When the Fire Comes Back: How Anger Can Be a Turning Point

Anger doesn’t always arrive like a storm.

Sometimes it creeps in quietly—a slow burn under the surface that you don’t recognize until it’s already lit something inside you. That’s how it showed up for me. A message from my daughter. A simple sentence paired with a photo of a political roundtable in Minnesota: “I feel like your next adventure is in politics.”

I wasn’t expecting it to shake me. But something cracked open the moment I read her words.

At first, I didn’t realize I was angry. I thought I had made peace with that part of myself—the ambitious, confident version who used to believe she could lead, influence, change things. Politics was something I once saw as possible for me. I believed I was smart enough, organized enough, bold enough to belong there. And over time, I let that dream go.

Or so I thought.

It turns out I hadn’t let it go at all. I had buried it. Tucked it away beneath years of surviving, adapting, playing smaller, trying to fit into roles that no longer fit me. And when her message arrived, it didn’t just stir up nostalgia—it unearthed a kind of fire I didn’t expect. I was angry. Angry at the years that passed while I kept shrinking. Angry that I stopped believing in my own spark. Angry that I handed so much of my identity over to what was expected of me and called it love. Called it loyalty. Called it necessary.

For a long time, I didn’t feel safe enough to be angry. That emotion felt too dangerous—too wild, too unpredictable. I stayed in sadness, guilt, confusion. Those feelings felt quieter. Safer. But when the anger finally rose, it surprised me with its clarity.

Because anger, when you don’t shove it down or turn it into a weapon, has a way of telling the truth.

It says, That wasn’t okay.
What I allowed. What I gave up. What I believed I had to do to be worthy or loved.
None of it was okay.

And yet, this anger didn’t feel like a step backward—it felt like a return. A remembering.

Somewhere inside, the part of me who still believes she’s meant for something more has been waiting. Waiting for the fog to lift. Waiting for the grief to settle. Waiting for the fire to come back and say, Don’t forget who you are.

The truth is, I do remember her. That woman who used to feel bold and clear and fully alive. She’s not gone. She just got tired. She got tangled. She survived. And now, she’s rising again—not to reclaim old dreams for the sake of nostalgia, but to choose something new that’s finally big enough to hold all this clarity and all this fire.

I don’t know exactly where this path is leading yet. It may not be politics. It may not be anything I once imagined. But I do know this: it has to be something that allows me to lead again. To use my voice. To stop shrinking.

This is part of the Unburdened™ journey too. Not just the softness, not just the healing, but the fire. The moments when you stop making yourself small and start building something that matches the size of your spirit.

So if you’ve felt a flicker of anger rising, know this: you’re not broken. You’re not going backward. You’re waking up. Let it burn off what’s no longer yours. Let it remind you what still matters. Let it bring you home to the woman who was never gone—just waiting for you to remember how to hold her again.