The Gospel of Women’s Rage
This is the gospel of the woman who carried too much, too long.
The one you ignored until her silence cracked and her hands caught fire.
This is not burnout.
This is not exhaustion.
This is rage.
Not petty rage. Not hormonal rage. Not overreacting rage.
But sacred, righteous, ancestral rage.
The kind that is earned.
The kind that shakes generations loose.
The kind that doesn’t burn the village because that’s not what women do.
She doesn’t destroy. She doesn’t annihilate. She disrupts.
She causes discomfort until you learn.
She steps back and lets the consequences unfold.
She makes you sit in the mess you created and figure out how to clean it yourself.
She doesn’t fix what you broke after you ignored every warning.
She watches, steady and unsparing, while you finally feel what she carried for too long.
But why now? Why this turn in tone? Because for too long, I’ve focused on healing, resilience, softness, and hope. I’ve preached integration,balance, and compassion. All of those are still true but they are only half the story.
The other half is anger and for too long, I’ve bypassed it. We all have. Because women have been taught to fear their rage. That it’s dangerous. That it’s destructive. That it makes us like them. But this is not their rage. This is not rage that abuses or dominates. This is the rage of being heard but not listened to. This is the rage that comes when you do the work, rise higher, love harder and they stay the same.
This is the rage that transforms.
The Cracking Point
It started as it always does: I was polite. I was clear. I was helpful. I was ignored.
Then one day, one small thing too many lands in my inbox or on my shoulders, and I snap. Not outward or immediately, but deep inside something breaks and it will never go back the way it was.
You see the look on my face, and suddenly you’re listening, but it’s too late. You don’t get to ignore the whisper, disregard the request, and only respond to the rage. You don’t get to hear me now and think you’re entitled to stay.
This is the rage I feel standing in the pantry, looking at the Tupperware haphazardly stacked where once I had nested them like Russian dolls. That small moment, seemingly unimportant, becomes the spark. Because I have done too much already to now have to turn around and find what I tried to maintain completely destroyed.
It creeps up slowly, but like a rolling stone it builds momentum, until it escapes in a bloodcurdling scream of absolute rage. Rage that I have been disrespected time and time again. Ignored until I feel invisible. I scream to no one and everyone in the empty house (everyone but the dogs, who have already hidden from my wrath).
It was the rage at the cardboard box I ripped apart with my bare hands because it was better than lashing out physically at someone, speaking over my need for space and distance, despite the headphones I wore specifically to be left alone.
It’s the rage I feel as I write this. Because I’m done hearing how hard everyone else has it while the help I asked for went unnoticed, unanswered, and unvalued.
The Pattern
But this isn’t just about me. This is the pattern we see everywhere. It's in the woman who has been asking her husband for ten years to help carry the emotional labor. Then, when she finally files for divorce, he starts going to therapy and starts showing up. But she’s already gone. It’s too late.
It’s in the woman who shows up to work early, stays late, overperforms without recognition, and then one day... stops. She does exactly what she’s paid to do and no more. Then suddenly people notice, why aren’t things getting done? Why isn’t she available? What changed? They were always capable. They just didn’t care until it they were left carrying the load.
It’s in the mother who saves a snack for herself and doesn’t share. Not out of cruelty. But because she realizes she is a person. Not just a mother and she’s allowed to want something just for her, without feeling shame or guilt.
This is about boundaries. This is about not explaining them anymore. This is about the moment when she stops fixing, stops performing, and stops asking.
This is about the moment when she lets herself get angry.
The Shame of Female Anger
We’ve been taught that our anger is dangerous. That it makes us unlikeable. That it means we’ve lost control.
Because when men get angry, they get results. When women get angry, they get dismissed. “Oh, she must be hormonal.” “Are you on your period?” “God, why are you so emotional?”
We are told to calm down, to lighten up, to be kind, or to fix it. When we finally explode, after putting down countless nets of grace, we are suddenly the villain. They don’t remember the warnings. They don’t remember the pleas. They only remember the moment we stopped being nice.
And worse, they expect us to clean it up. They want us to feel bad for the damage. They want us to make them feel better.
No.
Not anymore.
Rage with a Story
Our rage is not random. It has a lineage. It has evidence. It is the conclusion drawn from every time we were expected to give more than we got. Every time we were expected to be the bigger person while someone else got to stay small. Every time they waited for us to snap so they could call us crazy, but never acknowledged that they were holding the scissors.
We are done being cut.
This rage is holy.
It is intelligent.
It is earned.
The Archetype Awakens
This rage is not reckless. It is archetypal.
