I just finished listening to Rebecca Traister’s book Good and Mad, an exploration of women’s anger in the world of politics and beyond, and boy did it get me going. As I mentioned last year regarding masks and their beauty at allowing me to fully and completely mutter to myself without anyone noticing (muffled inside voice notwithstanding), anyone passing me on the street these last few weeks would have seen a woman of a certain age, bright red over-ear headphones in place nodding and saying things like “exactly” and “hell, yes.” It is the reason the kitchen and living room side of our apartment is almost blindingly clean since I was listening to the chapters on the 2017 MeToo movement and workplace harassment while scrubbing the hell out of the sink and swiffering the floor within an inch of its veneer. In this moment, as I revise my novel, coming face-to-face with the power of anger is one of the things that will float my story of four women and their experience with anger/trauma bravely into a strong current or see it flat like a raft on still waters.

Naturally looking at how anger works in my own life makes my heart beat extra fast. The idea around how all that emotion rises up and has the transformative power to change things has, for me, always been terrifying. Mainly because I feel I don’t know how to control it. Of course “controlling emotion” is a loaded statement and one that has been used to control women since the invention of woman. Anger is the only one of the twelve (the other eleven: Interest, Joy Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Contempt, Self-hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, Guilt) that, when exhibited by a woman outwardly—whether publicly or privately—is intercepted as madness or hysteria or shrillness or name any other poison that will attach to her. In researching what the twelve emotions are, I came across this cool quote in a peer-reviewed research paper, which full-disclosure, I did not read fully but yet am fascinated by the topic: “As psychology transformed from the science of the mind (James 1890, Wundt 1897) into the science of behavior (Skinner 1953, Watson 1919), an important topic slipped from scientific view: the subjective experience of emotion” (The Experience of Emotion).

Subjectivity: reality as something felt. And there we wrap right back around to anger and its role in the lives of women. How we feel it in our bones, our blood, our bodies. I, personally, have always been crap at it. I know I’ve said/written about it before, I’m afraid of the Vesuvias factor. That my anger will be an explosion/destruction landing on myself or others. In college, I was drawn to a friend because she appeared completely in touch with her anger. Was able to channel it into witticisms and bold actions that I craved for myself. That further into our friendship, her anger unchecked became a more dangerous thing served to confirm my sense that See, that kind of emotion is scary, can hurt people. Whew I dodged that one. Guess I’ll leave this corner of the playground and go stay under the fountain of agreeable. But truthfully, in her life I suspect she was in need of a way to channel it in a healthy way rather than to shut it down altogether.

Healthy. Doing the messy work of excavation. Gaaah. Pulling up all that emotional blacktop, digging, looking at the guts of the thing. Whether with the work of a professional, a course of action, finding guidance private or public, however and whatever support system works, it’s available. Of course it is, even as I’ve always felt embarrassed to even ask. Again, the stigma around women’s anger feels fierce. And how it’s buried I know can be generational. I see women right now unfurling their anger flag high in the air. I know from the movements on the street, online, in the face of so much bullshit toward women that is on display (the trashfire that is Texas. I swear to fucking christ, I’m ready to charter a bus, rent a ranch in New Mexico, hire doctors and begin an underground railroad for women in need. That’s the Lotto winnings I’m looking for.) that we have rage and when channeled it can light a bonfire for change. I went to the pussy marches and screamed my head off with hundreds of other women (and men). The challenge for me is to take this anger project deeper into myself, so that it’s the subtler more personal moments that are given some attention. A way to access the anger inside that is only mine. That will heal me. Move my story forward, which, as happens, will have that ripple, butterfly, domino, slinky effect throughout my world. Wish me luck. I wish you luck too.