Visions Journal

How anger became my light

Madison Hansen

Reprinted from the The Ongoing Journey of Recovery: Recovery across the lifespan issue of Visions Journal, 2025, 20 (3), pp. 27-28

When I was four years old I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I spent a year in hospital. It was so very vulnerable. Insulin injections were not voluntary. The very thing I needed to live hurt me. 

Later, when I started kindergarten, every day an adult would single me out of class and escort me to the office for my injections. Everyone stared. I was different. The judgement on their faces told me as much. Kids went to the office because they were “bad.” I was punished not only by my own body with chronic illness, but socially as well. Shame says, “You are bad.” I internalized that.

In first grade, one kid grew fond of throwing pinecones at me. I took it… and took it… and took it. Finally, I had enough. “Why?” I asked. I felt rage. “Why are you hurting me?” “Because you’re a spazz,” he said. “It’s funny when you spazz.” The very reaction he provoked was his reason for hurting me, then. But which came first? That kind of thing really messes with your head.

This wasn’t the only incident. The bullying didn’t stop. It spread to other areas of my life. As I grew into adulthood, for a long time, I tried to snuff out my own light. A decade of my life was sickening, twisted darkness. I was untethered. Nothing felt real. Everything was self-destructive. The only truth I knew with any certainty was that there was only one way to get the relief I had been looking forward to since that first pinecone to the noggin. If you know, you know.

The truth is that being crushed by life, by abuse, by the slow erosion of self-worth leads to coping mechanisms that people only see as "bad choices" and “personal failures,” without understanding what led to them.

What gets lost

The Oxford Dictionary defines “recovery” as: “the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.”1 Reflecting on my journey so far, I wonder: what do I feel was taken from me over time?

• my ability to dream
• my ability to connect with others without fear
• my ability to feel safe in the world
• my ability to see that I was worthy of respect, dignity and kindness 

But I also see recovery differently: it’s a process of reclaiming agency and unlearning oppression. When you’ve been bullied and made to doubt your own perception of reality (gaslit) by people and institutions  that tell you your experiences don’t matter, you start to doubt yourself. So recovery is also realizing what got taken from you in the first place.

I also believe there is value in seeing recovery through a systemic lens. Too often, recovery is framed as an individual journey of self-improvement, ignoring the broader structural forces that contribute to substance use and mental health struggles in the first place. 

By shifting the focus beyond personal hardship and towards the systemic factors at play, we can foster a deeper understanding of recovery as more than just an individual responsibility—it’s also about challenging the conditions that create harm.

Re-finding myself

As an adult, I learned that I had undiagnosed ADHD. As well, one day, someone pointed out the injustice I had experienced. That’s all it took. One act of courage. The spark of hope was relit, and I considered the possibility that what had happened was real. The thread of my story got a little less tangled. Someone offered their truth, and now I knew this wasn’t the end of my book anymore. 

Recovery, for me, has been the long process of untangling those knots. Learning that I was never broken. That I was never the problem. I needed to trust that my anger towards others was a justified response. Not only is it

OK to stand up for yourself, but if you ever want to make a psychological prison break, you must have the courage to trust yourself and your perception of reality.

Anger is a normal reaction to injustice. It protects us. It tells us when something unfair is happening. It is safe to feel anger. It is critical information that encourages us to do something. What is that something, exactly? Well, the thing is, once I accepted my perception of reality, I could talk about these things frankly. I could express what was in my heart all along. I could speak the truth. 

Now, recovery is not all roses. These days, I hold myself to unreasonable expectations in the hopes that society will finally treat me with an ounce of dignity. The reality is that much of my journey has been shaped by survival under immense systemic pressure, not just personal growth.

But it’s a process I need to keep exploring. 

Sharing recovery

This is a reminder: there is nothing wrong with you. Not for being different. Not for having health issues. Not for standing up for what you know in your heart to be true. Do not internalize the shame that others use to control you. We do not, and never have, deserved punishment for being who we are.

I have spent a lifetime reclaiming my fire—learning that anger is not something to fear, but something to wield; that what was once destruction can just as easily become light. And now, I pass that light to you.

It turns out, there are a lot of really cool things about me. I am in a process of recovering all of the parts of myself that had been stolen, including:

• my ability to dream
• my ability to connect with others without fear
• my ability to feel safe in the world
• my ability to give myself respect, dignity and kindness

We are who we are, and we are cool as heck. And with that I say, psst, pass it on. My courage is yours. OURS.