Why I’m Letting Myself Be an Angry Woman

The world needs more of us

“Don’t bother being angry,” my friend, Sunny told me recently. “I’ve been down that road and it’s a waste of time. It only pushes people away and in the end, nothing comes of it but more discord.”

I’d just told her that my emotional cycle had turned to anger once again. I’ve always suppressed my anger because I grew up in an environment where family members typically expressed anger with explosive emotion — the strength of which scared me. I didn’t feel safe around anger, so I judged it as wrong and pushed it under the surface when it rose up.

Of course, that’s not possible to sustain. Eventually, it will explode out of you. Like it’s exploding out of me now.

In the past, I never really talked about it. I wrote about it in my journal. I prayed about it. I cried about it.

Eventually, the anger passes.

“Don’t bother being angry,” my friend, Sunny told me recently. “I’ve been down that road and it’s a waste of time.”

Events of the past month, however, have made me question my beliefs about anger and how I deal with it. For instance, I have some relationships in which anger is a deal-breaker. I confronted this with one of them last month, asking why I couldn’t express my anger. She said she wasn’t interested in abusive relationship dynamics or emotional violence.

I didn’t agree that anger should be conflated with either. Our conversation was passionate and did not end on a good note.

The next week, I found out she had blocked me on all social media platforms and we haven’t spoken since.

Now I’m even more angry.

When Sunny shared her perspective on anger, I saw truth in it. Hell, I don’t like to be confronted by anger. I don’t even like being the one who’s angry.

But…I also object. I object to our culture’s insistence that we place emotions into a binary system of good and bad, right and wrong, healthy and dangerous. I object to being asked to believe that a whole spectrum of human emotions is inappropriate. I particularly object to the way we judge an emotion’s validity in relation to the gender of the person who is expressing it. Anger in men? Good. In women? Bad.

What is going on here?

About two years ago, I began experiencing painful and scary medical symptoms in the left side of my chest — specifically in my breast. I’ve been to several doctors and had a mammogram, ultrasound, and other scans and tests, but so far, no one has been able to identify what is wrong.

And yes, the “C word” has been thrown around.

It has been an exhausting, frustrating, hopeless two years as I’ve struggled with this pain on a daily basis — not to mention the emotional burden that comes along with it.

Six months ago, I met a new friend who is an Ayurvedic healer. We started talking about my issues and she gave me some ideas for herbal remedies, but when she had gone through her list, she said:

“My gut tells me it’s anger. I see a lot of women in their 40s who are suddenly overwhelmed with anger. They have suppressed their feelings their whole lives — dealing with sexism in the workplace, sexual trauma, abusive relationships, loss of identity due to motherhood… We’re supposed to just deal with it all, take it all, and never push back. We’re not allowed to be angry, we’re not allowed to put down boundaries, we’re not allowed to say, ‘I don’t want this!’ So we just keep enduring, and swallowing our feelings, and one day…one day it comes exploding out of us, usually as illness in the body because our souls are trying to tell us that this must be dealt with.”

I started crying immediately. Her words felt like a bell ringing somewhere deep inside me.

“And it’s almost always in the breasts,” she went on. “When I see women like you, they are almost always dealing with breast issues. That’s what we’re taught to do with that area. It’s for everyone else’s nurturing. Such a tender place but we aren’t taught how to use that power to heal and love ourselves.”

I was nodding then, wiping at my eyes. Yes, yes, yes.

“You can take the herbs and work on making some small changes to your diet, but really…you have to express yourself. You have to yell and scream and rage.”

At that point, I stopped crying. “No,” I said. “I don’t do that. That’s not the way.”

She was insistent. “You have to get this out of you. Anger is normal. You’re supposed to move it out of you. You’re supposed to express it. You have to do this if you want to heal.”

When was my turning point in relation to anger? I’d guess around the age of 38, when my partner left and I realized everything I had sacrificed for the past seven years had been for nothing. I’d lost my chance at having the family I’d wanted my whole life all because I was convinced he would finally warm up to committing to our relationship.

Sure, I was mad at him for a little while. He didn’t just end the relationship, but did so in the most dishonest, unethical, cruel way possible, both financially and emotionally.

But the real target of my rage was myself. I wasn’t stupid. That man did not want me. He didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t want to buy a house with me. He didn’t want to have a kid with me. I had seven years of evidence to prove that.

And yet, I chose to stay.

