By Rachelle Garcia Seliga
https://www.innatetraditions.com
@innatetraditions
If all the women on this planet FELT, INTEGRATED and UTILIZED our rage - Earth would be radically, beautifully, and immediately transformed.
RAGE is one half of a whole. The other half to this whole is CREATION.
We need to know and feel our rage because it gives us crystal clear clarity into what we don't want; what isn't working.
What often happens when women feel rage, however, is one of two pathways:
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The first pathway is: Many women feel bad or guilty for feeling rage; conditioned over many, many generations that anger and rage are 'bad' feelings. And so - when these women begin to feel anger/ rage, they turn towards distraction and/ or self-medication in order to NOT feel the rage.
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The second pathway is: Women become crystal clear on what they DON'T want but do not know what they DO want.
Why don't we know what we want as women? Because we have been acculturated to not focus on our needs and our desires; to focus on negativity rather than positivity; to complain about all the things we don't like, and to commiserate amongst ourselves.
But if we don't know what we want, how can we create something different than what is?
Knowing what we want and utilizing the pure, raw energy of our rage - is what brings something into manifestation; this IS how we create.
Why else is this potent female rage not being utilized?
Anger and rage are typically pathologized by women and health care practitioners alike. Medically speaking, rage is often considered to be a 'symptom' of another underlying "mental health disorder" such as depression or anxiety. Therefore, medication for "anger management" is often prescribed to "treat" the various other problems women are "suffering from."
The most commonly prescribed types of "anger management" medications are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants, including medications such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. As well anti-anxiety drugs such as benzodiazepines - including medications such Valium, Ativan and Xanax - are often prescribed "to help reduce the occurrence of anger and frustration."
"1 in 4 women in the United States is on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication or both. And women are two and a half times more likely than men to be on an antidepressant."
-Aviva Romm, MD
The above statistic comes to us from PRIOR to 2019; prior to the impact of global social isolation, job loss, school closures and the like. In the first week the WHO declared a "pandemic": prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications rose 39.6 percent for women (22.7 percent for men). (1) and (2)
One evening about 8 years ago now, I co-led a women's circle that a friend had organized for the New Moon. After I shared in this circle, a quiet woman in her 40s came up to me and said: "Can I talk with you?" I said yes, of course. So, we stepped to the side - because I could tell she wanted privacy - and she spoke in a low voice and she told me this:
"Right before I begin to bleed each month, I get really angry." And then she just stared at me. I looked at her, waiting for her 'punchline'... waiting for "the thing/ the message" she was wanting to share with me. And then I got that - THAT was her sharing.
So I said "Is there something else?"
And she said "Well, I have been getting so angry each month right before I bleed. I'm a teacher at an elementary school and I have three young kids - and right before I bleed each month I just can't handle it all. I get so angry. And - so last month" she says, "I went to my doctor." "You went to your doctor?" I asked - fascinated truly - that a woman would consider going to her doctor because she felt angry. It never occurred to me until this point in time that women do this. And so then I said "Well what happened when you went to your doctor?"
And she said "He prescribed me Zoloft."
And I stood there considering all these things that I never considered before: A woman going to a MALE doctor because she felt angry before her monthly bleed... and the doctor prescribing her an antidepressant because she felt angry.
I then asked this woman "Well, what did you do?" And she said "I didn't take the medication, I don't want to take the medication, but I don't know what to do."
And since that one time, this first time that a story like this was shared with me - I have heard this same story hundreds of times - reiterated by hundreds of women. Some of them have taken the medication and some of them not.
I sat down and talked with this woman about anger and rage as being healthy. How anger and rage show us what is NOT working in our lives - offering us opportunities to make changes - to create lives that are more aligned with our Truth. I shared with her how: If we don't feel our anger and rage, we don't have the same FIRE we need within us to make these changes. And how in fact that this is one of the purposes of our premenstrual time; that as our body begins to ready itself and bleed by the breaking down of our uterine lining and let go, it is our time as women to break apart our lives and take stock of what is no longer serving us - so that with our bleed - we can let it go.
WHY would this woman - and the hundreds of other women I have heard from with this same story - WHY would they be / why would we be feeling so angry and rageful?
Could it be because they are / we are exhausted? Could it be because Mothering receives no honor nor respect nor support within the modern world? Could it be because we're living within global systems and institutions that are predicated on the dis-ease of women? Patriarchy is linear, women are cyclical - we literally "don't fit" into these pre-established systems - unless we medicate ourselves to be able to fit.
The anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications that are prescribed for "anger management" and rage - are purported to 'lengthen your short fuse.' But they also numb you physically and emotionally.
When women can no longer see and feel clearly what pisses them off - they no longer are in touch with the FIRE of their rage. The FIRE of rage is the fire of what is NOT working - in our respective lives and in the collective.
Who or What benefits from women NOT being able to connect with and feel their rage?
Who benefits from such a large percentage of the female population being on psychiatric medications?
The current, dysfunctional, degrading systems that we live under, benefit.
Because if we are not connected to and FEELING our rage as women - we don't have the energetic capacity to create systemic CHANGE.
We need to feel our rage;
develop a razor-sharp understanding about why we are so angry;
understand how to not harm others nor ourselves with this energy;
neutralize this energy;
and then focus this big, powerful energy on that which we DO want - on that which we want to create - in order to create a different world.
And we can only do this when we FEEL this rage. And we can only FEEL our rage to this degree and with this clarity when we are unmedicated; unmedicated from all things.
If we were all connected with our rage as women, and could SEE and FEEL the world that we want to create - we could birth this new world into manifestation so fast - and perhaps spare ourselves and spare humanity prolonged suffering.
Rachelle Garcia Seliga Copyright©
August 2021