art by Aaron Paquette,
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022...
"Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.
Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It’s a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It’s a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.
How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is willful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.
In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change. This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful.
The women I admire most—those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and the expectations that come with them—have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation. Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it."
~ Soraya Chemaly, "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger"
Angela Yarber of Tehom Center, "Protest Goddess"
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And in 2024 many women (and many men) did put efforts to elect Kamala Harris to the presidency of the US.
We are members of the 8 billion humans alive today...
But did you know this?
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Today's Goddess:
800 BC, Aomori prefecture Japan. Dogū
We tend to look for greatness
always in somebody else
rather than yourself.
Go inside and
get your sound.
always in somebody else
rather than yourself.
Go inside and
get your sound.
Carlos Santana
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Good morning, and thank you for the continuing line of goddess figures. It's making me think of fashioning one for my household.
ReplyDeleteShe would like that, I'd imagine.
Delete...Barbara, continue to be angry, perhaps it will help to right the wrongs.
ReplyDeleteIt's an excellent emotion which can take people into action that needs to be done, and I recommend an ounce of discretion as well.
DeleteThe concern of many for the unborn rings hollow when there is so little concern for the born.
ReplyDeleteThe childcare situation not to mention healthcare, food...oh I sure am angry!
DeleteHow many eons have women been told that our anger is ugly, unwomanly, unfeminine, and that our proper mien is one of quiet acceptance? Anger is a power source that we have been raised to believe we are not capable of using properly.
ReplyDeleteAgain. Thank you, Barbara.
Yes indeed. Here's raising a toast (of bread since I no longer drink alcohol) to all the great actions from women's anger.
DeleteI agree with your sentiments. Your country seems definitely to be slipping backwards. I'm afraid ours may follow...
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking it can't get worse. Then it does.
DeleteSo many angry women--and so many who should be.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a need for justice, and women (and quite a few men) may bring it about if they just MOVE with the anger.
DeleteThank you. I need reminded that there are like-minded women out there. I am shouting RIGHT ON with all your memes.
ReplyDeleteI was with my adult daughters when we heard word of the death of RBG. I started shouting and crying. They couldn't figure out why because I was making something out of nothing. They couldn't fathom that rights could be taken away.
There’s a good reason women have PMS: Putting Men Straight.
ReplyDelete