Oh, hello. Today my name is Angry!Sare. Why am I angry? Well, there are a multitude of little and not-so-little things that are going on in my life situation right now, but they’ve really got nothing to do with it because I coped with all of those things with a smile and infinite patience, say, yesterday. I am angry because I am premenstrual – but please let me explain what I mean by that.
Eckhart Tolle, in his wonderful book ‘The Power of Now’ is very clear and helpfully so, about the fact that a woman’s best and easiest time to wake up and become Enlightened is actually during the process of menstruation (pre & during). Why is this? Because there’s all that emotion right on the surface and it’s not just the woman in question’s emotion. At that point in a woman’s cycle, she is unconsciously and unintentionally tapping into not just her emotion but the collective emotional pain of all women who have ever lived and who have been unable to manage their own pain.
All the rapes. All the subjugation. All the torture. All the mutilation. All the childbirth. All the everything.
About a year ago I decided that I wasn’t going to try to medicate my way through this part of the month. Instead I was going to try to ride it out, allow the physical pain and emotional pain to wake me up, to increase my compassion. So far, so good – but let me tell you, never in my life have I been this angry before. Not when my parents got divorced. Not when I found out why they got divorced. Not when people told me I couldn’t do things I certainly could. Not when I failed to get respect that I had earned. Not when I was discriminated against because of my sex (an occasional thing), and because of my age (an ongoing thing). Not when someone called me a heretic to my face. Not when people who are supposed to love me treat me like shit. Not even then. The amount of anger I’ve ever felt in my entire life (and I’ve had anger issues) pales in comparison to what I feel right now.
O, Holy Jesus, am I angry.
Why am I sharing this with you? Well, two reasons, really. It’s helping me to put it into perspective. I’m an external processor, don’t you know. But also this other reason – we need to stop adding to the universal feminine painbody. Please. And that needs to happen everywhere – in every corner of the earth, but certainly the corner in which you yourself are resident, and certainly the corner in which I am resident. And there are some people (#VaginaBlogs) who are working on that, one angle, one path, one way in their corner. Please go look. Go bear witness and allow it to strengthen your resolve.
Me, I’m going to go meditate.