Think of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. She wasn’t just angry. She was transformed. She walked into that apartment, torn and tattered, said “Honey, I’m home,oh, I forgot, I’m not married,” and heard her own loneliness played back to her on a loop. That was her cracking point. From that breaking came power. She didn’t go out to cause chaos for chaos’ sake. She defended the vulnerable and more importantly, she taught the vulnerable how to defend themselves. She didn’t swoop in to save them like a hero. She showed them they were strong enough to save themselves. That they didn’t need a man, a savior, or permission. That they could do it themselves while wearing heels and skin-tight leather.
She didn’t need saving.
She became the consequence.
That is what feminine rage looks like when it transforms.
Not a tantrum but a transmutation.
I see it, too, in Harley Quinn, especially in Birds of Prey, when she is no longer tethered to the Joker or filtered through the male gaze. Her rage becomes a reclamation of her own narrative, her own pleasure, and her own chaos on her own terms. The sisterhood of that film, each woman awakening to her own power, mirrors the awakening we feel in ourselves.
But not everyone sees themselves in comic books. So let’s stretch further.
There is Medusa. In some tellings, she had already been through enough, assaulted in the temple of a goddess she served faithfully, blamed not just by society, but by the gods themselves. Turned into a monster not because she was evil, but because she was beautiful. Because her beauty had been a threat. Yet, in that monstrous form, she finally found her power. She was given a cave for reprieve, a place to be alone. Men were warned: do not enter. Do not look. Do not take from her again. But they did and her gaze turned them to stone, not out of survival, but as a consequence. Her story is not one of victimhood. It is one of divine boundary setting.
There is Kali, the goddess so often misunderstood. People fear her because they see the blood, the fire, and the destruction. But they forget, she destroys what needs to be burned. She clears the illusions that keep us bound. From her ashes, new life rises. Her rage is nature’s rage. Her dance is liberation. Her presence is a reckoning.
Her love is fierce enough to remake the world.
There is Audre Lorde, who reminds us that our anger is not only valid but vital. "Every woman has a well stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” Her words dismantle the shame of female anger and reconstruct it as fuel for transformation.
We can turn to music, to the voices of feminine rage in song, raw, powerful, and deeply ancestral. The song of generations of angry women to the voices of women who sing what many of us cannot say.
From Björk’s elemental keening in “Pluto,” where she screams: “Excuse me, but I just have to explode / Explode this body off me,” a howl of complete shedding and transformation.
To Nina Simone’s searing protest in “Mississippi Goddam”: “You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality,” a line delivered with unwavering clarity, shaking both conscience and complacency.
To Fiona Apple’s simmering self-liberation in “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” where she declares, “I’ve been in here too long,” breaking free from invisible chains with a whisper turned command.
Alanis Morissette, whose raw delivery in “You Oughta Know” hurls the truth like a thunderclap: “And I’m here, to remind you / Of the mess you left when you went away,” giving voice to every woman who swallowed pain while smiling through gritted teeth.
These aren’t just songs. They’re battle cries. They’re prayers. They’re refusals to be quieted.
These are not stories of ruin. These are stories of rebirth.
You may not wear leather or carry a sword but your rage, too, has an archetype.
Your rage has purpose.
Your rage is not the end.
It is the rite of passage.
So let her in. Let her rise. Let her show you what you’ve been too afraid to name.
And then…become her.
The Reckoning
This is what happens when we stop centering everyone else. This is what happens when we realize we can walk away from one-sided marriages, leave behind draining friendships, say no to the boss who keeps piling it on, and hold onto the snack without guilt.
It’s not cruelty or selfishness but a reclamation.
When they ask what changed, why the silence, why the exit, why the roar, we will not be the ones to explain. Let them sit with the echo.
We will be too busy building the world that should have always existed. A world where women do not have to break in order to be believed.
The Gospel of Feminine Rage is not a warning. It is a beginning.
We have felt it. We have named it. Now we alchemize it.
This week, I invite you to create your own Feminine Rage Practice.
Create Your Feminine Rage Playlist. Find the songs that speak to the storm inside you. Choose lyrics that cut through the silence. Include anthems that remind you of your power. Add tracks that bring you to tears, and others that make you want to scream-sing in the car. Then, take time to listen—let the sound move through you. Let the rage be witnessed.
Choose Your Feminine Rage Role Models. They could be singers, authors, characters, ancestors, or activists. Who has embodied righteous anger in a way that made you feel seen? Who told the truth when no one else would? Who stood firm when it would have been easier to stay silent? Write their names. Study them. Most importantly, ask yourself why you chose them.
Reflect and Reclaim. For each song or role model, ask yourself:
What specific qualities do they embody?
How do they express their anger?
What boundaries do they hold?
How can I integrate this into my own life?
This isn’t about glorifying rage for its own sake. This is about learning how to hear it. How to harness it. How to turn the fire into fuel.
Let your playlist be a prayer. Let your role models be your reminder. Let your reflection be the spark.
