I'm really f*cking angry

And you should be too

This is not a post about recent events.

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you may have noticed that I’ve been planning a post around rage for a while. I started thinking about the concept, I think, in January. I thought about rage against the deeply, and purposefully, unfair system that we live in. I thought about female rage, and how often it is dismissed and belittled as a way to prevent women voicing their experiences to drive change - and then about how that is true for so many institutionally minoritised or marginalised groups. Then I heard

Dr Sharon Blackie

speak in February about menopausal rage, and how that can be channelled into something positive and productive. I thought about how much we are taught in our society to repress anger, especially if we are women. I thought about how all-consuming and destructive rage can be, and wondered if it can ever be a positive force. Is it really true that all emotions are ok? Surely they’re all part of us for a reason. What do we do with the darker ones?

Photo by Tommy van Kessel on Unsplash

Yet, somehow, for someone who normally writes in a frenzy of need - a need to tell a story, to protest against injustice, to draw attention to an experience - I found myself uncharacteristically slow to act on the impulse to share this piece. I think because it left me rather… tired.

I felt a burst of rage that inspired me to think about this topic - an intense flame that roared inside me for a little while. But the energy it took to feed that fire ran out and, after thinking about anger for so long, I realised that I didn’t have the fuel within me to keep feeling it. I was burnt up and burnt out.

I thought I couldn’t write about anger anymore because I wasn’t feeling angry - I found it hard to put myself in that place, mentally, to communicate the experience when I wasn’t in the midst of it any longer. When I was sitting within the cooling ashes of it all, without the strength to feel much of anything.

Then I realised that I am still angry. It’s not so much that the fire has burned out, but that it’s died down. It’s still flickering away inside me, even if I’m struggling to feel the heat. And maybe it’s in this state, with a cooler head but the blisters still on my fingertips, that I can find the lessons and the opportunity in this feeling.

That I can listen to what my rage has to teach me.

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I think I’ve always been a fairly fiery person. I blame that on my Italian heritage. My Italian mother attributes it to my Scorpio nature. When I was young, I was rather volatile. I would feel anger rising inside me, like water boiling on the stove. It rose quickly, and would flood my system before I had a chance to control it. I don’t “see red”, as the cliché goes, but the edges of my vision blur, and there’s a part of my brain that understands at this point that I’m about to say or do something I’ll regret, even though it’s powerless to stop me.

My rage is usually short-lived, though. I am a Catherine Wheel - I flare up, spray fire uncontrollably, and then go quiet and cool just as quickly. The most intense, long-lasting fury has always been reserved for myself. That anger, the type that lingers, that holds resentments, has mostly been directed inwards. The overall story I told myself was that any issues that came up were my fault, and I was responsible for not managing them. I was the problem. I didn’t deserve any better. Things would be better if only I were better. It’s only recently I’ve started to question this narrative, and wonder whether it wasn’t all my fault.

Women’s anger

Motherhood hit me like a tonne of bricks. The frantic hormonal fluctuations, the lack of sleep, the constant giving of yourself whilst getting nothing back. Being hit, kicked, spat at, having toys thrown at your head, told “I hate you” or “you’re the worst” by someone to whom you’ve given everything you’ve got. No space to yourself, not even being able to use the toilet alone, even your own body is not your own - it’s constantly in demand, and is changed beyond recognition. Your life is irrevocably altered, and it’s too late to decide if you like it this way.

I discovered a lot of anger in motherhood. Particularly when we discovered that our daughter was autistic, and her meltdowns and demand avoidance increased. Particularly when my son decided he didn’t want to sleep on his own and would spend half of every night lying on top of me so that I can’t get a decent night’s sleep. Particularly when I was dealing with my own health challenges, and trying to build my business, and the kids only wanted me, and then my husband would complain that he felt tired and overwhelmed.

You’re not supposed to say you feel angry as a mother. You’re supposed to say that it’s the most fulfilling experience you’ve ever had. That it’s tough, but you wouldn’t change any of it. That you can’t imagine your life without your kids. Well, I can imagine my life without them. I’m not saying I’d choose that life, but I know if would be a lot easier. There’s a lot of things I’d change about motherhood if I could. It does feel meaningful at times, but a lot of the time it just feels like bloody hard work. I’m resisting the impulse to say “but I love my children”, because that’s also what you’re supposed to say. You have to rush to point out that you’re not a terrible mother. So I’m not going to airbrush the whole topic with platitudes, because this is what stops so many mothers talking about it. We all think we have to keep quiet because everyone else is loving it and we’re the only ones finding it tough, so we must be the worst mothers in the world. So here it is: motherhood can be fucking shit a lot of the time. It’s hard. Really bloody hard.

