I Have Both:

A Feminine Reflection on Anger and Empowerment

“I sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork. I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife. When there's meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.”

―Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Anger is a paramour I was born forbidden to entertain. Anger. Hunger. Malcontent. Anger’s mouth is crude; cruel. It has no filter. It spits in the face of restraint. It’s an uncontainable eruption. There is nothing (pardon the dated cultural reference) demure about it.

When I turned 33, my life blew up in ways I had not only never anticipated, but I landed in circumstances in direct opposite of what I had envisioned my life to be.

For the first time, I was angry. I felt like I had reason to be. It was an allowance I didn’t know I needed.

The floodgates sprung wide, and I allowed my anger to pour out like lava. I did nothing to hold it back or reign it in. And because of that unleashing and my refusal to keep it locked inside where it was “acceptable”- I survived.

I thrived, in fact.

I went back to work full-time. I went to grad school. I ate whole foods and moved my body. I stopped drinking alcohol and cut the caffeine. I became singularly-focused. And that focus was on my own well-being so that I could weather the storm I was in, and care for the ones I loved the most. Anger makes everything sharp and clear: there is no time to waffle back and forth. My situation was unfair, and not of my doing. But it was, what it was. I couldn’t change it. But I COULD change myself.

I knew could choose to wallow and get lost, or allow anger to push me to get up and make something of myself. I did the later.

We don’t often talk about women's anger in a way that empowers them. In sitcoms, an angry wife is the trope most often leaned against- the crutch of the modern American world we’ve painstakingly built. Even her vitriol is asinine and mostly related to domestic tasks, such as forgetting to take out the garbage or changing a light bulb. No mention of the oppressive system she was forced to swim in. Let’s not talk about the aprons they are still wearing.

“Angry Women” is a political ploy- a marketing tool to leverage and discredit women’s voices and concerns. It’s just the angry women talking. (Have you read, "Women Talking” by Miram Toews? You should.) That period of my life was one of the darkest I have ever weathered as an adult. But nearly a decade later, I have moments where I wish I could access the kind of anger I had when everything was crumbling.

What was so empowering about anger?

I’ll tell you.

It was the very first time, the very first time in my entire life, I led with what was best for me. It was the first time I asked myself what I needed and wanted in order to survive before considering someone else. It was the first time I ever told anyone to fuck off and meant it. It was the first time I realized how powerful I could actually be if I stepped into it and not away from it. It was the first time I owned possibility- and I didn’t want to give it back.

It broke me. But I was reborn into someone I finally recognized. Someone I was proud of. Someone who survived.

I was taught that anger was a consuming fire- one that would eat me alive. “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” was embossed on plaques, recited in Sunday School; it was in marriage counseling 101. It was evil; painted red like the devil. It torched good will, good deeds, goodness entirely. To let anger burn meant to let Satan win. I can’t remember a single moment of my first twenty years when I raised my voice unless I was on a stage. Anger had no place in holy living- so we all seethed in silence and burned from the inside.

But in that season, the sun went down most nights on my anger. It was the only thing that kept me warm.

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In another life, I taught high school English. The Handmaid’s Tale was always part of my curriculum. I would write out the above quote long form, on the whiteboard in a blue expo marker. I would turn my back so they wouldn’t see me cry. I had no proverbial knives in my drawer, then. No teeth.

I have both now.