As a woman in the helping professions, I have struggled with finding my voice. I have struggled especially with expressing anger in a graceful, professional way. These are the things that have helped me.

• Mindfulness meditation. Daily meditation helps me regain my equanimity quickly. It doesn’t mean I don’t get angry, but when I do, I’m able to let go of it quickly. I can forgive if that’s what’s needed, or I can move on to problem-solving if that’s the right approach.

• In April 2001, I did the 12-week program outlined in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. The program included writing 3-pages longhand every morning, and this is a practice I have continued off and on until now.

• Writing poems. In June 2001 I wrote the first of several poems that were published in FINDINGS, an annual collection of writings associated with ARMC and edited by Victor Bressler, MD.

This poem, “Finding My Voice,” came to me as I was grieving over the deaths of several patients and over my own losses. Medical school had caused me to leave pieces of myself behind, and I needed to reclaim them.  As I was meditating one day, I had a vision of awakening in near darkness with a tangled skein of red thread in my hands.

I was in medias res – in the middle of the story, but I knew which story it was. I was holding Ariadne’s thread, and I was in the Minotaur’s labyrinth. I didn’t know which end of the thread to follow.

One end would lead me out of the labyrinth. The other end would lead me toward the bellowing monster. Interpreting the vision felt like interpreting a dream. The bellowing monster represented my anger; he was doing the bellowing for me.

Finding My Voice

If my throat is a deep well
to jump into, the fall, to my
surprise, lands me knee-deep
in thick black muck. I hide
from myself. First, I write
the progress note. I push
grief aside; death is clinical.
The certificate is bureaucracy,
until I write the diagnosis:
overwhelming sepsis. I find
a tangled red skein in my hands.
I long to wind the thread and find
my way, in blackest pain, in
reddest rage, bellowing. But
the black bile rises. I can’t
clear my throat until, with tears
and time, my throat, suffused
in golden light is dipped not once
but seven times, over and over.

Question: Is anger something you struggle with in your personal or professional life? If so, share about it in a comment below.