Do You Swallow Glass & Call It Grace? Reclaiming Healthy Female Anger for your Emotional Toolkit

Anger as Protection for your Boundaries, Safety and Consent!

Every month at our Storytelling with Goddess circle we discuss what women have had stolen from them, or removed and distorted in society, religion and culture by patriarchy.  This month anger was the tool we discussed which was removed from so many of our emotional tool kits. This might not be news to everyone, but trust me, this is new to some women, especially those raised in authoritarian, right wing, fundamentalist religion - some who are in the process of deconstructing now. Even those of us raised in less oppressive families or environments do well to discuss context and perspectives they might not have previously considered. 

What follows are some of the most profound sentences I shared with the circle from the Root and Ritual substack titled, Why They Taught Us to Cry When We Should Burn by the Peacekeeper Trap:

If I wanted to maintain absolute control, I would create a religion out of the “Peacekeeper.” I would praise the woman who swallows glass just to keep the dinner table quiet. I would look at her bleeding mouth and call it “grace.” I would teach her that true strength is the ability to absorb infinite amounts of abuse without ever raising her voice.

The women present deeply resonated with those words and what followed:

If I wanted to neutralize an entire demographic, I would not bind their hands. I would hijack their emotional compass.

I would take their anger, the exact biological mechanism designed to protect them, and I would convince them it is a disease. I would teach girls, from the moment they can speak, to cry when they are furious. I would wire their nervous systems to fold inward under threat. I would label their righteous fury as “hysteria,” “bitterness,” or “irrationality.”

I would make them terrified of being called a bitch.

That’s exactly what patriarchy has done. This social construct imposed by men onto women for thousands of years has shifted the shame from the perpetrator where it belongs onto the victim. When our boundaries have been crossed, when consent is ignored, when we’ve been lied to, betrayed, mis-used, raped,  or molested some of us who never learned boundaries continue to submit, turning the anger inward where it turns into depression and possibly disease.  Others spiritually bypass, go silent, gaslight themselves, employ toxic positivity or toxic niceness and are often guilted into forgiving the transgressor lest they’re somehow deemed a bad girl.  We cry which is generally the more acceptable response for women in patriarchy. We do anything and everything not to make others uncomfortable as we’re encouraged to sweep the burning, shame or fear inside us under the rug, to keep the peace and be politically correct.

When we lost the archetype or role model of the feminine face of god, the Divine Feminine, we lost anger as a legitimate and healthy response to injustice or a lack of safety.

Sekmet teaches women to say NO without guilt!

When one researches we find all the goddesses who regularly employed anger when it was necessary and called for: Kali, Sekhmet, Inanna, Lilth, Pele, Durga, Morrighan, Eris, Medusa, Aphrodite, Demeter, Nemesis, Lyssa, even Kwan Yin – to name just a few. There were also the demonized Harpies and the Furies called the “boogeywomen” of ancient Greek mythology by Prof. Carla Ionescu on her Goddess Project youtube channel.  Rather than demonize the person who is the victim, telling him or her to quietly endure, these ancient archetypes were saying you get what you have coming to you. If you rape, murder, abuse, then be prepared to have any of these Goddesses, or their energy, unleashed upon you.  To avoid that wrath, do the right thing, hold yourself in check because you will be held accountable by righteous anger otherwise. Do not bring anger upon yourself with your bad deeds because if you do the wrong thing you should surely expect anger from your victim or that victim’s protectors.  This was not about giving the abuser a get out of jail free card by shifting the shame to the victim and depending on a passive or quiet response from the abused.  This was about insuring fairness, justice, and balance as well as protection from evil-doers – a response lost when these ancient goddess myths were erased from history. Can you imagine any of the aforementioned Goddesses tolerating the Epstein Files disgrace or the domestic violence statistics, taking away women’s rights to their bodies, or any of the many other multitude of injustices done within society, religion and culture?  Of course not and that’s exactly why these Goddesses were disappeared, demonized or marginalized.

Too often today it is the evil doer who is not held accountable. The woman who is raped is asked what was she wearing? The rich man gets off the hook for his abuse with a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. Many courts favor the rich if the injustice even makes it to court.  Women are denied reproductive freedom and some are forced to wear burkas because men cannot control their own libido. Women or girls who complain about being wronged, who don’t obey male authority or won’t tolerate their consent or boundaries being violated are often considered unreasonable, bitches, femi-nazis, mean girls, or man haters. The current Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, has tried without success to disgrace such women saying they’re lonely, unfulfilled and old cat ladies.

In some communities women and girls are manipulated with fear-based religious threats of Hell. Christian Nationalists are desperately trying to stem the tide of a rising immigrant population by convincing young women their role is having more white babies to out-number people of color. The current narrative in the manosphere is women and girls are denying men and patriarchal culture what’s deserved! Women and girls are trying to navigate the dangerous terrain upon which they find themselves and anger is a healthy emotional response.

Find Your Sacred Roar

The highly respected and famous psychologist Carol Gilligan often discusses how women learn by the time they’re a teenager living in patriarchy how very hard it can be to hold men accountable and state truths honestly and directly to them while staying safe and not suffering some form of retribution -  mostly because they’ve never been held accountable within male-dominated patriarchal culture.  She explains males begin to lose their empathy after the age of seven years old and begin to adopt the entitlements of male authority in patriarchy, leaving women expending disproportionate amounts of energy trying to communicate with men who have low emotional maturity or EQ. Perhaps readers have heard one of the high-ranking men in the manosphere, the billionaire, Elon Musk, touting his idea that empathy will cause the destruction of the western world.

The Divine Feminine, as deity, archetype or role-model and ideal offers humanity solutions and sanctuary. Notably, within contemporary Goddess Spirituality, the lion-headed Egyptian Goddess, Sekhmet, whose oft distorted patriarchal story demonizes her strength and authority teaches women to say “NO” without guilt or shame. Women’s consent, aspirations, wisdom and dreams matter! Sekhmet emulates a sacred roar and holy anger all women must once again learn belongs in their emotional tool kit as an action of protection, justice and accountability.

Stop swallowing glass and calling your bleeding mouth grace.  Find your sacred roar.

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Rev. Dr. Karen Tate’s eighth published book, Pagan Portals: The Divine Feminine: Deity, Archetype and Ideal is now in pre-order with a launch expected in early October.  To learn more about the solutions and sanctuary offered humanity by the Divine Feminine, order your copy now!

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