Sacred Signals: The Call of Anger and Resistance

If you’re seeing the same world I am right now — you’re probably angry.

And that’s the thing: we are supposed to be angry.

Anger can feel like a dangerous word. It carries images of sharp words and raised voices, barbed attacks and bruised egos. Anger can conjure visions of harm — physical or emotional.

For many of us, our relationship with anger is often characterized by our socialization. We learn a very black and white version of anger. Those assigned male at birth often get funneled into a pattern of anger as one of the few “acceptable” emotions to express, tying the expression of anger to masculinity and clouding access to helpful, healthy expressions of anger. In dramatic contrast, those assigned female at birth often get a very different message: Anger = aggression = bad. Anger = too emotional = not worth listening to. So we learn to make ourselves smaller, swallow the anger, and smile instead. We learn to apologize, silencing ourselves before anyone else can.

When we’ve experienced anger as dangerous, our association with anger becomes hard‑wired into the nervous system. Even the hint of anger can trigger survival responses: the fight that snaps into aggression, the flight that looks like avoidance, the freeze that shuts us down completely, or the fawn that bends itself into people‑pleasing to neutralize the threat.

Each of these is an understandable, deeply human response — a tool we learned when anger felt unsafe. But sometimes, the very tools we’ve used to survive can block us from our anger’s true purpose.

Anger is an active emotion. It wants to be used. Anger is a cue for needed action, pushing us to act on something our bodies registered as intolerable. Because here’s the truth:

My anger doesn’t diminish my viewpoint. The intensity of my anger doesn’t make me irrational. It doesn’t erase my worth. It doesn’t void my voice. The depth of my anger is evidence of just how deeply I care — about myself, about others, about this world we share.

At its core, anger is the emotion we experience when our boundaries are violated, or when we witness an injustice — when our values are violated. And right now, across the world, we are seeing this on a massive scale. We are watching genocide. We are watching cruelty. We are watching the trampling of human dignity and worth. It is devastating. It is heartbreaking. And yes, it is enraging.

Your anger doesn’t make you abrasive, invalid, or the “bad guy.” Villains are not the only ones who act on their anger; they are simply the ones who fear our collective anger. And I am tired of the narrative that my anger is part of the problem when I am simply angry at the actual problem.

It is not a problem that we are angry when people in our communities are arrested with no reason, no warrant, no trial. The problem is that it is happening.

It is not a problem that we are angry witnessing violence enacted against trans and queer folk. The problem is that it is happening.

It is not a problem that we are angry hearing genocide justified. The problem is that it is happening.

If you are grappling with anger that won’t lie down, feeling crippled by a world that doesn’t want to hear what you have to say — I hear you. I feel it with you.

It is hard to value compassion in a world that punishes softness.

And it is so powerful that you haven’t lost your caring.

So if your anger has pushed you to that overwhelmed, fearful, survival place:

– If you want to fight, we will do so together.

– If you want to flee, we will make a safe harbor to find your courage.

– If you want to freeze, we will find ways to stay connected.

– And if you want to fawn, we will stand together and make space for your true voice.

Your voice is as sacred as your anger.

And now more than ever, it is worth speaking.