Of course you get angry when someone is screaming in your face. Of course you get angry when you try to help someone put their shoe on and they throw it at you. Of course you get angry when you’ve asked someone seven times to brush their teeth and they tell you you’re the worst mother ever. If an adult spoke to you the way your kids do, you would walk away and never speak to them again. You’d probably call the police. Obviously, they’re children, not adults, and it’s not the same. You recognise that they can’t help it, that they haven’t learned the skills necessary to process their emotions yet, and that the world is a big, scary place that they have no control over so they’re trying to take control where they can. You know all of this. It doesn’t stop all this behaviour being really fucking frustrating. Especially when you have the pressure of getting them to school on time, getting yourself to work on time, paying the bills, looking after the house, and everything else you need to deal with stacking up while you’re waiting for your little darling to get their shit together.

Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash

I know, as well, that most of my anger flares up when I don’t feel seen. When I’m not being listened to, when I’m not feeling valued. I feel like I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of myself and let go of a lot of my own needs and desires in order to prioritise those of my children, and, of course, they don’t appreciate it. I’ve become somewhat invisible, giving and giving, getting little in return, and not even feeling like I am a full person anymore, never mind being seen as one.

Anger is a perfectly rational response to motherhood. It’s on us to deal with that anger in a healthy way, of course, but it’s not unreasonable for us to feel it. But I realise it’s not just the experience of motherhood itself that has made me angry. It’s everything that surrounds it. It’s the fact that I had to give up my career and become self-employed once I became pregnant because, once I told them I was having a baby, my work environment became utterly untenable. 54,000 women are forced out of the workforce every year in the UK alone because of maternity discrimination. We’re doing vital, unpaid work in raising the next generation, and we’re being punished for it.

Then there’s maternity pay, which, in the UK, is less than half of minimum wage. I’m sorry, but if minimum wage is the least amount of money that you need to live on, how the hell is a new mother with a whole new human to look after meant to live on less than half of that?! At least we get something - there is absolutely zero statutory maternity pay in the US, and employers aren’t even obliged to give new mothers a day of paid leave. Some choose to do better, but the only statutory requirement is two weeks of unpaid leave. So of course, many women and birthing parents on low incomes go back to work immediately, still bleeding and leaking milk, stitches tearing, because they simply cannot afford not to.

Then there’s the fact that the gender pay gap gets substantially worse for women when they have children, whereas men who have children earn more than men without children. There’s the fact that Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women, and Asian women are nearly twice as likely to not survive their pregnancies. There’s the fact that women contribute around $11 trillion annually to the global economy through unpaid care work, yet they are belittled, mocked, insulted and discriminated against because of it. There’s the fact that there’s a whole industry profiting from making birthing people feel bad about the way their bodies look after they’ve given birth, and another one profiting from making them feel like they’ll fail as parents if they don’t follow a specific technique… I could go on and on.

There’s a lot to be fucking furious about.

And when you look beyond motherhood, there’s so much else. The fact that rape has effectively been decriminalised, the attack on abortion rights, the freedoms of women being stripped away in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and so many more, FGM, child marriage, period discrimination, misogyny in healthcare, hatred and violence towards our trans sisters and siblings, the number of places in the world where our queer sisters and siblings are at risk… it never ends. How are any of us managing to go about our lives without bursting into flames of white-hot rage?!

And yet they tell us that our anger is “silly”. That we’re hysterical, emotional, shrill, nagging, ridiculous. This is how they keep us down - they mock our anger and convince us that it’s distasteful so that we won’t make a fuss and won’t fight for the rights we deserve. Well fuck that shit. This bitch is making some noise.

What’s good about anger?

My anger has not felt helpful or positive in the past. It has felt destructive. It has caused issues in relationships and stopped me from moving forward in my life. So reading Sharon Blackie’s book, Hagitude, and hearing her speak at Alnwick Story Fest, the idea that anger could be a useful or even valuable emotion was a difficult one for me to wrap my head around.

All emotions exist for a reason. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being forced to rewatch both Inside Out movies about 87 times by my children, it’s that all of our emotions have a function, and we need them all in balance. But what’s anger there for? What could possibly be the point of flying off the handle and screaming into the void?

