life unnoticed, dress itself up as righteousness, wrap itself in grief, hide under a coat of exhaustion. It can sound like a sharp tongue, or wear the face of a silent woman who hasn’t spoken her truth in twenty years. Anger has a hundred disguises and a thousand more excuses for existing, but its job is always the same: to burn from the inside out.

For a long time, I thought anger was something that happened to me—like weather or illness—arriving without invitation. But the truth is, anger is a visitor we summon with our own unspoken ache. It blooms when we’ve been hurt one too many times, or when something inside us feels unbearably out of place. And once it’s inside, it begins its slow work of rearranging the furniture of our souls.

Anger is not polite.

It will tip over your peace like a table set for Sunday dinner.

It will steal sleep, sour the stomach, harden the heart.

It will make a thief of your breath and a stranger of your better judgment.

And if left unattended, anger will make you sick. Not the kind of sick you can name in a doctor’s office, but the deeper kind—the kind that dulls the light behind your eyes and pulls a shadow across the body. I’ve seen people swollen with anger so old it feels fossilized. Their minds become cluttered with resentments they’ve polished like heirlooms. Their bones carry tension like a second skeleton. There is a heaviness that comes from hauling the same grievances through every decade of one’s life.

But the most treacherous thing anger does is pretend that it’s something else entirely. You can call it stress. You can call it tiredness. You can call it disappointment, frustration, irritation, envy, heartbreak, even apathy. But peel back the layers, and you’ll see that red pulse, that trembling ember waiting to ignite. Sometimes it even hides beneath sadness or depression, too ashamed to admit that what it really wanted was for someone to say, I hear you. I see how deep that wound goes.

When I finally began to name my own anger, it startled me how childlike it was.

A tantrum.

A foot stomp.

A small voice shouting, It’s not fair! from a corner of my grown woman's heart.

There is something humbling—almost tender—about realizing that the rage of a fifty-year-old is often the cry of a five-year-old who never felt safe enough to speak. When I picture myself that way, I soften. I imagine a little girl who doesn’t yet know how to use words for her hurt, so she screams instead. And I realize how often my adult anger is just that same scream wrapped in sophisticated language.

Seeing that child in myself doesn’t excuse my anger, but it explains it.

And once understood, anger becomes less of a monster and more of a messenger.

So what do we do with it?

First, we tell the truth.

Not to others—at least not at first.

To ourselves.

I am angry because I feel unseen.

I am angry because I expected something different.

I am angry because I am hurting.

These admissions are not comfortable, but they are the doorway.

Then we breathe. Not the shallow breaths of someone bracing for impact, but the deep, rib-widening breaths that remind your body you are not in danger. Most people don’t realize that anger cannot survive inside a body that is breathing slowly. It needs short, frantic breaths to stay alive.

After that, we listen.

Anger is loud, but underneath the shouting is always a longing—something softer asking to be tended.

And finally, when we have held our anger long enough to understand it, we can do the work of transforming it.

Because here is the secret no one tells you:

Anger is just passion wearing a disguise.

At its core, anger is energy—hot, raw, electric. It is the same energy that fuels creation, innovation, devotion, courage. The same current that can destroy a life can also rebuild one. But transformation is a choice. Anger asks, What will you do with me? Burn your own house down, or light the lantern that guides you forward?

I have taken my anger and turned it into fire for my own becoming.

Not by pretending it isn’t there, but by directing its heat.

Passion is simply anger with a purpose.

It is the decision to rise rather than collapse.

It is the moment you tell the child inside you, “Come with me. We’ll do this together.”

Anger will visit all of us. That part is non-negotiable.

But we do not have to let it burn us alive.

We can learn to hold it the way we’d hold a frightened child—firmly, gently, with clarity.

We can learn to harvest the heat without surrendering to the flames.

And when we do, we discover that the fire meant to destroy us has been the same fire lighting the path home.

Hari Om Tat Sat