The Rage Work: How I Chose Integrity Over Destruction

I’ve been sitting with a lot of rage these past few weeks.

Not irritation. Not frustration.

RAGE.

Full. Fierce. Earned.

Because something happened. Something that never should have been done to me.

Layered betrayals that shattered my reality.

Violations that cut to the deepest, most vulnerable parts of me.

And holy hell, the rage came.

I am letting myself feel it.

Which is new for me.

Most of my life, I wouldn’t let myself feel anger at all.

Not a little. Not a flicker.

I believed that if I felt it, if I let it in, it would make me a bad person.

Or people would abandon me.

Or people wouldn’t respect me.

So I swallowed it.

Even when I was being lied to.

Even when I was being hurt.

But not this time.

I am letting it move through me. Fully. Without shame.

I stay with it. Feel it. Hold it. And I’ve had to choose what to do with it, repeatedly.

Here’s what I didn’t do:

I didn’t call names.

I didn’t threaten.

I didn’t lash out.

I didn’t post the receipts.

I didn’t blast specifics across the internet.

I didn’t burn down lives for revenge.

Instead, I:

I expressed myself with dignity and precision.

I spoke from integrity, not chaos.

I chose to say what needed to be said, without spite, without venom.

I carried myself with dignity and restraint. Because that is who I am.

I chose to honor my values, not my impulses.

I chose to let my integrity stand.

And I’ll be honest. That choice cost me something.

My body wanted the hit.

My nervous system wanted the release.

It would have been so easy to burn it all down.

But that’s not who I am. And it’s not how I want to deal with the emotion of rage.

I’ve spent years learning and mastering emotional intelligence.

Through it, I’ve learned that emotions are temporary.

They flow through us when we let them.

They don’t have to define us.

And they don’t have to control what we choose to do.

That’s the rage work I’ve been doing:

learning to feel it, hold it, and choose my response.

This is what healing really looks like sometimes.

This is part of reinvention.

And it’s part of leadership, too.

Being a leader doesn’t mean we don’t feel hard emotions, even rage.

It means we learn how to master them, and choose who we want to be in the midst of them.

Because we don’t just reinvent our lives.

We reinvent how we hold power.

How we hold rage.

How we hold ourselves.

If you’ve ever stood in that place, knowing you could burn it down, and chosen something stronger, I see you.

I’m walking it too.

And I am proud of you.