Lea Morrison

I’ve been thinking about rage this week. Not as a problem to solve or a stage to pass through, but as the most unmediated, unmanaged, uncoached response a survivor’s body can have.

It arrives before the editing begins.

Before the mind starts negotiating with itself about what is appropriate to feel. Before the world rushes in with its opinions about how long grief should last and what forgiveness is supposed to look like. Before the wellness framework tells you that this much feeling means you need to regulate.

Rage arrives first. And it arrives telling the truth.

Every other feeling a survivor carries has usually been shaped by something external. Guilt shaped by self blame. Shame shaped by stigma. Even sadness gets more room than anger because it’s quieter and easier for everyone else to be around.

But rage is the one feeling that is hardest to perform and hardest to be talked into. When it’s there, it’s there because something in you still knows, without negotiation, that what happened was wrong.

That knowing is worth something.
More than something.

I wrote about this week’s CNN story, about survivor rage, and about what the wellness world got fundamentally wrong.

Link in bio.
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