An essay on feminine rage, direction, and coming down

---

Get Angry

In recent years, there has been a renewed cultural push to reframe women’s anger as something dangerous, excessive, or socially disruptive. In an article for The Guardian, Soraya Chemaly writes about how women are consistently taught to suppress anger in order to remain likeable, calm, and acceptable, even when that anger is justified. Emotional intelligence is often praised when it looks like restraint, softness, and accommodation, and criticized when it takes up space.

From an early age, many of us are taught to appease. To please. To be sweet.
To smooth tension rather than name it. Anger becomes something to manage quietly, if it is allowed at all. Not because it is harmful, but because it disrupts systems that rely on compliance.

But anger, when understood correctly, is not chaos. It is information.

One of the aspects I love most about teaching women’s self defense and combat fitness classes that involve striking is witnessing anger being released in a healthy, supported way. I see the power in those moments. Faces change.
Muscles engage. Eyes widen. It is a moment of feminine rage.

What has been taught to be small becomes taking up space in the room and being welcomed for it. What has been told, over and over again, to be quiet transforms into guttural, loud voices. What has been dismissed as anxiety or met with “just breathe deeper” becomes sharp, intentional exhales while pummeling a strike mitt or bag.

You cannot catch your breath if you never fully exhale.
That is what I love about what I do.

The problem is not the anger.
The problem is when it has nowhere to go.

When anger is suppressed, it turns inward. When it spills without direction, it overwhelms. What makes the difference is structure.
A place.
Permission.
Support.

A moment where the body is allowed to complete a response it has been holding back.

Release does not mean losing yourself. It means letting something finish.

But even healthy release has an aftermath.

The comedown is the part no one prepares you for.

After the intensity, after the sound, after the body finally lets go, there is often a quiet surge of anxiousness. The nervous system checks for safety. The mind looks for meaning. This does not mean something went wrong. It means something real happened.

You are justified in that anger. You are allowed to express it. You are allowed to feel the crash that follows. What matters is what happens next.

The comedown is not weakness. It is not failure. It is the moment where care is required.

This is where grounding matters. Where breath slows. Where warmth, stillness, nourishment, and gentleness help the body understand that it is safe to return. That expression does not come with punishment. That power does not require self abandonment.

Staying stuck in the crash leads to burnout. Never releasing leads to numbness. The work lives in the transition.

This is what I love about what I do. Not just the strikes. Not just the strength. But watching women learn that their anger can move through them without consuming them.

This is grit and glow.
The fire and the return.
The release and the exhale.