sacred anger
on female anger, myth, and the wild feminine
Dear reader,
I’ve been walking with my anger for a while now.
As I work with women, with myth, with the cycles of the wild feminine, one truth keeps rising: anger is not our enemy. It is a holy force, misunderstood and misnamed. It asks to be listened to, not feared.
This essay is both personal and archetypal. A love letter to rage, to stories, to the fire in all of us that knows exactly where the boundary lies.
I’ve stopped fearing my anger. I see it now for what it is: sacred.
Over ten years ago, I started approaching my anger as a Divine gift, through myth and stories.
I see my Anger as a Mighty She-Bear, roaring inside a small kitchen. I wait for her to let it ALL out. I sit and stay with her until she can free herself and go back to wilderness. Even if that means the kitchen is fully wrecked.
Anger as a Sacred, Holy Ground. Anger as a Divine Feminine attribute.
Female anger usually rises from the root: from injustice, from betrayal, from the 'no' we weren’t allowed to say. From the moment our boundaries were crossed and we were told to smile anyway, to accept, to allow something to be taken from us... our bodies, our voices, our choices.
It stems from the silence we were asked to keep in order to stay lovable.
Anger is not a shameful shadow. It is our inner fire speaking truth. It is a boundary forming. It is a prayer for change.
And yet, so many of us have learned to fear our anger. To swallow it, numb it, smooth it over, bury it beneath politeness, reason, or performance. As a means to protect ourselves from violence against us. We were taught to make ourselves palatable. As women, we learned that to be safe, we must be pleasing and that anger is the opposite of pleasing.
So we learned to direct that Sacred Fire inward.
We turned it into shame.
Into self-doubt.
Into body hatred.
Into perfectionism.
We turned it into illnesses, into silence, into tears cried alone in the dark because we had no safe place to scream.
But the Archetypal Divine Feminine? She never asks for that.
The Goddess, in all her forms, knows that anger is part of the Holy Flame.
Goddesses of Anger
Durga, the invincible one, the hindu Goddess who rides a lion into battle. Using Her ten arms, each holding a weapon gifted by a different God, Durga was not born out of submission or gentleness, but out of divine rage. Her form emerged when the world was drowning in chaos, when no God could defeat the growing threat alone. So Durga did not hesitate. She stepped into the battlefield, calm and centered in her purpose, eyes blazing with clarity. She did not rage blindly. She fought with precision. She knew who she was protecting. She knew what she was destroying.
Durga reminds us that sacred anger is not chaos... it is clarity. It is devotion. It is action on behalf of life.
And from Her brow came Kali, The Dark Goddess, tongue wild, unstoppable in Her love and Her wrath. Kali teaches us that anger does not make us less divine. It makes us real. Fully embodied. Capable of fierce love and necessary endings.
Kali’s rage destroys only what needs to be released.
And so does Sekhmet, the lion-headed Egyptian Goddess whose rage nearly consumes the world. She was created by Sun God Ra to punish the injustices of humanity, and her fury was so vast it had to be pacified with red-dyed beer. But even then, she did not disappear. She transformed.
Sekhmet reminds us that rage is not just for punishment but for protection, and even healing. Her fire is both the disease and the cure.
And then there is Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and of wild places. Protector of girls, she is not often named alongside the raging goddesses,but her silence carries sharp edges. Her arrows fly when boundaries are crossed. Her anger is not spectacle, it is sovereignty: She owns Herself, Her body, Her forest.
Artemis shows us the power of withdrawing, of protecting space, of answering intrusion not with apology but with precision.
The Witch, the Crone, the Mother, they all carry Fire.
These Goddesses, and the archetypes they carry, invite us to reimagine Female Anger not as something to be repressed or feared, but as a sacred, valid, and necessary force. They call us to remember that rage can be Holy. That it is a sign something deeply sacred is being threatened. That it deserves not only space, but reverence.
Anger as A Female Collective
Anger is a powerful emotion and, for many women, it is inextricably linked to personal and collective injustices. It is time to recognize and embrace this experience, transforming it into a force of empowerment. Women's anger is not a liability, it is a force for change.
When we focus our anger on constructive, creative, and sacred action, we do not diminish its power, we alchemize it. Through reflective writing, ritual, embodiment, dance and art, we can channel our rage into a source of clarity and forward motion.
When we allow ourselves to feel anger, to stay with it, to listen, we begin to understand its message. Anger tells us what we value. What we’ve lost. Where our boundaries lie. What we are no longer willing to tolerate.
It tells us: "Something must change."
You don’t have to explode. But you also don’t have to swallow it.
There is a third way... the Sacred middle path of transformation.
Honouring Anger
You can honor it. You can give it movement. You can journal it, dance it, scream it, cry it, paint it, speak it, ritualize it. You can take the raw heat of it and shape it into something that frees you, something that clears the air, something that lights the way for others.
Anger is precious information. It is not wrong. It is not dangerous. It is a call to presence. To truth. To choice.
So let it rise. Let it burn away what no longer serves. Let it lead us back to the part of us that knows: our truth is sacred. Our "no" is sacred. Our fire is sacred.Not fire for destruction alone, but for transformation. For alchemy.
May our anger be the call that lights the way to a more equal and just future.
May we remember that the Sacred Feminine includes fire as well as water, eruption as well as stillness, and that we carry both.
Reflection
Where has your anger tried to speak?
What is it protecting?
What is it asking you to transform?
Ritual Invitation
Light a candle. Pour a tea, coffee, drink. Write a letter to your anger. Let her speak. Do not interrupt her.
Let her say what has long gone unsaid.
Let her wreck your kitchen.
When she is done, thank her for showing you where the fire still lives.
Open the door. Let Her run free.
✨ If this piece stirred something in you…
You might also want to read “on violence and myth”, a reflection on the old stories that shaped us, the weight women carry, and what it means to still believe in the myth of the girl who walks into the forest.
🔗 Read it here
You can comment, share this piece with someone carrying sacred fire, or reply directly to this email.
May we keep remembering the holy in our rage… and each other.
Great piece :)
This is an important conversation that I wish more of us were having.