I went back and forth between the title of this post. Was it going to be ‘That time he questioned my heart’ or ‘Listen guys, just hold some %$#@&! space”. Obviously, you see what I chose, but ultimately both describe the reason I’ve opened my laptop today.
We’ve all watched the complete farce that’s occurred these last couple of weeks with the Kavanaugh nomination, and as of yesterday, confirmation. And many have either seen or felt a certain sense of anger surrounding it all. Just yesterday, I deleted two male extended family members because I simply don’t have it in me any more to be mansplained to or antagonized for the things I say or write or feel.
Let’s face it, social media is how we communicate with so many of the people around us, and many are outside our personal circles. Many we have never even met, nor will we ever meet. But those people we know? I don’t get it. I have never and will never pick an online fight with a family member, immediate or extended if I disagree with something you have posted or written, but should you pick one with me, mansplain me, antagonize or condescend to me, I’m coming back at you just the same way I do those times it occurs person to person. Conversation about something is one thing, straight up antagonistic or mansplaining is another. And if you don’t understand mansplaining, go look it up.
I don’t want to just direct this at men, because I’ve watched a few women not understand this rage so many women are experiencing and that’s been swelling in the last two years. However, many times it’s the men around me that don’t understand why we are so fucking angry, why we are protesting, and why, in my case, I have given up on this idea of what I was taught America was.
Just after the election, I printed out the Administration’s main plans for their first 100 days. I shared it with my coven, and we talked about how these things affected us. At the time, there were people within SCRB directly affected by these points. There were people in our community directly affected by them as well and because as a Priestess, I look at the wider community beyond Novices, it enraged me how those in my state, my home state and my country were going to be affected by this.
It continued and piled up, more and more throughout that year. I found myself at the after-election protest, the Women’s March, planning and executing a Planned Parenthood rally at the Statehouse (where we were counter-protested on the spot), the rallies at the airport after the Muslim ban, chalking for Aaron Bailey, and as a speaker at a women’s event called Tearing Down the Walls. In my mind, I see other protests on Monument Circle but I can’t recall what we were there for, as there have been so many that they blur together with noDAPL protests too. Those are just things I walked out my front door for. Pile on top of that every headline and media broadcast of Tweets, actions, abuse, lies, Nazis, etc. etc. etc. … I’m enraged.
I work in birth, and so I see and read and experience violence against women almost on a daily basis. I make it my business to help women and birthing people to find the care that will prevent this occurring to them, but knowing there is a rising maternal death rate in this country, that women of color are 243% more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than white women and that is has nothing to do with education or socio-economic status… I’m enraged.
Last fall, I couldn’t write and execute another happy harvest ritual when around me people were literally being killed in the street for simply being black, while trans women were being killed for being trans, while Native American women were more likely to be sexually assaulted than non-native women, or even go missing, while our Muslim and Jewish neighbors were targets of racism and discrimination, while our LGBTQ loved ones and neighbors rights were threatened. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
So, that became my focus. Take the need, place it in the center, build a ritual around it, raise energy, call on the gods and make protection magic. What could be more important?
In my work of pulling this off, people close to me literally questioned my heart. Those were words spoken to me. And they crushed me at first and came as a shock, because how can my rage for my friends and loved ones mean that my heart is ugly? Why is it that when a woman is angry over injustice, she is told to change that emotion, to be loving, that her anger is wrong? Why is it that when a man is angry over injustice, he’s seen as strong, direct, empowered by his rage and he’ll be the one to save us all?
Anger can come from a place of love. It can come because of love and watching the people and things a woman loves abused, harmed and killed.
If you have a problem with a woman’s rage, step back. Ask yourself why. Reflect. She doesn’t need your guidance in how to properly direct or redirect her emotions, unless she asks for that advice. Instead of questioning her heart, hold some space around her. That’s what my coven Sage did for me. I can’t speak to whether he felt the same anger, or even understood my anger to the depths that it was before that ritual. But he held space, supported me and the rest of us by showing up, by listening, by helping to raise the energy needed. As a straight, white, cis-gender man, many of these points of attack from this Administration don’t directly affect him, or many other white, straight, cis-gender men. Instead of questioning my heart, telling me to reroute my anger, advising me that punching a Nazi in the face if I had to was wrong, he held space.
Guys, hold space for this rising tide of female rage. We need you to do that. We need you to support us, to move over in the spaces that you have occupied without question for so, so long and know that we have a right to a place at the table, especially now as a Court forms up that might very well strip us of the rights to our reproductive futures, and more. If you can’t do that, be prepared for that rage to be directed at you, too.
And as far as my heart being questioned, I’ve come to understand it was not about my heart. It was the strength of his own heart and whether he was strong enough and had enough endurance to hold space around us that was in question all along.
Some of you won't be that strong. No matter. We are channeling our inner Lagerthas, and we got this.
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| Lagertha, with one fuck to give. |
