Is this the right time to retire from anger?

A good friend is known for asking questions, I have a reputation for being angry. My English teacher reported I was too emotional. I carried it into student politics, journalism (bleeding hearts correspondent) and trade union activism. I have spoken my mind and allowed a sense of justice to overcome my peace and define me. 

Is it really in Little Women, a book I've never read, that a character says, "I'm angry nearly every day of my life."? What does she mean? Writer and academic Emilie Pine dug into anger for Notes to Self. Martina Evans, a poet friend, reviewed it saying it's a book you want to give to everyone. 

Pine questions how one emotion might define her or other women with something to say. "I am distrustful of the restless energies of anger. And I am distrustful, too, of the way that a woman expressing a strong opinion, or being honest about painful experiences, is now identified only with anger, rather than any other emotional or intellectual capacity," she argues. 

My restless energies (often defined as 'difficult') came from Catholicism, relationships, work, the stress of freelancing. Demands of negotiating pay and working conditions endlessly, alone,  take their toll. Then menopause, swinging you from the brink of fury to floods of tears. And ageing's unmentioned indignities.

I build a house over myself

A house of scraps, sewn on an old treadle machine, 

making bricks stuffed with underwear. 

My house will do, one day, as a soft room 

where I can throw myself against the walls.

A Friable Earth

Sewing and growing - no power-relationships, quiet time. I retire from caring. I will not appear on picket lines. I will not rise to  invitations to be indignant. I will admire from a distance fighters for justice like the poets Warsan Shire and

Victoria Adukwei Bulley. Then, of course, the intelligence and reach of Angela Y Davis whose Freedom is a Constant Struggle, I began reading this week. 

In my break I'm interested to see what happens to the anger emerging from all quarters, interested to discover where I can place my need to talk about right and wrong and ask questions of those who've hidden (or ignored) the words. Interested to see how much longer anger remains taboo.