The Anger I Was Carrying

Hello there, my name is Nour, I'm 46, and for a long time I thought anger was simply part of who I was. My family came to Australia from Lebanon when I was young, and I grew up with the idea that you worked hard, looked after your family, kept your problems to yourself and got on with things. My parents had sacrificed so much to give us a better life, and I always felt that meant I had no right to complain about mine.

For years, I managed everything that came my way. I worked, raised my children, looked after my mother when her health started to decline, and tried to be the person everyone could rely on. I was the one people called when there was a problem, and I was proud of that. What I didn't realise was that underneath all of the responsibility, I was becoming exhausted and frightened, and because I didn't know what to do with those feelings, they started coming out as anger.

It wasn't one particular thing that caused it. It was years of little things piling up until there wasn't much room left inside me. Then my mother became seriously unwell, and suddenly I was trying to manage hospital appointments, work, my children and everything happening at home. I remember one evening standing in my kitchen after a particularly difficult day, and my husband asked me a completely ordinary question about dinner. I turned around and shouted at him so loudly that everyone in the house went quiet.

I still remember my daughter's face. She looked frightened, and that broke something in me because I had spent my whole life trying to make sure my children felt safe.

After that, I started noticing how often I was angry. I would become irritated by traffic, by noise, by people taking too long in shops, by someone asking me to do one more thing when I already felt like I had nothing left to give. But underneath the anger was something I didn't recognise at first. I was anxious all the time. My mind was constantly running through everything that could go wrong, whether my mother was going to get worse, whether I was going to lose my job, whether my children were okay, whether I had forgotten something important. I was always preparing for the next disaster, and when I couldn't control what was happening, I became angry instead.

Eventually, my daughter said something that stayed with me. She told me, very gently, "Mum, I think you're scared." I wanted to tell her she was wrong because I didn't feel scared. I felt angry. But when I went home that night and really thought about it, I realised she was right. I was scared of losing my mother. I was scared of failing my family. I was scared that if I stopped holding everything together, everything would fall apart.

That was the beginning of me asking for help. It wasn't an overnight change, and I still have moments where I feel that familiar heat rising in my chest, but I'm learning to pause before I react and ask myself what is actually underneath the anger. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed, sometimes I'm anxious, sometimes I'm exhausted, and sometimes I simply need someone to tell me that I don't have to carry everything on my own.

My mother eventually became well enough to come home, and while things didn't suddenly become perfect, I started making small changes in my own life. I began going for morning walks, something I had never made time for before, and I started taking photographs of flowers and trees along the way. At first it seemed silly, but slowly I found myself looking forward to those walks.

One morning, I was walking through the park when I noticed a little girl laughing as she chased bubbles with her father. I stopped for a moment and watched them, and for the first time in a very long time, I realised I was smiling without having to try. It was such a small moment, but it felt important. I had spent so long waiting for something terrible to happen that I had forgotten to notice when something beautiful was happening instead.

I still get angry. I still worry. I still have difficult days, and I don't think healing means becoming a person who never feels those things. For me, it has meant learning that anger doesn't have to be the only place my fear can go. There is still room for laughter. There is still room for music playing in the kitchen while I cook dinner, for long walks, for coffee with a friend, for my children making me laugh when I least expect it, and for those little moments of joy that I used to be too busy worrying to notice.

I spent years believing I had to be strong enough to carry everything. Now I think perhaps being strong can also mean putting some of it down.