Not long ago, I had a session with an energy healer.

Actually, my dog Apollo and I both did. So when I found out that Athena was her name, I knew we we’d landed exactly where we were meant to. There are no accidents or coincidences, and this was yet another reminder.

Athena sat me in a chair and walked circles around me for a minute or two before stopping in front of me and asking if I’d experienced any significant shifts recently. In the week before this session, I’d cut ties with someone I’d been in a really intense romantic partnership with, so I shared that I was in the midst of that change.

“Are you angry?” she asked with a firmness in her voice. I smiled and said, “Yeah…” with a sort of exhausted laugh and a shake of my head. “I’m angry.”

“Good, ” she replied. “I want you to scream.”

“Scream?” Insert puzzled look here. “Like…?”

“Just scream,” she said, matter of factly.

“What should I…? Do I just…?”

“Just let it out, anything. Whatever it is, just go.”

So I opened my mouth and tested my chops. I screamed. And then I really screamed. Something from deep, deep within me came roaring out as I threw my head back and howled from the top of my lungs. Then the tears came rushing forth from their broken dam. I screamed and I sobbed and I sat in that chair in front of a stranger with Apollo at my side, and I just f*cking released it all. I was angry. I was.

This healer held steady to her place in front of me and offered soft and steady wisdom in between sobs. “Those of us who seek a higher path can have this idea that we need to ‘see the light’ in everyone, all the time. But you’re still a human. And you’re angry. Be angry.”

As it turns out, I would only get angrier. In the weeks following this split, new information came to light that was puzzling at best, and deeply, deeply painful at worst. It sits heavy in my heart space as I type this. I’m hurt. I’m angry. I am.

Despite the conscious path I seek, I am still, much to my delight, a spiritual being having the experience of being human. I am human. And my humanity grants me permission to feel anger alongside the awareness that myself and this person who is a trigger for these feelings are manifestations of the same light. I could have been anything, a tree, an animal, a cloud, anything—and something divine chose for this vessel to carry my spirit, and equipped me with the ability to feel—so that I could f*cking feel.

I’m liberated in the awareness that nothing is good or bad, only our minds can write the stories that make it so. Anger is neutral, and our conditioning decides something about that feeling that tells us to manipulate it somehow. It is just information, like any other emotion, that presents an opportunity to turn inward and study. Only in this allowing will we heal.

Nothing of anger requires me to step outside of seeing this person wrapped in love. Indeed, I love him still, without condition, and I let there be space for anger in that love. Accountability in that love. Truth in that love.

Our humanity is ours for the embracing. Because the unchanging truth of what we are, is still stardust, and we are here for the sweet and humble embracing of all that we are and all that is.

May you make space for all of the prizes inside the cereal box of being human—anger, and love, and all the rest.

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Author: Stef Osofsky
Image: Author’s Own
Editor: Travis May
Copy Editor: Danielle Beutell
Social Editor: Lieselle Davidson