Monkey World

I have an anger management issue.  I am asking myself where I can put these feelings of anger.

To cut a long story short, it's not Duchenne that sets me off.  It's dealing with a world that doesn't get it.  In the last three weeks, it's been: the officious volunteer at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, a venue that actually has good access, greeting us with a list of what Tom would not be able to access as a wheelchair user; it's my mum being charged £25 for a £10 taxi journey because we had a wheelchair accessible vehicle; it's feeling 'told off' by a restaurant owner who got very flustered when we arrived with wheelchair and assistance dog;  it's the unnecessary step from plane to corridor when we came back to Heathrow from our holiday; it's the 'wheelchair space' on the Heathrow - Oxford bus, precarious to get up to and sit in, too small, secured only at the back, without seatbelt, and taking twenty minutes to put together by the (very nice) driver who needed to consult the instruction manual.  It's the accumulated effect of examples like this going back ten years.  When we are about to celebrate the 2016 Paralympics, why is accessibility still not routine in much of the UK?

So how can I deal with my anger?  To carry it around eats me up, and fighting every battle is obviously not possible.  Cognitive behavioural therapy had me writing a diary of every time I got angry.  A 'mindfulness for carers' course had me observing my breath and sitting by a river watching the feelings flow by.  But I still want to thump someone.

'Let go and let God' is another option.  I'm not a believer but I have a good imagination.  What kind of god could I give my anger to?  Maybe the Narnia route, sitting by a stream in Aslan's country?

Then the image came into my mind of a tourist attraction in Dorset that I went to a couple of years ago:  Monkey World.  It's a refuge for primates rescued from abuse.  A wonderful place, with big enclosures and deeply caring staff.  I remember the gibbons silhouetted in their high tree top home, and how the children's playground was a lot like the chimpanzee enclosure.  The traumatised residents of Monkey World were accepted there as themselves, calmed, reassured, and eventually brought back to physical and mental health, their natural energy and grace.  I imagine such enclosures and such care for my own anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, and grief.  The God to whom I could give my anger would be like a keeper at Monkey World.