← Notes from the Edge
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Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor and author of the upcoming memoir Notes from a Certified Mad Woman. Welcome to the Edge.
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Welcome to Midnight Menopausal Meanderings, the place where menopause, insomnia and the disappearing filter meet somewhere in the middle of the night. I'm Lisa Lacey, host of Notes from the Edge, which this series is part of. And tonight I want to talk about anger. And not the pretty kind. Not the carefully processed, therapeutically approved anger that has always been converted into a lesson, wrapped in a bow and made comfortable enough for everyone else to consume. I want to talk about the kind of anger that changes the way people look at a woman, because people were remarkably comfortable with my pain when I delivered it softly, apologetically and with enough self awareness to make sure nobody else felt blamed. And then eventually I would get angry and suddenly the conversation changed. You see, my pain had been acceptable when it was quiet. It had been acceptable when I explained it gently, when I added disclaimers, when I said, I understand everyone is doing the best that they can. I know I played a part. I'm not trying to blame anyone. See, it was okay when I made sure that the person who heard me did not feel too uncomfortable hearing about the fact that they had heard me. I was the version of suffering that was socially acceptable until I wasn't, because that being socially acceptable didn't require anything from anyone. It didn't interrupt access, it didn't demand accountability, and it did not change the terms of the relationship. It allowed everyone to remain exactly where they were while I carried the emotional consequences of what had happened and nothing happened to them. I carried it quietly. I carried it beautifully and gracefully if possible, preferably with some positive inspirational language attached. But you know what? The truth is, anger doesn't always arrive beautifully. Sometimes it arrives years after being reasonable, or after you've explained the same boundary 12 different ways, or after being misunderstood, minimized, dismissed, betrayed, interrupted, talked, overused, manipulated, or expected to absorb one more thing because you have always been the person who could handle and endure it. And then there's anger that arrives in menopause, which is really inconvenient for everyone who was benefiting from my pre menopausal version because menopause has a fascinating way of negotiating the emotional contracts. You never consciously agreed to, the ones that said you would remain pleasant, the ones that you said you would be the one continuing smoothing things over, and that you would absorb the tension in the room so everyone else could feel comfortable metabolizing their heavy emotions for them. The hidden contract with fine print that said you would explain away your boundaries or explain them gently enough that nobody would actually experience them as rejection. That you would keep giving people access to you because removing access would make you look mean. You know what? At some point that contract has to expire. And in my case, nobody sent out a press release. One day I just simply realized I was no longer available for performance because I didn't have the energy, I didn't have the hormones, and I no longer had the patience. And in my case, I no longer had the reserve to pretend something was fine. I'm fine when it is clearly not fine. That does not mean that every angry thought we have is correct or every reaction is justified, and certainly doesn't mean that menopause gives me permission to emotionally decapitate everyone who irritates me before breakfast time. Although I could. There are mornings when that feels a little compelling. Not gonna lie. The disappearing filter is not always the creation of a new irrational woman. Sometimes it is the revelation of a woman who is underneath all the accommodation. The one who has been editing herself for decades. The one who knew something was wrong but kept questioning her perception over and over and over again. The one who would tell herself because other people told her she was too sensitive, too demanding, Emotional, Intense. Difficult. Too much. Too much. What about the woman who swallowed the truth because she knew the truth might cost her some belonging? In my memoir, Notes From a Certified Mad Woman, Fingers crossed, hopefully launching November 1st, I write about the way women are often rewarded for becoming emotionally manageable. Here are some words that are acceptable for us. Pleasant. Accommodating. Self. Sacrificing. Useful. Easy to soothe. Easy to direct. Easy to tolerate. We smooth the tension before it even escalates, because we learn that very early and we absorb discomfort quietly, which, by the way, can eventually cause a lot of chronic problems in our body because we keep everyone else emotionally comfortable. And many of us are extraordinarily skilled at that particular performance. Not because it's fake. It was a beautiful adaptation, because approval eventually begins to feel like safety. And pleasantness, well, that keeps us attached so we don't have to avoid rejection. But self abandonment becomes the currency and some of us become caretakers because usefulness feels safety, feels like safety, or feel safer than us being real with people. And then there's our perfectionist side, because flawlessness feels like armor. Then there's the agreeable side. Because conflict to many of us feels like danger inside our bodies. And eventually we can lose track of where the performance ends and where our identity begins. And then we start asking the question, who are we? I knew how to become whatever version of myself, the environment rewarded or needed or required. Professional Lisa, strong Lisa, funny Lisa, sexy Lisa, supportively so capable Lisa. I'm going to say strong Lisa again. The woman who could carry and endure impossible emotional weight while pretending it was not crushing me internally. I was praised for being strong, but what they were praising was my ability to continue functioning while feeling emotionally overwhelmed. And there is a difference. Strength is having capacity and choice. Self abandonment is continuing because you do not believe you are allowed to stop. You see, real strength says, I can carry this. Self abandonment says I have to carry this because nobody else will. And I don't know who I am if I put it all down. And a lot of us are called strong when we