Beyond the Anger, Beyond the Outrage

Fog sat softly on the surface of the bay as I paddled from the shore. I wanted to clear my mind this morning, this day that marks the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill. Wind blew from the south, pushing my boat along broken pilings, skeletal reminders of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, where gulls, cormorants, and pelicans perched.

As I glided through the choppy, brackish water of Mobile Bay, images of the past year replayed in my mind. Beaches ankle-deep in crude, oiled birds, cleanup workers, children frolicking in oil-slick Gulf water….all this and more flashed by like a horror movie. But amid these traumatic memories, I looked around. Pelicans dove for fish, mullet splashed ahead of my boat, great blue herons stood in the shallows along the shore nabbing their breakfast. Cormorants floated in the waves and dove for food. Schools of tiny fish popped the water. All this life, this beauty, was evident in the moment.

I remembered the articles and posts I’ve read on Facebook. Many areas are still covered in oil. Marshes and shores sickened by the black death of sweet crude from MC252 reek of death. It’s not all beautiful. But there are areas that are recovering. And so we, too, must begin our recovery process.

When I worked as a psychotherapist many years ago, some clients got trapped in a cycle of anger over traumatic events of their past. Granted, part of the healing process involves recognizing the anger. But to get stuck in it perpetuates the cycle of re-wounding and re-traumatizing. So…how do we move beyond this emotion to a place of healing?

Given the enormity of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the corporate dysfunction that created it, how can we swim out of the collective whirlpool of outrage and put the energy that perpetuated the anger into building solutions….together.

A friend of mine wrote a book called Simple Truth. In it, Thom Rutledge describes our relationship with anger as being something that we can huff and become intoxicated by or we can use it to fuel us forward into creative solutions and health.

When we close our hearts in rage, we greatly diminish our capacity to love the places, animals and people we care about most in the world. So why do we hold so onto our anger? It might be a way we cling to the event so we do not forget. But know this, we can forever remember and honor this tradegy by the good we put out into the environment, by the ways we care for our planet and each other. And mostly, by allowing our hearts to guide us to building a healthier world. To do this we must move beyond the anger, move beyond the outrage but use it to fuel our efforts.