Rage

Five of Wands, Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot

My rage threatens to burn me alive. For this, I am grateful.

A few years ago, not only did I not believe that I was entitled to rage, but I genuinely doubted my ability to feel it. After years of therapy (specifically EMDR), of deepening my intuitive practice, and of developing my political awareness, I now hold rage with all the novelty and pride of a shiny new toy.

I exist both within and outside of my rage: I feel it, yet I am also (detachedly) amused by it. I find myself wondering, “To whom does this rage belong? Me? No way!”

Sometimes my rage washes over me in paralyzing waves; sometimes it punctures me like a dagger. Its physical manifestations oscillate between adrenaline-fueled heart palpitations to exhaustion and my accompanying need for twelve hours of continuous sleep. It suffuses my subconscious with images so vivid and vengeful, my dreams often force me awake in the middle of the night.

“Who is entitled to rage?”

This question of both personal AND political importance permeates every media depiction of protesters. It is the implicit spectre in the testimony of every sexual assault survivor. It is the unspoken inquiry whose answer determines how we distinguish “heroes” from “terrorists.”

Personally, I believe:

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to the 300+ mass shootings men have committed in 2022 alone.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to the deaths of over 6. MILLION. PEOPLE. globally from COVID.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to state-sanctioned racism that enables police to murder over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to our country’s lack of meaningful action on climate change.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to 2 million people being imprisoned for profit in the “land of the free.”

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to the systems that create poverty and deny human beings access to clean water, healthy food, quality housing, culturally celebratory education and healthcare, safe communities, love, and happiness.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to genocide, both historical and current.

• Rage is an appropriate reaction to rape culture, misogyny, homophobia, and compulsory compliance with the gender binary.

RAGE IS AN APPROPRIATE REACTION to realizing that we, as human beings, have fucked up so profoundly and so repeatedly at fulfilling the ONE TASK we were put on earth to do: to love each other.

Let me be clear: When I refer to “love,” I do not mean it in a milquetoast, sanitized, conventional, superficial, enabling way. I mean “love” in a fierce, holding-each-other-accountable, learning-from-our-past-mistakes-to-build-a-better-future, fighting-for-ALL-PEOPLE-to-have-what-they-need-to-thrive-and-love way.

For this reason, my love and my rage need each other. It’s only by allowing myself to feel the fullness of my rage that I understand both the strength of my love and the depth of my despair at how woefully we all (including myself!) have fallen short of this mission.

I admit that, because I have only recently discovered and started to own my rage, I have not yet learned how to peacefully coexist with it. I don’t know how to prevent it from overtaking the tenderness of my love, but – painful mistake after painful mistake – I am learning.

Moving forward, I vow to resist getting stuck in the temporary satisfaction of feeling my rage so that I may harness its blistering power in service of love.

And I invite you all to hold me accountable to this goal.