were actually really, really tired. A lot of us are called resilient when the truth is we've just never been given an option or a safe place to collapse into. And of course we're dependable because our families, our businesses, communities and relationships have quietly organized themselves around the assumption that we will absorb the cost. Our currency gets spent, theirs doesn't. Then one day when we stop or our body makes us stop, which happened in my case, suddenly I'm difficult, not strong. I'm reactive, unstable, angry, selfish, hormonal. Which is interesting because people rare call a woman hormonal when her hormones are helping her tolerate everyone's. They call her hormonal when the tolerance disappears. So in my memoir, I write that women's anger is often treated as the problem. Instead of evidence of betrayal or violation or unmet needs, our nervous system overload or being silenced for way too long. Something's going on. Now, that doesn't mean every expression of anger is healthy, but it is data. It is just information. It tells us something has been crossed, lost, ignored, or just become intolerable. It's our body's way of saying, enough. This hurts. It doesn't feel safe. It's not fair. And I cannot continue. I'm no longer willing to disappear in order to remain connected to you. But we don't know how to say it. We don't have words for it. We don't have permission for it coming from ourselves. We're looking for it outside ourselves. And that's where things get complicated, because anger interrupts access. A woman who becomes angry may be not useful or not answering immediately or she stops explaining herself or lending the money or solving the problems or tolerating the disrespect in the name of keeping the family together or being part of the family, or being the emotional recycling center where everybody dumps what they do not want to process themselves. So I get to say no, and I've started saying no. And no can feel aggressive to people who were accustomed to unlimited access. Sure, a boundary feels cruel to somebody who benefited from my lack of them. And distance, for some people, can feel like punishment when they believed that my presence was guaranteed. That is why people can celebrate a really strong woman conceptually, while reacting badly to the actual female power. In practice, they like the quote, the mug, the T shirt, the inspirational posts about women rising from the ashes. But they are not that excited when she rises from the ashes and changes the locks or sends the invoice, or finally tells you the damn truth or stops apologizing for the fact that she survived the fire and it changed her. People say they want women to be honest, but honesty is welcomed most enthusiastically when it is calm, convenient, diplomatic, and doesn't expose anything or anyone that may be uncomfortable or that carries consequences. When the woman can tell the truth while remaining warm, reflective, accountable, emotionally contained and deeply concerned, well, that's great. But visible rage enters the room and people, they stop listening. They become cautious, submissive, defensive. Or they try to reduce the woman's entire emotional reality to instability. And that can be one of the loneliest parts of female anger. Realizing that some people were more attached to your emotional usefulness than your actual humanity. They loved the version of you who could understand everybody, gave them one more chance all the time. Could see the wounded in child inside the adult of them who kept hurting you and understood why and made excuses for them and could turn every injury into empathy before requiring accountability from you or them. When we stop translating other people's behavior into something forgivable, suddenly we've changed. Maybe I did, but I finally stopped abandoning myself to remain understandable to people committed to misunderstanding me. And menopause can intensify this because the body itself is changing. Sleep changes, stress tolerance definitely changes. Emotional regulation can change and require additional energy. So there's very little energy for masking, caretaking, pleasing or over functioning. An old grief comes up to be dealt with. Old resentments and betrayals. Things I thought I had moved past, but come find out I just moved around them or buried them under workaholism or productivity. Called it. Oh, I accepted it because confronting it Would have changed my life trajectory. So menopause sometimes does not cause anger, but it removes the chemical scaffolding that helped you. Contain can reveal how much emotional labor we're performing without consciously recognizing it as labor. And then everybody asks why you are suddenly so angry. Suddenly? No. The anger is not sudden necessarily. Its visibility is sudden. The consequences are sudden. Your refusal to keep swallowing all the bullshit is sudden. But the anger itself may have been accumulating for years, if not decades. And that's an important distinction. Breakdowns rarely happen overnight. They accumulate beneath suppression, betrayal, tolerance over functioning emotional labor, and self abandonment disguised as maturity. Women are often taught that protecting themselves is selfish while sacrificing themselves is admirable. And that destroys our bodies. But I also need to say something that matters deeply. Anger carrying truth does not automatically make every expression of anger acceptable. I admit I have been violent. I have exploded on people that didn't deserve it. I have said things designed to wound. I've reacted from years of accumulated pain rather than from the reality of the moment in front of me. And I have taken justified anger and expressed it in unjustifiable ways. Both can be true at the same time. People have hurt me deeply, but I am responsible for what I do with that pain. Trauma explains my behavior. It does not sanctify it. Justified rage is still dangerous. Wounded people can still wound people. And that is the part that gets lost. In some conversations about empowerment, we swing from silencing anger to worshiping it. From telling women not to feel it, to telling women to express every moment of it as sacred. But it's not automatically wisdom. It's just energy, information, protection, activation, sometimes discernment, old pain, projection. Sometimes it's a boundary. Sometimes it's fear wearing a lot of armor. Sometimes it is the body trying to respond to what's happening now. Or sometimes it's still responding to every similar thing that happened before. The work is not to silence anger. It's to learn how to listen to it without allowing it to drive