Enduring Flame: Reclaiming Personal Power After Trauma
The Healing Fire of Will
Where Earth steadies, Air expands, and Water softens, Fire ignites.
It jolts the nervous system awake, blazes through the numbness, and lays bare everything you’ve tried to keep buried. Fire is the element of transformation, of destruction that precedes rebirth. It’s the spark that awakens us from dormancy. The blaze that consumes what no longer serves.
Fire is what happens when survival is no longer enough. When the body, weary from shrinking, dares to move, to push. When the tongue, heavy with swallowed words, starts to burn. When the soul, cornered, exhausted, will not contort itself anymore to fit in too-small spaces.
In the Sacred Elements framework, Fire is the energy of reclamation. Of anger, yes… but, also aliveness. Fire is vital lifeforce energy that rises inside when you stop negotiating with your pain and start listening to and acting on it. When you stop asking for approval and start remembering your sovereignty and your worth. When the holy rage protecting the sacred in you erupts and you declare, “no more.”
To walk with Fire is to practice discernment. To ask: What is this flame for? Am I burning myself down… or am I setting myself free?
Uncontained, fire can scorch and destroy. Repressed, it can smolder and consume from within. But, the work is not to rid yourself of Fire. It’s to make room for it. To let it move through you—purposefully, powerfully, without apology. Healing through Fire requires courage and a willingness to face the heat of our own truth.
Fire shows us how to rise, to roar, to remember the power that pulses through us.
Fire and the Fight Response
In Polyvagal Theory, Fire correlates with our fight response. Fight is a mobilized state of self-protection driven by the instinct to assert, resist, defy, push back. When danger approaches, the sympathetic nervous system surges and the body braces—not to run, but to fight.
But for many trauma survivors (especially those socialized as female), this internal fire is quickly extinguished. Anger is shamed. Will is punished. Boundaries are overridden. We’re taught to be “nice.” To be agreeable and accommodating at the expense of our own choice and voice. The intelligent fight response is exiled—cast out as inappropriate, unseemly, and excessive.
Anger is not the enemy. It’s a signal. A boundary. A sacred no. Sometimes a f*ck you. It rises hot and red when something precious is threatened, when our dignity, safety, or truth is at stake. In a culture that devalues emotional expression—even more so in those who are marginalized—fiery instincts get buried deep. But, buried fire doesn’t go away. It smolders. It consumes from the inside out. It becomes inflammation, tension, anxiety, depression, numbness, passive-aggression and resentment.
To heal with Fire is to rekindle our vitality and wildness. To welcome our anger to move through us, to complete its charge. To remember our fire as expression of aliveness. Authenticity. Beingness. A demand for justice and source of sacred protection. This kind of fire doesn’t burn bridges—it builds boundaries. It says: I am here. I matter. I will not go silent.
The Parts That Blaze: Fire in Internal Family Systems
Fire is the part of us that sets the boundary. Speaks the truth. Lights the match.
Sometimes Fire is a Manager—fierce, controlled, calculated. The part of us that stays sharp. Takes no shit. Always ten steps ahead to prevent us being caught off guard, to avoid even a flicker of vulnerability from being seen. It works hard. It doesn’t flinch. It holds the line.
Other times, it’s a Firefighter. Sudden. Uncontainable. Unapologetic. This part flares up when something old is touched—an echo of helplessness, a whiff of shame… and it comes out swinging. It lashes out, overpowers, cuts off connection, seeks sensation. It would rather burn the whole world to ash than ever let us feel powerless again.
Because underneath is something small and hurting.
The child who was punished for being angry.
The teen who was called “dramatic,” “disrespectful,” “too much.”
These Exiled parts carry the memory of shining bright and getting burned. The unmet need to be seen, heard and affirmed in our own instinctual knowing of what’s best and right for us. Our own sense of justice. They hold the betrayal of being named dangerous and difficult to love.
So, Fire rises to protect them. And when it comes, it comes in hot.
That’s why we approach with respect. We listen to our Protectors. Ask what pain they carry. What they’ve been trying to prevent. We witness the urgency in their blaze… attempts to defend against the unbearable. And when trust is built, the wildfire settles. We learn that our Fire is holy and we can carry it with integrity.
We become the kindling.
We become the hearth.
We hold the flame.
Fire's Wisdom: Signs, Symbols, and the Soul
Fire is the spark. The surge. The sacred destroyer and the force of becoming.
The archetypes of Fire are the Warrior. Alchemist. Truth-Teller. Burning through illusion, forging identity, demanding embodiment. These are the ones who carry the untold rage of the lineage. Who reclaim vitality and take up their rightful place. Fire archetypes rise in us when something has been denied too long. When we realize we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. When we risk rupture for the sake of integrity and alchemize our pain into power. Fire ignites our will to live in a world that tried to smother it.
Fire corresponds to the archetypal realm of instinct—raw, primal, vital. It’s the domain of the animus in its activated, initiating form. The energy that erupts when a boundary has been crossed, a truth denied, a soul stifled. Fire lives in the psychic drive toward becoming. It smolders hot in the crucible of transformation, where identity is challenged, dismantled, remade. If Air gives us the symbolic mind and Water gives us emotional depth, Fire offers life-force, passion, the will to act. It’s the part of us that resists domestication. That says: I desire. Fire doesn’t ask for permission. It drives us toward wholeness. The heat of the soul remembering itself.