I was enraged at myself. What the hell was wrong with me that I didn’t think I deserved more than what I’d settled for?

But the real target of my rage was myself.

And it kept happening, in all areas of my life. Friendships. My relationship with my sister. My relationship with my parents. My career.

I’d get a lowball bid and accept it, even though I knew I was worth more. Relationships were unequal, but I shrugged it off. I worked unpaid overtime week after week and still found myself smiling stiffly while my boss complained that I wasn’t doing enough.

Slowly, but surely, into my 40s, the veneer started to crack. I began arguing. Pushing back. Taking less responsibility, instead of all of it. I started expecting people to take my perspective seriously, since they expected me to take theirs seriously. I started objecting to working seven days a week and I even asked for (and was denied) a raise.

I can’t say that it went particularly well, even though I continued to mostly stifle my anger, and when I expressed it, I only did so when I was feeling calm and in control of myself. I never yelled. I never behaved in an aggressive manner. I never made demands.

But yes, I asked. I stated. I insisted. I would hardly budge, after a lifetime of bending over backwards.

I began arguing. Pushing back. Taking less responsibility, instead of all of it.

Nobody liked it. My new stance on life brought about many changes, including a couple friendships that have faltered because I would not accept that my perspective was invalid or inaccurate. I quit my job 4 months earlier than I intended to because I would no longer work that many hours and endure that much stress when every attempt I made to advance my position in that agency was met with a non-negotiable “No.”

Though I might sound certain and confident, this time in my life has been filled with worry and fear. This isn’t like me. I’m the lady who lets people do what they want. If you burn me, I will pretend it didn’t happen and keep holding your hand. I’m the one who will forgive any violation. The one who will look to explain away any betrayal. I’m the easygoing, gentle “mom” of the group who just wants peace.

And I do want peace! I long for it. I love my easygoing, forgiving, gentle self.

But also…I am tired of being hurt. I am tired of looking the other way. I am tired of accepting the lowest offer or pretending that my perspective doesn’t matter.

Some little voice inside me keeps saying, I think you are worth more than this.

And I’m starting to believe that.

After I cut myself free from a predatory situation last year, I couldn’t hold back the rage anymore. I was so angry about that situation — about how it started, about how he had manipulated me (by his own admission), about how worthless and disgusting and just downright gross the whole thing had made me feel.

And the anger kept rising. Not just about him, but about everything I’d ever been angry about but never expressed. And every time a little transgression happened, I exploded — either at home, by screaming into my pillow, or on the page, by writing a ranting essay about how pissed I was.

I admit, it felt good. Keep in mind that I’ve almost never expressed my anger to anyone since I was 12 years old. To give myself permission to do it felt enormously freeing.

But did it really get me anywhere? I think about Sunny’s words again. How she said people stop listening to you when you’re angry. That definitely seems to be the case. My anger angers someone else, and then they feel the need to yell at me and walk away.

But again, I return to another truth — that anger is normal. It is a natural part of the human emotional spectrum. Why is it we accept happiness exactly as it is with no need to edit or adjust it, yet we insist that anger needs to be controlled?

We have rules around sadness, too. And grief. And pretty much all emotions that we consider “negative.”

I’m not sure I believe in that, anymore.

But again, I return to another truth — that anger is normal. It is a natural part of the human emotional spectrum.

I find myself wanting to explore my anger. I come to the page day after day and find that it’s still there. Dare I express it? You know what? Yes, I dare.

I’m also afraid of it. I’m afraid of the way it is alienating people in my life and my work. Most were people I didn’t know in the first place, so I don’t care about losing them. But there are some I do care about losing. Some I do fear will never venture back to me.

But is that on me? Or have we lost the ability to receive anger in this culture? Has toxic positivity painted us into a corner? Has it tricked us into believing that all anger is abusive and therefore unacceptable?

Maybe that’s the danger in all this. Not that we can’t express it, but that there’s so little capacity in our current cultural climate to receive it. That we don’t, as a society, have the emotional competency to witness someone else’s anger.

And so, as much as I want to return to my sweet, easygoing personality, the woman who will love you no matter what you do, I can’t do it. As much as I agree with Sunny that (female) anger puts people off, I just don’t care right now.

Maybe I shouldn’t have to practice being more peaceful in order to get the world to listen to me. Maybe the world just needs to work on listening to and embracing angry women.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

From this angry woman: