fusing yokes
anger. rage. fury. grief.
The heat radiated within my rib cage and I felt hollow inside as if all the oxygen in my lungs was used as fuel for the spontaneous flame of fury that overcame me.
In my lifetime as a woman, I’ve witnessed and experienced how we get a bad reputation for our emotions, particularly anger. The PMS stereotype only fuels the misunderstandings of what’s actually happening in the body, and to be honest, I’m tired of managing myself for others’ comfort. I’ve known I’ve been in my luteal phase because I typically get more irritable, but this was a whole new level of rage.
Each day over the last few weeks has been like a slow ratchet tightening the belt on the invisible ball gag in my mouth.
“Don’t say anything, Adrianne. You’re just emotional because of the hormones in your body.”, I’d tell myself as I choked on the blood from biting my own tongue.
When an appointment I booked weeks in advance was requested to be moved with less than 1 hour notice, it broke me. I spent the day in bed. What a luxury to wallow in my emotions in reaction to this very first-world problem.
And when the drive-thru employees couldn’t understand my taco order and I got the wrong product, I thought, “This is it. This is what breaks me.”, as I tried oh-so-hard not to emote the rage towards my husband who ordered correctly but brought home the wrong item.
Yet again, a very first-world problem that from the outside would garner the stereotypical judgement about women being “too emotional”.
It’s only one sliver of the week though. I also supported multiple small businesses, helped navigate a tricky PR situation, cleaned the chicken coop, wrote two songs and broke 4 nails from pounding on the piano, and took care of my family and home. I had coffee with friends and showed up to give a hug to someone I knew was struggling. I bought a gluttonous amount of chocolate and I held wobbly planks in a yoga session where all I wanted was deep breathing.
It didn’t matter that I ate my feelings.
It didn’t matter that I breathed deeply.
It didn’t matter that my nails broke as I slammed my fingers against the ivory keys.
It didn’t matter that I checked off my entire to-do list.
It didn’t matter that I showed up with compassion for myself and others.
Still, that flame of fury is emanating heat above my liver, behind my lungs, between my heart and stomach in such a robust way it wouldn’t matter how much oxygen I inhaled. This fury demands more oxygen and seems born from an endless supply of methane for continuous combustion.
“Is something else going on?”, my husband asked last night.
A few weeks ago, we had a big conversation around the definition of “work” and what that looks like in our lives. He is the rock of our home. Steady. Grounded. Centered. He works a traditional job and I’m uncovering my deeply rooted struggle with authority as I reflect on how I landed in entrepreneurship despite having said during my 20’s that I’d never own a business.
I’ll be shifting into full-time farming this April and keeping my freelance support on a very part-time basis.
This change in how I “work” also means a change in compensation. Potatoes don’t generate dollars until they’re harvested and no one is paying an hourly rate on a bi-weekly pay schedule for me to be in that field.
Work is still work regardless of compensation though. In the summer, we both sit on the porch after a long day and reflect on how good the work felt. There’s a different sense of accomplishment and success when it’s work, sweat, blood and often (my) tears that went into something.
Our society has established norms of what work means and it’s often tied to productivity for a bottom line. Work is what you do to get paid. The rest of your time is just “living”. Similar to our conversations around women’s unpaid labor in the home, there is so much invisible mental work that comes with simply being alive.
Becoming a farmer is going to change how I show up in relationships, including my marriage. Facing the state of the world, growing food as my form of protest and running our life means I’m balancing a lot of different things each day.
Order seeds, materials, containers, supplies.
Sitting across the table from a friend while they sort their thoughts on the current events.
Navigating and planning for upcoming schedule conflicts that will impact our planting schedule.
Discussing different perspectives and finding common ground with those that think differently than me.
Offboarding clients and resetting expectations with others.
Multiple doctors appointments as I try to manage my raging uterus.
Listening while my friend cries on the other end of the phone about how “awful all this is” right now.
Laundry. Dishes. Groceries.
Using my voice in a new, uncomfortable and very vulnerable way.
Don’t forget to smile or they might think I’m angry when really, I’m just focused.
Drafting the details of what I believe in and sourcing books to educate myself further.
So. much. work.
So, when my husband and I chatted through all the ways “work” shows up in my life, particularly in my relationships with others and my passion to help others feel less alone, we needed to be on the same page with our definitions and expectations.
I’m grateful to have a partner in my life that sees it, gets it and supports it. As we discussed this, he shared that he just sees me on my phone and he doesn’t know what I’m doing or why, so sometimes it’s frustrating because he doesn’t have the context that I’m holding space in my DMs for someone having a breakdown.
That’s so fair.
Now, when I get a text that requires intentional, present focus I vocalize it. “Hey, this requires my attention for a bit. I’m not ignoring you, but I’m going to be distracted.” Because breakdowns just can’t be contained in the 9-5 timeframe like the average job.
When we got home from dinner last night, I looked at my phone as I walked to the house and saw multiple notifications from the past 30-minutes I spent driving. A long text from a friend pops up and I sit on the bench by the front door with my right leg crossed over my left. I had taken off my right shoe and started texting back. If not for my thumbs batting against the screen, you would have thought I was paralyzed or suddenly turned into a statue.
Send.
“Sorry. I was just responding to a text. Go ahead and watch your show tonight because I think I’m going to be pulled away for a bit.”, I shared as I took off my other shoe.
“Is something else going on?”, he asked?
I paused. Took a deep breath and shared a very condensed version of the following:
Nearly every woman I’ve talked to in the last week or so is angry. Big angry. We’re calling it rage and we’re fighting so hard to be whimsy at the same time.
