Transforming Anger into 'Sacred Rage': How to Channel Emotions for Good
“When a woman is at home in her wildness, rooted in her instincts, and attuned to the voice of her deepest knowing, she is a formidable presence…[and] thunders after injustice.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves
There is so much to be said, so much emotion to process, so much hurt to heal, it’s hard to find words or a focus for this week’s newsletter that doesn’t devolve into some pollyanna, bypass-y BS or an outright red-hot, rage-y rant.
To observe my path this past week would have been to observe the waters: first stunned, still as flat, black ice; next melting into a grey slush by the side of the road; then leaving to the wilds, forcefully pulsing and churning over turbulent cataract after cataract, later sputtering as a leaf caught in an eddy, spinning round-and-round, eventually stilling into calm. This morning, from this place of stillness, I’ve been focusing on composting all of this into something more centered, more purposeful, more directed: Enter ‘sacred rage’.
In a search of wisdom, I turned to Terry Tempest Williams, the writer who “speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, ‘what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?’”
Williams has written and spoken of transforming anger—which she acknowledges to be a great motivating force—into sacred rage, a conscious anger directed towards justice. It is an embodied, composted anger: “The difference for me is when I’m angry, I’m in my head. When I am holding sacred rage, I feel it in my solar plexus, in my belly, and I can proceed with a greater focus and with compassion for what I feel is not right” (Humble Commitment: Terry Tempest Williams: A Conservation Author’s Sacred Rage. Laura Paskus in Conservation Voters New Mexico).
This. I’m now slowing, breathing, grounding, absorbing, and harnessing wisdom, in part by turning to my own teaching tools! (tools I seemed to have momentarily forgotten this week.) [One exercise, for example, focuses on the concept of duality and utilizes the wide-ranging and complex characteristics of water to help us illuminate, integrate, and balance the inherent dualities—the light and the shadows—we all possess, in order to stand in our own fierce power]. I’m composting all of it.
The work of an advocate, formal or informal—whether it’s on behalf of the planet as mine has been, or in favor of community, equal rights, fair wages, clean food, children, education, mental health, you name it—is most often born of fierce love and dedication, and sometimes out of straight-up necessity. These paths are hard (and many of these champions are taking this week hard). Inevitably, no matter the role—whether front-facing or behind-the-scenes, leading or supporting, big or small, public or private—every advocate will somehow face the myriad tensions that arise as society battles it out over, in William’s words, “matters of justice”. Nearly all will witness both the most admirable qualities and capacities of the human spirit, and the most base. It is in the context of these struggles that our own character, our own capacities, our own wounds, will be activated, and in the end, determine whether we will hold true to the fierce love and dedication that started the whole damn thing, or somehow be unable to do so and instead, succumb to embodying those more base human characteristics. Do we embody ‘sacred rage’ or just rage?
About a decade and a half ago, after spending five years working as the lead scientist and strategist for a coalition of ranchers and environmental groups challenging some $500-million worth of water rights in Idaho’s Snake River Basin Adjudication to protect agriculture (yes, I acknowledge its inherent problems), wildlife habitat, open space and in-stream flows from the relentless march of development, I hit an inflection point. I was damn good at what I did. And, it brought me toe-to-toe with a cast of almost-entirely white and angry men fighting over money and power. So while there were certainly compelling motivations that keep me going—the rewards of an intellectual challenge, the quiet satisfaction that I was running circles around these guys, and a strong call to do good by the wilds, all of which could have fueled an ego-driven and lucrative career—when this work was nearing completion, I recognized I was done. I was done with the anger, done with the fighting, done with the kind of energy I felt around me. I resolved then and there I was going to do good by doing good rather than fighting.
And, since that time, this is largely where I’ve stayed. I add value where I can and limit my time in angry arenas. I believe in bringing beauty to the world. I honor the power of creativity. I rely on community and love and kindness. I hold hope for a “different kind of power”. As I write this, I’m recalling a painting I finished last winter entitled ‘Rise Up’.
What I wrote about this piece at the time seems particularly poignant today:
In a world where we are bombarded by a steady stream of madness, making art is a form of resistance. We face seemingly infinite daily assaults on our humanity—violence, apathy, selfishness, aggression, cruelty. We can resist these energies by directly opposing them—and at times, we should. We can also counter them by actively placing our attention, focus, and love in the places that matter. Today I rise up by making beauty—and in doing so, cultivate my personal sense of joy, focus, meaning, and overall wellbeing. And, then, I gift this to you.
It seems I was speaking of sacred rage.
xo Wendy
P.S. It’s now a few days after writing this piece—still just one week out—and I’m finding my center of gravity returning, my sacred rage becoming even more grounded. I’ve read lots of accounts of how people are coping with the trauma soup we’re in—some heart wrenching, some bringing levity. Laughter is finally re-emerging for me. How are you coping?
The middle way - to neither repress the anger nor lash out, but instead use the energy to take action appropriate to the situation at hand
Thanks for this, particularly this: "We can also counter them by actively placing our attention, focus, and love in the places that matter." There are two books in my TBR pile: Women Are Angry: Why Your Rage is Hiding and How to Let It Out, and Rage Becomes Her.