That's not quite true. I have way more time for reading these days than I did when my buzzkills were little. Still, my stack of books, piles and lists of articles are always growing faster than my ability to keep up. I just read a good article by Jessica Grose about Momfluencers (linked in sidebar), which informed me of yet another book (by the same author) to add to the pile. The title is Screaming on the Inside, the Unsustainability of American Motherhood, and it will be released on December 6th. Jessica has been a mom, opinion writer, journalist, and editor of the Parenting newsletter for the NYT for several years and I am always bookmarking her writing.
Two weeks ago I attended a lively workshop titled "Using Anger to Improve Relationships," led by a Portugal based psychotherapist named Marina O'Connor. Sixteen women from various cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds including Turkish, Indian, and British participated, and boy did we have a lot to say. One sentiment expressed at the event was a collective sense of disillusionment about how we were raised to understand and cope with anger. There was a lot of "I was taught to regard anger as an inappropriate emotion for women," and "the way I was taught to handle anger was to not experience it at all." I have long believed that a huge portion of the mental health problems that trip us up in adulthood (and by "us," I mean people of all genders) stem from our lack of modeling and preparedness not only in understanding and expressing anger, but in handling interpersonal conflict in general. Mom rage is a real thing -- I've experienced it myself, and there's a reason these places called "rage rooms" are sprouting up across the country. I hope Jessica Grose has a follow up book in store for us called Screaming on the Outside, as I think there's much to be said about how we externalize anger and rage, too.
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