'Why Am I So Angry All The Time?' The Rise Of Female Rage
Plus, one free trick to lift your spirits this weekend, and a mid-life friendly degree if you're looking for a career pivot.
Kia Ora, Capsule Community! Welcome to your Sunday Substack.
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What We’re Thinking About This Week…
Mōrena!
The other week, I (Emma) took my toddler into a fancy-pants store and ended up in a long chat with the lovely woman who was managing it (while trying to keep tiny, prying hands away from the fragile section).
It was the weekend before the hīkoi was set to start and during our chat, the woman – Pākehā, late 60s/early 70s – used the world ‘whānau’ when describing her upcoming Christmas holidays, and when she said it, she paused. “I only have one word of Te Reo so far and I just used it in the right place!” she beamed.
You know when you have a tiny daily moment that gives you an insight into a wider societal shift? For instance, the day of the US election, I was leaving Sydney and the traffic jam outside my hotel was so bad, so aggressively vicious, I remember thinking, ‘Uh oh, this doesn’t bode well… for the world?’
Well, I had the opposite feeling with my chat with this woman. She is of a generation where, up until even a few years ago, the use of Te Reo in daily conversation just wouldn’t have been done. It would have either been “PC gone mad” – like all those people losing their mind about the ‘kura’ signs - or just not even a thought.
But when she said ‘whanau’, she was so stoked, so proud of the word and of herself, that I thought, ‘Okay, I think this hīkoi is going to be massive.’ Because there is a growing appreciation that Te Ao Māori is the backbone of so many things we love about this country – and the overwhelming support shown in the historic hīkoi this week proves that.
Our Wellington-based writer, Sarah Lang, took her son along on Tuesday and described the atmosphere as one of utter joy, a collective movement of national pride and peace (those two things rarely go hand-in-hand, especially when it comes to protests of that scale, right?)
We have a wider profile on the hīkoi coming next week but in the meantime, the tangible next step is to do a submission to the government about the Treaty Bill – Emily Writes has a great guide here.
Have a lovely weekend!
'Why Am I So Angry All The Time?' The Rise Of Female Rage & How To Release It Healthily
British psychotherapist, author and podcaster Jennifer Cox thinks anger and rage are totally normal and that we should express, not repress, these emotions. What with Trump, online misogyny (and, for some of us, perimenopause), we thought now would be a good time to ask her to chat about female rage!
Women can experience IBS, migraines, anxiety or other health issues and – while these things are happening – rage is sometimes at the core of things. Jennifer’s seen this with many clients. “When the penny drops that this is anger, it's this powerful thing.”
For instance, a woman might be angry about being paid less than a male colleague, or having to shoulder the mental load. And it’s not necessarily only one big thing. “Micro-moments can pile up to systemically grind us down.”
As women, Jennifer says, we’re told we can have and do everything but, in reality, we can’t. “I think that’s the major thing that underlies women's rage. In the book, I primarily focus on the ‘gaslight’. Part of this ‘gaslight’ is when women start feeling there's something wrong with them. I've had so many patients who say ‘my husband says that his friend's wives are fine managing all of this’. Is that bro code?”
Jennifer says she isn’t piling on men. “It's really important that we do this work together.” She notes that, while women are socially conditioned not to show anger, men are socially conditioned not to cry.
But hey, men don’t have to go through pregnancy, childbirth, periods, and menopause! Perimenopause can make us enraged – between the physical and mental side-effects, and just not wanting to go through this shit.
In her private practise, Jennifer sees many women who are going through perimenopause. “I think the drop in oestrogen exposes us to what should have been making us angry all along. As women, we’ve been biologically wired to look after people and care what they think. And once we're freer from that [after menopause], I think we wake up and think ‘why did I live that way for so long?’.”
Then, some women decide they’re done with sacrificing themselves and suppressing their emotions. “So, I don't think women going through perimenopause are getting angrier. I think they're seeing their anger clearly for the first time.”
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This might be a niche thought, but there have been so many times where I wish life was a little more like a Goosebumps book.
Remember how you could choose your own adventure – picking just how you wanted the story to go, but if you didn’t like it you could always turn the page back, no harm, no foul, no monsters.
Real life isn’t much like that as anyone reading this will know all too well and yes sure, there are moments we’ve all had where we wish we could turn back the clock and make a ‘better’ (read: different) decision, especially when it comes to our education.
If you’re a millennial you’ll remember the pressure we all felt to go to university straight out of high school, no matter if we knew what we wanted to do or not – which is how so many of us ended up with a Bachelor of Arts or Business that we have no idea what to do with. Three years of waiting for inspiration to strike, passions not found, and student debt racked up.
THEN, you figure you better bloody use the degree you’ve earned, so you take any job in the field and hope, just like on your 10th Bumble date of the month, that you’ll grow to love it (spoiler alert – you don’t). Fifteen years later, here you are – still not loving your career, and yearning for something more.
