The dark rage
I noted yesterday that en route to my ritual bath session, tons of thoughts were flooding my brain. Lofty, cerebral things like discernment, reflection, love, and the power of the “Divine feminine,” all things suitable for the impending spiritual moments with God. And others – the scars I have never been able to shake, like fear, anxiety, grief, and rage. And of those, lately, mostly primal rage.
In my search for the “existential meaning” of my life, as well as just plain understanding why the hell I’ve been feeling this way, I’ve been reading a lot of spiritual and mythology books. So their images, themes, and characters are blended in with all of the above thoughts.
Themes of darkness — places like walking through the underworld, sitting in caves of transformation, living in the Dark Night of the Soul — felt like home to me. These were all connected to a search for purpose and rebirth, a withdrawal from the regular world where one could take stock in peace. And of late, that’s just where I wanted to be, in a dark cave peering out at the world, but left alone.
My friends, the crones
I have felt just like the main characters of those stories and have preferred their company. Old crones, the ones who might eat you, slice you with their sword, or save you, depending on their mood and your attitude.
I am truly fond of the Cailleach, a Celtic goddess who ruled in the dark months of the year. Her specialty was to deal out the furied destructiveness of winter’s storms and the geologic explosions when creating mountains. Another hag, Baba Yaga, has also been appealing to me, partly because we share a Slavic heritage. She will eat you or help you depending on your answer to her questions, including, “Have you come to do deeds, or run from them?” That question is my favorite, and I can literally feel her fierce impatience with some weak or whining response. No doubt she would just level anyone like that for bothering to disturb her solitude. And I don’t blame her.
But it’s also irritated me that I’ve felt this way so much lately. Of course, there is a good reason. There is the rage I feel for having been robbed of so much in life. Innocence. Trust. Time. Developmental and life experiences. Even the possibilities for what I could have been in my life. He took so much, and in return, graced me with permanent scars I will discuss later.
Most of all, he escaped being accountable and instead dumped that one on me. He made me the “black sheep” and the “scapegoat” in the family system. I was handed the “blame” for something I didn’t do, and for years, those roles were “assigned to me.” And I accepted and carried them. Until now. Again, I will talk more about that later.
The broken connection
But there has also been something more, something deeper and really primal gnawing at me, probably my whole life, but certainly since my Mother’s death — the disrupted feminine. It has been the broken connection of my life…my relationship not just with my mother, but with myself…my own power…and the loss of a connection for so long with the power of the “feminine” side in a broader sense.
On some level, as I’ve grown in my own power, there is a rage at having had that taken from me for so long. I think with trauma there is a long fallow period of quiet where you just capitulate to survive. Then, as you start to recover and reclaim your power, at least for a while, there is also a tidal wave of rage because you realize fully what you were denied. And you are white-hot livid at that.
But it is not the rage of revenge…but something else. Revenge is not something I was ever interested in.
I couldn’t fully articulate it until I was reading a book by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, called: Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty. The book appealed to me because I am old, in my seventies now, so it was exactly what I was looking for. I am HUNGRY for the wisdom of those female elders and sages.
There were a lot of nuances highlighted in the book, from aging, coming into wisdom, rebirth, and humor. There was even a section on my old spiritual Mother, Mary, here expressed as the “Black Madonna.” Unlike the usual portrayal of Mary as docile and meek, the Black Madonna is the Divine feminine portrayed as a rebellious, powerful, protective mother of the earth.
Transformative wrath
So, in general, I was reveling in the wisdom this book offered up. But it was one particular chapter that nailed it: “Goddesses of Transformative Wrath: Her Name is Outrage.”
Outrage. Yes, that was it precisely: OUTRAGE! It wasn’t “blind rage,” which implies unreasonable, crazy, out of control. But outrage, which is something much more focused and reasonable.
To me, outrage is indignation, a justifiable force felt when harm has been done, when power has been wielded unfairly. When things have just been plain WRONG. OUTRAGE is the righteous force that wells up inside and wants to make things RIGHT.
From that chapter:
“The goddesses of transformative wrath…come to the fore when it is time to take action to change an unacceptable situation, when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. These are goddesses who were called forth when male gods or men were not able to defeat evil, and only a powerful goddess was equal to the task.” (Bolen, 82)
Or, I would add, when the harm was caused BY a male, and only a goddess was powerful enough to confront it.
The chapter mentions that it is in the later years — the crone archetypes — that this behavior appears. “Gloria Steinem has frequently observed that women become more radical as they get older…crones…become outraged at the tolerance of evil or the indifference to suffering.”
That FORMIDABLE crone
This expressed perfectly what I have been feeling these days. OUTRAGE at what was done. Outrage that it still happens and causes harm. Outrage when people are indifferent to the fact that those of us who have been abused are often treated like the problem, silenced, and pay a lifelong cost for what we endured, while our abusers get off scot-free.
Now, while I side with the likes of Cailleach and Baba Yaga, and fantasize about their methods, I realize this fury has to be reined in. It needs to be recognized, embraced, and expressed, yes. But it has to be guided and integrated in a safe and healthy way. I don’t want revenge…I want JUSTICE.
“These archetypes of transformative wrath are most effective when balanced by wisdom. Without wisdom, they can be destructive….With wisdom, the goddesses of transformative wrath are not unleashed in outbursts of rage, nor acted upon impulsively…anger is channeled into a commitment to bring about change, and a determination to find the best way.” (Bolen, 83)
I particularly LOVE the final summation:
“…when wise strategy and outrage come together, an older woman is transformed into a formidable crone.”
THAT is what I am feeling lately. OUTRAGE, and the wish to assume the mantle and responsibility of that FORMIDABLE CRONE.
The “father’s daughter”
Now, this didn’t start right when Mom died, or even in the few years before her death, as I was working earnestly with my therapist. But I realized in reading these things that after a lifetime of therapy aimed at teaching me life skills and catching me up to others, these last eight years of therapy have been different. They have all been about healing that feminine wound. Reclaiming that side of me that I rejected and disparaged for a lifetime.
Maureen Murdock wrote a book called The Heroine’s Journey: A Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. In it, she described what happened to me in life:
I was “…a father’s daughter — a woman who has identified primarily with the father, often rejecting the mother, and who has sought attention and approval from the father and masculine values..This beginning stage…often includes a rejection of the feminine as defined as passive, manipulative…weak, inferior, and dependent…Our heroine puts on her armor, picks up her sword, chooses her swiftest steed, and goes into battle….In her desire to dispel the negative associations with the feminine, our heroine has created an imbalance within herself which has left her scarred and broken…The heroine must become a spiritual warrior…learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of herself.”
Being “reborn”
Some of my biggest wounds, the source of mistakes and neediness, were rooted in that mother-daughter-feminine split I had to make right from childhood. Every time my father told me not to grow up to be a “stupid woman,” he was telling me to both not be my mother and not be a woman. Given that my mother was at his mercy, and was not there for me and did not protect me, I saw her as weak and useless. Hence my own lifelong mantra: “Don’t grow up to be my mother.”
It is finally only now, at this later stage of life, that I can see how much this rift has cost me. And that the source of my true power going forward IS in that feminine, so I must heal that rift.
As part of Murdock’s description of this work, she defines stages of the Heroine’s Journey that apply here: Descent to the underworld, reconnection with the feminine, healing the split, and integrating both sides.
“During this part of the journey, the woman begins her descent. It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, rage…of looking for the lost pieces of herself and meeting the dark feminine…it may involve a time of voluntary isolation — a period of darkness and silence and of learning the art of deeply listening once again to self….”
So, the rage…or rather, outrage that I have been feeling, the need to reconnect with the feminine aspects of myself and my life, and the need to be a FORMIDABLE CRONE to effect useful change…all of that explains why I have felt drawn to walk alone in the quiet darkness of the last several months. As Murdock so aptly put it: “In the darkness we are reborn.” (Murdock 100)
I will note I am far from “alone.” But I have pulled back from many things. I have been in a quiet time. And I will stay here as long as I need to integrate, reflect, and unite the broken parts. I am strong enough.
It didn’t start with power
But was I feeling this strong or outraged when I first started this deeper therapy work in 2018?
No way. In fact, it didn’t start with anger. Instead, I was saturated in fear and, to some extent, despair. But especially fear. So that is where this part of the book starts — FEAR.
Soul Mosaic 
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