through somebody's living room. The questions to ask, because we like better questions in here is what's happening now. What belongs in this moment and I'm in it at all. What belongs in my past? What boundaries being crossed and what grief is underneath? This grief is happening a lot, and we don't realize it. So what are we protecting? And what response to this is going to align with the woman I want to be today? Taking that pause to figure that one out matters because anger itself may not even be the enemy. Disconnection Maybe disconnection from our grief, even from our own humanity. The rage may be trying to reconnect us to something important, but rage without regulation can destroy the very things we are trying to protect. Healing requires integration, which is the ability to hold truth without annihilation, anger without the violence, boundaries without cruelty, grief without us completely collapsing and power without domination. And being emotionally honest without turning every wound into our total identity. And see, I was never taught those choices or options. I knew how to suppress it and I knew how to explode it. I knew swallowing everything until I could no longer hold it and then releasing everything in a way that terrified the people around me. Because I did not know how to hold anger. I did not know how to say what you are doing to me is not acceptable. I did not know that boundaries were supposed to happen way earlier. Before the resentment becomes hatred, before exhaustion becomes total mental collapse, and before self sacrifice becomes a weapon to prove how much everybody owes you. Or before you become so disconnected from yourself that you wake up hating yourself every morning because I did. So. That is my practice now. Not how to become less angry, how to become less afraid of what the anger is telling me and responding before it becomes an emergency. My energy is a privilege and I don't give unlimited access to people and then resent them for taking what I never stopped offering. I'm learning to recognize that saying no is not harmful. Leaving is not abandonment. Silence is not punishment. Distance isn't cruelty. Sometimes it's clarity. Sometimes it can be the first honest thing I've done or you've done for yourself in years. And yes, people are going to misunderstand all of this and that could turn them cold. Or say you've changed or say you used to be more this or more that. Or more manageable, more understandable. Or the one who absorbed the discomfort and kept the peace and allowed everyone to remain comfortable at our expense. And they may miss that person because that was useful and praised and knew how to fit in and belong in the box. But belonging in the box requires us to remain silent about what is hurting us or what doesn't feel safe. And you know what? Connection that depends on self abandonment is not intimacy. And love that requires permanent emotional compliance is not love. It is access. So perhaps menopause is not merely making women angry. Perhaps it is making the cost of continued self abandonment impossible to ignore. Our bodies are saying we can't do it anymore. We can't carry everyone. It's exhausting. And I want silence and peace. We cannot keep translating betrayal into understanding before, we'd have allowed ourselves to even close the wound or make our pain beautiful for other people and make ourselves manageable by disappearing. Now, that woman got me here. Got you here, helped us survive, kept relationships intact and business running and raised the kids and paid the bills and smiled and made dinner and remembered the appointments and carried the emotional weather of the household. And that was extraordinary. Extraordinary. But that was exhausting. So I don't. I don't look at that version of me and go, whoa, I don't like her. I have gratitude for her because she got me here, but she can't get me to where I'm going, so she must be released. The next version of me may not be easy to manage because you know what? She speaks sooner and leaves earlier and asks for help and disappoints people and rests without having to earn it and will explain boundaries in a loving and direct way. I tell the truth to people, and I allow people to be angry with me without collapsing into guilt. Their discomfort may not be mine, and I won't carry theirs. It's a different season. Not becoming softer, not becoming harder, but becoming more real, more honest, More me. I'm learning to hold my anger without swallowing it and without using it to destroy. I recognize what it protects, and some nights I have to really cry and grieve what it reveals. And I'm trying to set boundaries before the rage even has time to set in. Because I'm worthy of love. You are worthy of love. When we no longer endlessly become emotionally convenient for everyone else. So this is just one of the conversations in my upcoming memoir, Notes of a Certified Mad Woman. The book is definitely not about proving that I was always innocent, because I was not. It's not about turning trauma into excuses. It's about restoring context, because context matters. Asking what happened before the reaction? What did the body have to endure, swallow, minimize, survive silently? What was rewarded? What was denied? So then was the reaction. Real accountability may have been necessary on the other side, but see, the reaction itself is rarely the entire story. And when we document only the eruption while erasing the years of suppression that preceded it, we do not understand women. We simply categorize them as difficult, unstable, hormonal, crazy, overloaded, dramatic. Maybe she's finally telling the truth with the only language her nervous system knows how. Maybe she's been trained to survive a world that kept injuring her and then punished her for bleeding. That does not absolve us of responsibility, but it does restore our humanity. And for many women, restoring that choice is where healing begins not in becoming less. In becoming integrated. Not in silencing rage. In learning how to hold it. Not in being good, but becoming whole. So tonight, because we like to ask better questions in here, the question I want to leave you with is this. Who benefited from the version of you who carried your suffering quietly? And what might change if you stop making your pain emotionally convenient for everyone else? Maybe the manageable woman is not disappearing. Maybe she is finally becoming a woman who belongs to herself. This has been midnight menopausal meanderings. I'm your host, Lisa Lacy, from Notes from the Edge. When you answer these questions, I will see you at the edge.