We’ve spent centuries clawing our access to autonomy and being seen as whole-ass human beings just for it to be taken away depending on what state you live in.
We’ve spent decades fighting to prove we are just as skilled, competent, educated and functional just to be paid less, but hell, at least we get to work, right? We should be grateful.
We’ve spent years overcoming the misogyny we’ve held against ourselves and that which has been held against us by others.
We’re spending hours validating each other when we stand up against it in board rooms, coffee shops and just standing on the side of the road.
We’ve spent unmeasurable amounts of empathetic energy rubbing backs and quietly repeating, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve this.”, as we console the 1 in 3 women who are survivors of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both.
We’re spending thousands of dollars to discover who we are as individuals as we shed the negative beliefs that our value is in pleasing others, be it with our smiles or our pussies.
Existing as a woman was already a balance of hurdles and opportunities to persist and overcome. We’ve always had this underlying anger, an intuitive voice telling us something has crossed a line.
We know we will continue to be and have previously been labeled “fucking bitch” the moment our anger shows up to create boundaries instead of our people-pleasing performance.
In 2026, existing as a woman is like being told all that effort, time, energy and money has been for naught. We’re still at square one crawling, clawing, fighting.
When we witness the richest, most powerful people on this planet walk freely despite years of multiple women telling true stories and fighting to be believed, that anger burns a little hotter and we rename her rage.
And, when 3 MILLION documents come out and women are still challenged with verbalized doubts that all stem from the same evil that asks, “But what was she wearing?”, that rage transforms into a white hot fury.
Many of us women are out here putting band-aids on children’s boo-boos while searching for a place to store this fury to no avail. The simmer of anger we’ve always had bubbling under the surface is a full, rapid boil and we’re trying oh-so-very-hard not to boil our friends, family and loved ones like an uncontrolled Homelander from The Boys.
When the President of the United States sits behind the most powerful podium in the world and deflects a question about the Epstein survivors from a woman by being mad at her for not smiling more, the white hot fury risks fusing into molten lava.
Between quick hugs in the coffee shop, text messages that confirm each other made it home safe and ensuring we put food and water in our bodies, we’re frantically searching for somewhere, anywhere to put this energy so we don’t hurt someone with our words, actions and behaviors that feel increasingly more uncontrollable by the day.
Women are seeking comfort with each other, fusing fury together to share the weight of the yoke.
Women are digging into clay and dirt and flour to create art and life and bread.
Women are showing the utmost self-control in not burning this mother-fucking earth to the ground and instead sending texts to each other asking, “how do we build a better tomorrow?”
“Yea, that’s why I asked if there was anything else going on beyond that.”, my husband responded.
I soften my jaw and release my shoulders as I remember, he gets it.
This work, fusing our fury together to share the weight of the yoke and create art and life and bread while asking questions about the future; this work is going on all around you right now.
This work is critical.
We must express and emote this anger, rage and fury.
We cannot let it live inside of us only to fester and bitter the blood in our own veins.
This work will continue going unpaid and unseen.
In the moments halfway through taking our shoes off.
In the seconds we’re waiting for the automated message of our congress-persons phone line to list out which numbers to hit to leave a message.
In the wee hours of the night when no amount of THC gummies will allow our brains to shut-the-fuck-up and we’re envisioning a future where all of us have what we need.
Men, I’m not trying to leave you out. I’m simply saying most of you haven’t had to carry a yoke like this before.
Based on what I see, hear and experience, it seems when you hear about women’s anger, it justifies the misogynistic belief engrained in you that “women are just too emotional.”
I long for you to feel this deeply and be able to express it too. Real men feel and emote and express without violence.
In a world growing more violent by the minute with increasing shame around emotional maturity, you too are a pawn in this war we’ve been forced to wage against each other.
They compliment your skill and strength to keep you in their brute force, calling you a Knight while they move you in an L-shape formation to exploit your loved ones and maintain control.
You should be angry you aren’t given the freedom to express and break out of the box they shipped your latest gaming console in.
Grant yourself and each other the permission to think differently, to feel and to dream of a future that looks different.
Women, if you’re reading this and relate and/or you keep repeating, “yes!”, “this”, or “mhmm!”, find a woman in your life willing to fuse your yokes together.
Emotions are energy in motion.
Take them to the gym and cry on the stair master.
Join a yoga session and leave your insecurities at the door.
Order an inflatable bat and beat the shit out of a tree in the backyard until the inflatable bat pops.
Create art.
Sing at the top of your lungs.
Scream at full volume into a pillow or within the space of your front seat.
Soon, your anger will start moving like the Mighty Mississippi, beginning as a slow trickle until suddenly it’s a rapid release at the delta where it meets the Gulf of Mexico.
Our work isn’t done here folks because what follows this type of emotional release is always grief.
Collective grief is imminent.
It will look different for everyone and just like all grief, it will require a witness.
I’m preparing myself now and over these next few months before spring buds start growing on the trees and the birds start singing at 4am again. The farm will be a place for you to come. To be. To listen. To sit. To cry. To express.
To be seen.
I hope in sharing this with you today, you feel the fusion of our yoke and that the weight is easier to carry.
I hope in expressing so rawly today, you know you aren’t alone in all of this.
I hope in these words you find the permission to begin letting it out safely. All of it.
The anger.
The rage.
The fury.
I don't think I even begin to understand. I only know how disgusted and angry and hopeless I feel about the endless string of atrocities that us white men have committed, stolen, abused, and still attempt to justify. And while I know it is as useless as the privilege I float around on, I. am. so. sorry.