I Was Never Too Much. I Was Just Never Accepted

I have been angry my whole life

Not the kind of angry that breaks things. The kind that burns slow and steady when you watch injustice happen and nobody does anything. The kind that flares when shitty people do bad things and get rewarded for it. The kind that lives in your chest when you’re sitting in a meeting watching a decision get made that you know is wrong and nobody will listen because you’re the woman in the room.

I fought with my father for caring about the things he didn’t. For wanting to be who I wasn’t. For refusing to shrink into the shape he needed me to fit.

I got angry about bad managers. Bad jobs. Being mansplained. Being talked over. Having to fit in. Having to pretend I didn’t see what I saw. Having to compete with other women instead of trusting them. Having to play a game I never agreed to play.

Little by little it built.

Then I tried to save my son.

Zachary was an addict. And I loved him the way only a mother can love someone she is losing in slow motion — completely, desperately, without any ability to stop what was coming. I fought for him the way I fight for everything I believe in. With everything I had.

I lost him anyway.

And when I lost Zachary I lost my filter.

The nice girl. The patience. The ability to tolerate the falseness of the world I had been navigating my entire life. Gone. All of it. Because when you have held your child and known he is leaving and been powerless to stop it — you lose your tolerance for anything that isn’t real. And when I say real I mean, raw and authentic. Like. People.

I was never someone who suppressed her anger. I was someone who was never accepted because of it.

There’s a difference. And it took me a long time to understand that the problem was never my rage. The problem was a world that needed me smaller.

Then I got laid off.

Not for performance. Not for capability. For being me. For not following the script. For refusing to kiss ass in a room full of men who were less capable than me but better at the performance of corporate compliance. For knowing what needed to be done and doing it instead of waiting for permission. For being too much.

I sat with that for a while.

And then I got to work.

I built Wicked Women Rising because I am done pretending that women’s anger is a problem to fix.

I built BURN: Rage Alchemy™ because I know I am not the only woman who has been told her fire is too much. I built this because Zachary’s death burned away every reason I had left to play small. To listen to scared people expecting everyone to play small.

This work is for the woman who has been fighting her whole life and doesn’t understand why she’s so tired.

It’s for the woman who gets told she’s too emotional, too intense, too much.

It’s for the woman who lost something — or someone — that broke her open and left her with nothing left to lose.

It’s for the woman who was never too much.

She was just never in the right room.

On May 16th I’m opening that room for the first time.

BURN: Rage Alchemy™. Live. In person. Denver. $45.

Six spots. If this is you — or someone you know — the link is below.

She who burns, transforms.