A few weeks ago would have been my Joe’s 55th birthday, and I wanted to do something celebratory in his honor. Something that felt more like remembering his life than mourning his absence. I asked my mom if she’d like to go out to lunch or visit his memorial bench at Awbury Arboretum. She brushed me off, saying she had work to do that Monday. And just like that, what I had hoped would be a celebration shifted into something heavier. The loneliness of grief.
Matt, being the sensitive and kindhearted man that he is, offered to do anything I wanted to honor Joe’s memory. And while that was incredibly loving, the person I wanted to be with was my mother. Matt, sadly, never got to meet Joe. I wanted to be with someone who knew him, loved him, and shared this particular loss with me.
But my mom was busy.
So I went to Joe’s bench alone, brought him flowers, and took a beautiful walk through the Arboretum, crying for most of it. The autumn sunshine felt almost at odds with my sadness. The world was still shining, still moving, still doing its thing, even as I felt a little stuck in mine. When I got home, I decided to channel some of that energy into pulling weeds in our garden. A little physical labor to get out of my head and into my body.
And that’s when my mom came outside to chat.
Now, anyone who knows me knows I am rarely at a loss for words. But when I’m carrying intense emotions, I tend to go quiet. So as my mom attempted to make conversation, I offered short, clipped responses. Eventually, she asked if I was okay, and I decided to tell her the truth.
I explained that I was hurt that she hadn’t wanted to spend time with me on such a sensitive day. That I had been feeling alone in my grief. That I wasn’t asking her to fix anything. I just wanted to be with my mother. But the conversation quickly shifted to her sadness, her sleepless nights, her loss, her pain. Her, her, her.
This is a familiar dynamic between my mother and me, one that has historically brought out a whole lot of anger. But thankfully, years of therapy have given me a few more tools to work with. So I took a breath, acknowledged her grief, and tried to steer the conversation back to what I had been attempting to express: that I was hurting and wanted my feelings to be acknowledged.
“Well, I guess I’m just a horrible mother,” she snapped.
Oof.
I explained that I hadn’t said that. I wasn’t asking her to take the blame for my sadness. I was asking her to see it. And then she got up and walked away. I asked her to stay. To please stay in the hard part with me. But she went inside.
Now, historically, this is the exact moment when my enraged 13-year-old self comes barreling through the door. The one who slams things, screams, and desperately tries to make herself heard by getting louder and louder. And you know what? It has never worked. But this time, something was different. As my mom walked into the house, I took a breath.
And then I SCREAMEDDDDDDD.
I mean, really screamed. A full-bodied, from-the-depths-of-my-belly scream, followed by a generous helping of F-bombs. I knew I couldn’t keep all of that emotion trapped inside my body. But I also knew that directing it at my mother wasn’t going to get me anywhere. We’d danced that dance plenty of times before. So I let it out into the open air.
And something unexpected happened. My mom came back outside. She looked at me and asked if I needed a hug. A hug. The very thing I had wanted all along. She wrapped her arms around me, and I sobbed. Really sobbed.
There was no grand resolution. No perfectly articulated apology. No sudden unraveling of decades of complicated mother-daughter dynamics. Just a mother holding her grieving daughter. And for that moment, it was enough.
My anger was a manifestation of my grief.
And perhaps underneath all that rage was a much softer, more vulnerable request: Please don’t leave me alone in this.
Which got me thinking about Kali.
In one Hindu mythological account, the dark goddess Kali emerges from Durga’s third eye, born from the intensity of her rage in battle. Kali is fierce. Wild. Unapologetic. Often depicted with her tongue extended, adorned with skulls, and wielding weapons, she is hardly the soft, serene image we tend to associate with the divine feminine.
But Kali is not simply a goddess of destruction. She is also associated with protection, liberation, and transformation. Her destruction clears away what can no longer remain, making space for something else to emerge. And I find that duality incredibly compelling.
Because anger, particularly for women, femmes, queer, nonbinary, and trans folks, has so often been treated as something to suppress. Something unbecoming. Something dangerous or inappropriate. Be nice. Be agreeable. Don’t make a scene. Don’t be so emotional.
Meanwhile, we live in a world that offers us plenty of reasons to be furious. I think about the persistence of rape culture on college campuses, the ways women’s bodies are policed and publicly scrutinized, or a comedian like Shane Gillis casually calling women “whores” for wearing shorts at the gym. And I think, well, perhaps a little rage is warranted.
Perhaps anger isn’t always something we need to soften, swallow, or transcend. Perhaps it’s telling us that something matters. That a boundary has been crossed. That an injustice has occurred. That beneath all that heat, there is something precious asking to be protected.
And perhaps that’s where Kali’s energy becomes so interesting to me. Not as rage for rage’s sake, but as a force that can both dismantle and protect. Something fierce enough to confront what harms us and loving enough to make room for what might heal us.
I don’t think all anger is righteous. And I certainly don’t think every expression of anger is helpful. I’ve had enough arguments with my mother to know that screaming at someone and screaming out an emotion are two very different things. But I am beginning to understand that anger isn’t necessarily the enemy of tenderness.
Sometimes it’s the thing standing guard over it.
And grief? Well, grief has a way of wearing all sorts of disguises. Sometimes it looks like sadness. Sometimes nostalgia. Sometimes numbness. Sometimes it looks like a grown woman standing in her garden screaming profanities into the September air because she misses someone she loves and desperately wants her mom.
So if you’re feeling a lot these days, me too. Maybe we don’t need to immediately make sense of every emotion or rush to turn it into something beautiful or productive. Maybe we can just notice what’s there.
Cry it out. Scream it out. Dance it out. Paint it out. Yoga it out. Find whatever way feels safe and honest for those feelings to move through you. Not because we’re trying to get rid of the grief or erase the anger, but because perhaps allowing those emotions some room to breathe creates space for something else to exist alongside them. Something a little softer. Something a little more nourishing.
Like the warmth of a mother’s arms around her grieving daughter.
Big feels and Move With Love.
Xoxo,
Holly
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