Astrologically, Fire signs—Aries, Leo, Sagittarius—embody this passion, action, and creative will. They animate the spirit and spark momentum. They teach us how to move toward what calls us, even when we’re afraid. Each Fire sign relates to vitality in a distinct way: Aries charges forward, teaching us to claim our right to exist, to want, to begin again. Leo radiates from the heart, showing us how to take up space with dignity, to be seen without apology. Sagittarius stretches toward the horizon, lighting the way through wisdom, vision, and the sacred pursuit of truth. And yet, every gift of fire holds its shadow: impulsivity, arrogance, burnout, aggression.
Even so, these archetypes offer holy flame, reminding us that our desire is not shameful. Our agency is not a threat. That there is something in us worth protecting, pursuing, proclaiming.
Fire asks: What am I no longer willing to betray in myself? What burns in me that will not go out? What am I being called to risk, to reclaim, to roar?
When we are healing, we need to give ourselves the permission we never had to want. To push, to grasp and pull. Permission to move our bodies and speak our truths and trust our instincts and feel our desire without dousing it in fear or shame.
Fire reminds us that life is not just something to survive… it’s something to live. Something to fight for.
And sometimes, it’s not actually security we are seeking, but the felt experience of our own sovereignty.
Fire as Protection and Potential
Fire protects us by illuminating truth, burning away illusions, and providing warmth and light in the dark. It empowers us to assert what’s real and right for us, and to stand in our power. It teaches that our anger is a compass, revealing what matters and what’s been crossed. Fire is the flicker of life insisting on its right to exist. Our right to live and be.
Of course, not all heat is clarity. Sometimes what looks like empowerment is just reactivity in disguise. Sometimes we don’t just protect ourselves—we scorch everything in our path. This is the difference between embodied anger and disembodied aggression: One is rooted in presence, moved by a truth. The other is untethered, compulsive, devouring. One clears the way. The other burns it all down.
Fire's potential lies in its transformative power. It can show us how to stay intact and reclaim our choice and voice. It can teach how to transmute pain into purpose, anger into action, desire into creation. It’s the energy that thaws our freeze. The courage that challenges our silence. The instinct that moves us toward life.
To harness Fire's potential, we must recover the parts of ourselves we had to dim to survive. We must learn to tend our inner flames… to keep them burning steadily without letting them consume us.
If Earth is where we root, and Air is where we understand, and Water is where we feel—Fire is where we act.
We ignite.
We defend what’s holy.
We burn clean, not out.
Rituals and Practices for Igniting with Fire
Fire is about motion, voice, and vitality. These practices are invitations to reclaim what’s been suppressed—your passion, your instinct, your sacred fight. May they help you move what’s been frozen. Speak what’s been silenced. Burn through what no longer serves without burning yourself out. May you remember that your fire is not too much. It’s medicine.
Place your hands over your belly (solar plexus). Breathe into that fire-center. Say: “I trust my power. I honor my will.”
Visualize a firewalk. Imagine yourself walking over hot coals, symbolizing your ability to overcome fears and challenges.
Light a candle and focus on the flame. Reflect on what you need to release and what you wish to ignite within yourself.
Breath like fire: Practice a breathing technique that involves quick, forceful exhales to stimulate energy and release tension.
Watch the sun rise. Notice the color, energy and heat as they grow in intensity. Set intentions for the day and act with purpose.
Build a fire - literal or symbol. Burn old notes, write prayers into flame. Let it be ceremony. Let something go. Watch it transform.
Follow what excites you, even if it makes no sense. Do something just because it sparks. Create something. Let your desire lead.
Move your body instinctively. Dance. Shake. Stretch. Let movement be expression, not performance. Feel yourself alive inside your skin.
Journal Prompts for Fire
How can I channel my energy into constructive action?
How has my relationship with anger evolved over time?
In what areas of my life do I need to set firmer boundaries?
What fears are holding me back from pursuing my desires?
When have I felt most alive and connected to my inner Fire?
What passions have I suppressed, and how can I reignite them?
What beliefs about assertiveness and ambition have I internalized?
What does transformation mean to me, and how have I experienced it?
Fire Finds A Safe Place to Burn
When we’ve rooted in safety (Earth), made meaning of what’s happened (Air), and felt what needed to be felt (Water), we often find that we’re ready to reclaim what has always been ours: Fire.
Not the fire of destruction, but the fire of vitality and sacred will and purpose. The part of us that never stopped wanting. The part that still glows so bright beneath the wreckage, beneath the ash.
You do not have to be palatable. You can be powerful. You do not have to dim. You can blaze. You do not have to apologize for being here. You can take up space. Your anger is not too much. Your desire is not selfish. Your aliveness is not a threat.
Do you feel that heat stirring in your belly, rising up in your throat, radiating out into your limbs,, reverberating through every single cell of your body? You are alive and you belong.
You belong in all your heat and hunger and holy defiance.
This is the work of Fire.
To remember who the f*ck you are.
To protect what matters and act on what’s true.
To stop asking for permission to be fully, gloriously alive.