Sound familiar?
Luckily for you, there’s a way to flip the page back.
THE ONE THING… ‘You Can Try Today That’s EASY, FREE & Will Lift Your Spirits’
We’re going to cut to the chase here – the One Thing you can do to vastly improve your life today is to learn how to reconnect with nature. And thankfully, I spoke to a woman who is highly, highly qualified to teach us exactly how. Things may be a bit woo-woo here, but, reconnecting with nature is scientifically proven to improve your physical and mental health.
In early October I did an interview with a 54-year-old Aussie woman named Gina Chick and I titled the story ‘Stop What You’re Doing & Listen to the Story of Gina Chick – aka, The Most Inspiring Woman I’ve Ever Spoken TO.’
I stand by that title because it’s been more than six weeks since I spoke to Gina and I have thought of her and our conversation every single day since. When you interview people multiple times a week, and have done for decades – that’s a very, very rare thing.
Gina left such an impression on me because of the incredible story she has to tell – she’s been through the fires of hell, but what she learned can help us all.
I definitely recommend you read the story, but otherwise in a nutshell, Gina is extraordinary because she won the first series Alone Australia after beating out 11 other Aussie men and women, living in the middle of the wilderness with basically nothing but her wits and a giant possum cloak that she’d made herself for a staggering 67 days.
She won because of the strength of her mind, not just her body. She was torn open when she lost her one and only daughter to cancer when she was just three years old, after going through a terrifying cancer battle herself.
While in the pits of hell, she had something to lean against – something quite surprising: nature. She’d really been leaning into nature her whole life.
Infertility, Estrangement, Divorce & More: Dr Lucy Hone Looks Into How We Can Heal From The Living Losses That Shape Our Lives
Dr Lucy Hone has become a household name for her work on bereavement and resilience and now, she’s turning her focus on living losses: the non-bereavement losses like redundancy, climate change, infertility and more that affect so many of us. She talks to Capsule about her new work and the survey she’s hoping will change the game on our national mental health crisis.
At the end of 2023, three things coincided at once for Dr Lucy Hone, co-director of New Zealand’s Institute for Wellbeing and Resilience: a friend asked for help after going through a redundancy, a neighbour wanted resources to support a friend’s shock divorce, and then an executive coaching colleague mentioned that a large part of their client work was dealing with undiagnosed grief.
All three of these were big losses – but didn’t involve bereavement in the traditional sense.
This opened up a new way of thinking for Lucy and a new direction in her career – she has got a book deal with a global publisher to write about living losses; the life-altering events that affect so many of us.
Redundancy, chronic illness, climate disaster, infertility, migration, a natural disaster, family estrangement, divorce or separation to name some examples. Experiences that aren’t a death but can feel like one – only without the socially understood playbook on how to talk about them.
How Group Travel Hits Different – An Expert Travel Writer on Why Travelling as Part of a Small Group Can Be So Much More Fulfilling
Curious about group travel – but perhaps you have some perceptions or *thoughts* that are holding you back? One of New Zealand’s most prolific travel writers, Anna King Shahab, shares her experiences, advice and stories from her three Intrepid Travel adventures (plus, her picks of the best Intrepid trips you can book right now).
Capsule x Intrepid Travel
Look, I’ll be honest – I was a bit of a snob about group travel in my younger days. I’d see those large contingents of tourists obediently traipsing along behind their Pied Piper holding an embarrassingly loud flag and crowding all the ‘must-visit’ spots.
You fools, I’d smirk, content with my die-hard approach of winging-it travel – setting off with a bare minimum of research, thinking my go-with-flow approach was superior.
Now I realise I was also a fool (read that in Kath Day-Knight’s voice, it just sounds better). I probably missed out on a whole bunch of opportunities in places I was visiting.
My career as a travel writer has now seen me tick off all the formats many times: rolling solo or as a couple; joining a small group, joining a large group (43 is the most I’ve travelled with!), and with or without a guide.
For me – and trust me on this one – small group adventures with a local-leader is the prime pick of the menu. I’ve clocked up three Intrepid tours myself – in Northern Spain, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia – and each has created memories to last me a lifetime.
So, based on my own experiences here are some reasons why travelling in a small group can be so much more rewarding and fulfilling – and very different from what you might be thinking!
Hungry for More?
Here’s what we’ve read and loved this week. Check out some of this week's best stories from the web:
The Doctor Who Helped Me Understand My Mom’s Choice to Die NY Times
How to Quit Your Job and Start Living (and Dressing) on Your Own Terms Jenny
How These Men Left the Manosphere — and Why Some May Never Teen Vogue
That’s it from us this week! Thanks for reading - we look forward to catching up with you again next week. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on any of these posts today (or any others!) feel free to leave a message in the comments and we can have a chat!
Have a good week!
x The Capsule Team: Alice, Emma, Kelly & Sarah