Anger tells us when something isn’t right. It lets us know when our needs aren’t being met, or when something is out of alignment with our values, or when something needs to change. But we’re not supposed to wait until it boils over - if we acted on it, constructively, much sooner, it wouldn’t cause us issues. Except we’ve never been taught what to do with it. We’re not shown how to channel it constructively, or how to recognise it and respond to it. We’re told to suppress it.

My children love camping, and they adore a campfire. So do I. The first time they were anywhere near one, I was so on edge that I was vibrating. I kept fussing around them, pulling them back, and I started to panic that we should never have lit the damn thing in the first place. Then my husband came over to me and said, gently, “They’re actually being really careful.” I stepped back and watched. He was right. They were listening carefully to instructions, kneeling at a safe distance from the fire so that their bodies weren’t over it, and keeping their hands well back. They were taking great care over toasting their marshmallows, and disposing of the sticks when they were done. And I realised, they can only learn to be safe around fire if we give them this opportunity to learn.

This is the trouble - we don’t teach children to safely manage their own fire. We don’t teach them how to recognise it, how to take care of it, how to use it and safely put it out. We don’t give them the skills they need when they’re young, so, as they grow and their fires grow with them, they either burn themselves trying to keep the flames hidden, or their blaze spreads and rages out of control.

Another layer, for me and my daughter, is the experience of neurodivergent anger. For us, and for many neurodivergent people, it can be difficult to recognise our emotions in the moment. Sometimes I don’t know that what I’m feeling is anger until it boils over. That fiery temperament that seems to flare up over so little might not just be the personality trait of an Italian Scorpio, and might have more to do with flames that have been smouldering, unnoticed, for some time, until someone accidentally drops in the wrong kind of kindling and the whole thing goes up. Teaching a neurodivergent child to tend to their fire has an extra complexity that I feel I should be equipped to guide my daughter in, but I don’t because I haven’t yet mastered my own.

But I have found ways to put my anger to use. I write. As a columnist for a number of national publications, I channel my fury into calls for a better world. For justice. I write on Substack. I write in my journal. I make art. I talk to others. I co-founded a diversity and inclusion consultancy to try to drive practical change.

As I’ve come to recognise how feeling unseen in motherhood stokes my anger, I’ve come to realise how much I’ve felt unseen throughout my life. Partly due to undiagnosed neurodivergence and partly due to a number of circumstances, I’ve often felt frustrated that I wasn’t listened to, that I was talked over, that my words didn’t land. That I was an outsider who didn’t belong. No wonder I was angry.

Photo by Olga Bast on Unsplash

When I look back on my outbursts as a child, a teenager, a young woman, and my drive to be a writer and an activist, it feels like anger has, to some extent, been my life’s work. I’ve been angry for a long, long time - at the system, at people who’ve hurt me, at people who’ve hurt others, at injustice, at the world - but I feel as though I am coming to understand Sharon Blackie’s concept of “righteous rage”. I don’t feel like a coiled spring ready to leap out at everyone and anyone anymore, I have more of a sense of the nature of my anger and where I want to direct it. Another concept I love in Hagitude is that the first half of your life is largely spent in figuring yourself and the world out, and then, as you enter menopause in the second half of your life, that time of intense rage, you come into a space where you are ready to step into your power. You can fully be you because you understand who that is now, and you know how to be that person to the best and fullest of your abilities. So perhaps knowing myself better, understanding more about who I am and what I want, has given more shape and clarity to my anger. And it’s in this state that it can be truly useful.

Sharon Blackie speaks of anger as alchemical - it has the power to transform you. You might not know in the moment where it will take you, but you can sit with it and be curious about it. What will be left of you when that fire has stripped you down to the bone? When you allow the rest to be burnt away, you get to the core, the essence, of who you really are. If my rage is largely fuelled by not feeling seen as my full self, then that rage also has the power to show me my full self - to reveal who I truly am.

So be angry. There’s a lot to be fucking angry about, on both a microcosmic and macrocosmic level. Rage is an appropriate response to our lives. But recognise it, nurture it safely, channel it productively.

Let’s fuck some shit up.

Want to join me in exploring how creativity can help you process and channel difficult emotions, like anger and sadness? This month’s Creative Wellbeing Workshop is on Thursday 28th November at 7pm UK time, and we’ll be focusing on exactly that topic. I’ll talk you through some creative exercises for exploring those emotions in a way that supports your wellbeing, in a safe and supportive space. Paid subscribers have been sent the link to register for free via Chat, everyone else can sign up here: