Gathering Crumbs: On Female Rage

I grew up believing in a perfectly imperfect country.

Not perfect. Never perfect. But evolving.

I believed we were moving forward. That every generation pushed the door open a little wider for the one coming behind it.

As a girl, I was told I could do anything. Be anything.

And I believed it.

That belief existed alongside plenty of contradictions.

I grew up in an era when misogyny was hardly subtle. It screamed from heavy-metal lyrics and album covers, then found a different voice in hip-hop and popular culture. Women were objectified constantly. Ambitious, but still likable.

We learned the rules.

I knew not to walk through a parking garage alone without paying attention.

I knew to hold my keys between my fingers.

I knew to watch my drink.

I knew there were places I shouldn’t walk alone at night.

But somehow, even with all of that, I still believed I was free.

I still believed I could build whatever life I wanted.

And mostly, I did.

Which is why I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask at 50:

What is happening to us?

Because now I look at our daughters.

And what they are navigating feels different.

It isn’t just a song on the radio or a poster on someone’s bedroom wall. It follows them home.

It lives on their phones. It arrives through social media, algorithms, pornography, group chats, comments, DMs and images that can travel through an entire school before anyone has even figured out what happened.

It lives in the Epstein Files.

It lives in the Cornell 7.

It lives in the way too long to list of trusted adults – coaches and teachers and religious leaders – that have been exposed of exploiting others. And those trusted adults have been individuals that my children know and have interacted with.

It lives in the other way too long list of elected officials that have been accused of or convicted of rape, sexual harassment, or assault.

It lives in the increasingly violent way that people in our country interact with one another.

It should be blatantly obvious that the more there is pressure to expose information like the Epstein Files, the more there is a maniacal focus on punishing and sidelining others, especially women.

I am desperately sad that this is the world that our children live in….

And then, in the middle of thinking about all of this, we lose women who represented something important to generations of us.

Women like Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem represented very different kinds of female power, but both helped expand the possibilities of what a woman could be.

So yes.

Sometimes I am angry.

Actually, sometimes I am furious.

There is a particular kind of anger I have come to recognize in women around me.

Female rage.

Not the cartoon version of an irrational, screaming woman.

Not hysteria.

Not hormones.

Something much quieter.

It is accumulated rage.

It is what happens when you spend decades creating feasts for everyone around you, and yet find yourself gathering crumbs. I’ve seen that analogy in a few places and it truly resonates.

A crumb every time you are interrupted.

A crumb every time you smile because confronting the person isn’t worth the consequences.

A crumb every time you make yourself smaller so someone else can feel bigger.

A crumb every time you are told to be careful.

A crumb every time a woman is hurt and someone asks what she was wearing, why she was there, why she trusted him, why she drank that much, why she didn’t leave sooner.

A crumb every time you realize your daughter needs the same warnings your mother gave you.

A crumb when I dwell too long on the fact that I am the sole individual that pays for literally everything that my children need.

A crumb when I find myself exhausted at the end of the week, having done too much for everyone else – and not much for myself.

Eventually, crumbs become a pile.

And maybe that is female rage.

Not one thing.

A thousand things.

Every generation must decide what it will protect, what it will challenge and what it refuses to normalize.

And rage can have a place in that.

But rage cannot be the destination.

Because if all we do is rage, eventually it consumes the person carrying it. A wonderful therapist taught me a long time ago that anger is an emotion to process as quickly as you can, because all it does is take our precious energy.

So what do we do with it?

Maybe we start by refusing to dismiss it.

We listen when women say something feels wrong.

We teach our daughters that their discomfort is a signal that should not be ignored.

We teach our sons that respect isn’t simply avoiding violence against women. It is seeing women as fully human—complex, ambitious, sexual, imperfect, intelligent, difficult, funny, powerful human beings.

We stop teaching girls that being liked is more important than having boundaries.

We stop confusing politeness with goodness.

We speak up for women when they aren’t in the room.

We create friendships where women don’t have to pretend everything is fine.

We mentor younger women. And we praise the younger men that we know and interact with for being aware of the value and power that women have in their lives – both at home and at work.

We tell the truth about our own experiences.

And perhaps most importantly, we refuse to become cynical.

Because I still believe what I believed when I was young.

I believe my daughters can do anything. And they show me that every day.

I believe our sons can become men who make the world safer and more equal rather than simply inheriting its worst habits. And they also show me that every day.

I believe women can lead, build, create, love, raise families, run companies, change communities and reinvent themselves at 30, 40, 50, 60 and beyond. And have incredible partners beside them as they do it. Which I have and it is a gift that I am grateful for, every day.

I still believe in progress.

I’m just less naive about it now.

Progress doesn’t happen because history naturally bends in the right direction.

People bend it.

So we must bear witness to that and keep the bend from going further.

Over time, I know it will bend back.

Maybe our job at this stage of life is to stop enabling all the crumbs to gather. Make feasts for one another. For ourselves. And own it when we make one hell of a great feast….

For now, FBF readers, I’ll be over here, trying my best to keep the bend from going too far. Loving those closest to me well. Pushing for a safer and secure world around me and in my own home as much as I can, every day.

And when I get quiet, just know I am feeling the rage, and avoiding crumbs as best as I can.

 

Photo by Beth Chobanova on Unsplash