We always knew it was coming. There were signs we’d learned to read: a change in atmosphere, the sound of the fridge door opening, wine glugging into a glass. And then it would arrive. My stepfather’s anger filled the house, even the rooms he wasn’t in. We breathed it in and out silently, waiting for the storm to pass, waiting to see if we would all make it out OK. As a young girl growing up in that house, I was used to feeling that dark, threatening clouds were constantly looming on the horizon. And I learned that anger – even the smell of it on the air – was terrifying.
And then I met Miss Smith*. Miss Smith was my A-level drama teacher at my brilliant secondary school in the home counties. She was full of ideas and passion and, I suspect, had an ambition to open the eyes of her overwhelmingly sheltered pupils. One Wednesday morning, she asked us to work on our improv skills, while exploring the topic of homelessness. She played a TV reporter asking members of a homeless community (us) how we felt. If you can bear the problematic notion of middle-class teens attempting to articulate a reality they knew nothing of, it was a worthwhile exercise, at least because of the extent to which it awakened something in me.
I remember the feeling of injustice that arrived like a pressure on my chest. I felt agitated and on edge; hot tears appeared as I felt I had been given permission, in a way I hadn’t before, to feel the full breadth of my emotions. What I was witnessing at home had always felt private, a secret that felt uniquely mine. Homelessness, however, was an issue utterly removed from me and therefore I could become angry about it. Safely angry. This feeling was a revelation.
I left the lesson realising I’d accessed something for the first time – a new way of feeling. This type of anger didn’t cause a freeze response; it was the opposite. It came with an urgency that compelled me to do something. On the final day of sixth form, before leaving for university, I went to the drama studio in search of Miss Smith. I told her I wanted to thank her. She hugged me, then looked at me as if I was in trouble. “Whatever you do,” she said, “stay angry.”
Those words cemented a lesson I was learning in real time: there is profound injustice in this world that cannot be ignored – however hard you try, or easy people make it to do so. Moreover, we have a responsibility to do something about it. Miss Smith’s words granted me a permission to be angry because she had helped me reframe it as something useful and positive. And, crucially, her words also gave me an opportunity to reclaim something. Anger didn’t only belong to men who used it to intimidate and control women. Anger could be used by women to change the world. Around this time, I first discovered who Gloria Steinem was, and was religiously listening to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill album. Thanks to Bolton roots on my dad’s side, I became interested in the miners’ strikes, particularly the wives and how they organised. I saw women’s anger was powerful and purposeful and could make a difference. I could use anger to help people. I could use it to foster connection. But, mostly, the sense of empowerment was born from the realisation I could take something back. Abusers steal parts of you. Some of those things are irretrievable. The things you can reclaim are extremely meaningful. It was the slightest shift in the scales of power.
Like many young people, I went to university armed with a lot of earnest beliefs in changing the world. As I get older, that belief and the anger that drives it has only become more powerful, precisely because it is deliberate, considered and channelled. It shows up every day in my work, writing about women’s rights, equality and male violence against women and girls. It shows up in my personal life; the organisations I donate to, the marches I attend, the women’s groups I’ve helped organise in the past. Male anger still frightens me. I can’t watch aggression in films or on TV; I can’t tolerate the slamming of a door, even by the wind. I have a pathological aversion to confrontation. But I have never forgotten Miss Smith’s advice to stay angry. And just as she once showed me, I found a place for that anger, a safe place.
* Name has been changed
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