I woke up in the midst of this dream where I witnessed a godly exchange of love between faces I know, but cannot recall.

I rolled over, half awake and smiling only to fall back asleep.

I reentered the dream but this time I was triggered by a male friend, and maybe a few others who were being extremely disrespectful and mean to me. And it both infuriated and broke me at the same time.

In my dream I was standing next to a sister friend, my back to the boys as the heckled me, tears streaming down my face hot as lava.

I didn’t know what to do.

Weather to turn around and say, “hey you’re really hurting my feelings”, yell or to run.

I woke up sweating and confused much like a night terror but this was personal. Where had the blissful love gone?

It had been real, astral love. It was pouring God into God in the most beautiful of ways and when it took that dark turn after only a moment, I felt confused.

There were several points of interest that held my attention throughout the day that followed.

First, was that the people who triggered me were my male friends and it was because they were demeaning me, and being disrespectful, however they had never done this in real life.

Second, was that just a day before, I was enraged by a male friend of mine who triggered me because he was gas lighting an issue that I am really passionate about, and spoke down to me as if his opinion were a singular truth.

Silly boy, don’t you know no truth is singular?

The final point was that I had recently read a chapter on Rage in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ novel Women Who Run With the Wolves, and while it initially did not seem to resonate, it was on my mind all day as I went about my normal tidings.

I couldn’t wait to revisit it because the chapter discussed how rage is a teacher, and can give us insights into our minds that we cannot normally see in normal states.

Rage is special, and kind of dope-

Aka- your rage can make you aware of somethings you need to deal with.

Before I got to my writing and reading practice, I went for a bike ride and stopped in a cemetery where the magnolia trees and the tombstones know me and my voice well.

I rested against a tree and thanked it for days like this where growing is exciting and I dive into my soul head first, racing to uncover secrets and insights.

There are days when life feels stagnant and the growing goes slow, and those are good days too. But the thrill of evolution gets me hyped like no other, and today was one of those glorious days.

Finally, I sat in a secluded area where I could see the great pink sun sink over the harbor and I flipped to the chapter, “Rage as a Teacher”.

It affirmed my showing up, which I often do on my own- it is important to thank yourself for showing up because some days it is no easy task to meet up with pain and rage for coffee.

Healing is essentially the process of questioning and practice, and even by paying attention to our rage, analyzing it, and tending to it, we are taking the first steps of transforming that rage into something else.

Something magical.

Another very important aspect  is that rage can be triggered by something that is related to repeated disrespect as a child. No wonder I was so enraged when my friend gaslighted my opinions and passions.

Not because of that brief moment but because it related back to years of similar feelings, from society, from my family, and from constant slants against the intelligence of women.

The repeated disrespect has me ultrasensitive to this behavior, to the point where now- I’m angry. And I’m not going to put up with anyones bullshit if they aren’t willing to listen and see the other.

There were so many disillusions tied to this trigger.

For instance, the illusion that if I feel insecure or discouraged by a male about my art and passions, I won’t be successful in touching other people.

That if I can’t convince a few men, then I am not worthy of respect as an artist, at all. False. All false.

But this is what so tenderly aches my soul, when one insignificant incident makes me feel this way, when one man’s ignorance triggers me to feel a wrath of fire.

Here’s the catch though, sister friends. When you respond with anger to people who refuse to listen you can so easily be cast as crazy and hyper-emotional. To me, that is a super power. I love feeling the freaking feels.

I leak all the time, whether it’s a good film, an empowering song, two friends hugging, a parent loving on their child in the metro. I can’t help it. We all pick up on subtle energies which can be so exciting to be tapped into the world so intensely and in the same breath, so damn overwhelming.

Get mad if you feel rage. If you want to yell, yell until the cows come home honey. But the next day, pick up your journal your pen your whatever-the-hell-you-use-to-do-internal-work and start to heal.

I know those wounds are deep. I have bullet holes in every corner of my body and everytime I think the healing is near finished I find it’s only just begun.

Here’s the thing- it’s not fucking cool to gas light women. There is a collective anger about this issue, for me it is both cultural and personal.

Today, my practice lead me. I did not lead it. It lead me not to hardening but to softening. To deeper understanding of myself and to dissipate the illusion that I need any sort of validation to call myself an artist, poet, writer, intelligent beautiful creature.  

Yeah. That’s all that I am and so so much more.

Rage is such the mean teacher who you end up loving at the end of the year because she taught you something valuable.

Because wherever there is rage, there are old wounds to be healed further, there is mess to clean up, illusions to identify and drop.

But loveliest of all- there are, of course, poems to be written, paintings to be painted, and songs to be belted from the lips of an angry, frustrated woman who is sick as I am of having her opinions laughed at.

Use it. For art. For healing. For change. But never let it make you hard my love, you are a camellia.

You bloom in the freezing night and you never compromise your warmth.