Take it From Me, a Hothead
we're not angry enough
Confession: I have a temper.
And, I know why anger and angry people get a bad wrap. When I was younger, I threw tantrums. Said things I didn’t mean. Hurt people. I’ve been on the receiving end, too, of another person’s rage. It never feels good.
As I grew older and learned to control myself, I saw the way people would recoil whenever I expressed even a fraction of the frustration I felt — even if and when that anger wasn’t directed at them. Most times it wasn’t.. and still…
I have spent a lifetime learning how to calm and cool my anger to acceptable levels. To learn when and where it is appropriate and when the burning red, hot forces of my intensity make me come across as “too much”.
After all this time, I am still a hothead. But, not a hothead in the way most of you are probably imagining. The things that make me angry tend to confuse even the people who know me best, because in many ways I am more patient than most. I can wait endlessly for the children in my life to find their shoes or finish a sentence. I don’t mind clutter, a ruined rug, or a permanent Sharpie stain on the dining room table.
I have an unusually high tolerance for teen snark, traffic, late friends, unexpected guests, and detours I didn’t plan for. None of these things bother me. In fact, I accept them, even mostly enjoy them.
But I am easily enraged by things that to most seem like minor or momentary inconveniences. The way we’re needlessly herded like cattle at the airport, packed like sardines on airplanes. Subscriptions designed to be impossible to cancel. The silent theft of what little resources we have. A cashier or front desk clerk telling me there’s nothing they can do and no one else to speak with — a working class person whose body is literally on the line for billionaires, protecting and serving them because they have to in order to survive.
People, anywhere, taking more than their share. Cutting in line. Manspreading. Scamming people. Bullying. These are injustices I will confront and do.
And there are deeper issues that bother me, too. Issues so many of us have become silently resigned to that I just can’t or won’t let go. The fact that so many beautiful women I know have been conditioned to be disgusted by their own image — and that I’m expected to perform that same disgust toward myself whenever I’m in a room with them.
How readily most of us accept punishment as the best way to change behavior — whether time-outs or prison sentences — even as we live with the trauma of those systems inflicted on us. Thoughtless, arbitrary rules in schools, workplaces, courtrooms that reinforce that system. The expectation that I, or any of us, show deference to people we don’t respect simply because they occupy some position we’re supposed to automatically honor.
“This is the way it’s always been done,” in any form, at any time.
A few years ago, my oldest daughter signed up for classes through Washington’s Running Start program, which allows students to enroll in college-level courses at local community colleges while still in high school and receive double credit.
My daughter, who is dyslexic, was always eager to get her textbooks early so she could begin the necessary work of reading through the course load well in advance — to prepare for how long it would take her compared to her peers. On the community college website, the page to order books was not only slow but down, and a little pop-up appeared advising students to head to campus to buy books at the campus bookstore instead. So, on a day we’d planned to run errands together, we stopped by.
When we arrived, the address led us to a sparsely furnished room with a woman standing behind a table. It did not appear to be a bookstore. On the table sat a few pre-packaged stacks of books and a cash register.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked. My daughter told her she was looking for the campus bookstore.
This, apparently, was it.
Students were supposed to order books online and pick them up here, the woman explained, at this meager table in this near-empty room. The website hadn’t been updated to reflect that. My daughter would need to wait for the site to be working again to place her order, though it was likely the books wouldn’t arrive before the start of class.
Visibly frustrated, my daughter asked why the site would direct her to campus if the campus didn’t actually sell books. The woman quipped, “I’m sorry, hon. But that’s just the way it is. You want to be an adult? This is adulting.”
I watched the familiar rage — the kind that overcomes me in moments like this — begin to flush across my daughter’s face. Her eyes, like mine, shifted from a cool aqua to a piercing medusa green. “No,” she said tersely. “This is not adulting. The school made a mistake. That is not my fault. You’re acting like I decided for the school not to have their shit together by enrolling. I didn’t — but I’m expected to live with the consequences. We choose our systems. And we can choose better ones. That’s adulting.”
She said it angrily, rudely. The look she gave the woman was one of pure contempt. I was embarrassed. To most people, it would have seemed like an overreaction, and I felt like it reflected poorly on me as her mother.
But, at the same time, I could relate. What she’d said was something I’d long felt but hadn’t put into words.
We choose our systems and we can choose better ones.
This is the unacknowledged truth so many of us ignore. Every time we (as consenting adults) accept systems that inconvenience, disrespect, or even abuse us — we are choosing them.
So yes, this is the way it is. But I refuse to accept that it has to be.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, author and anthropologist (and my personal patron saint) Zora Neale Hurston recorded curse prayers and hoodoo rituals during her federally funded field research, cataloguing them in her works, Mules and Men and Hoodoo in America.
The first time I read these curse prayers I was awestruck.
Here are just some of my favorite excerpts:
O Great One, I have been sorely tried by my enemies and have been blasphemed and lied against. My good thoughts and my honest actions have been turned to bad actions and dishonest ideas. My home has been disrespected, my children have been cursed and ill-treated.
O Man God, I beg that this that I ask for my enemies shall come to pass: That the South wind shall scorch their bodies and make them wither. That the North wind shall freeze their blood and numb their muscles. That the West wind shall blow away their life’s breath, that their fingernails shall fall off and their bones shall crumble. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, their sight shall fail and their seed dry up so that they shall not multiply.
I pray that disease and death shall be forever with them. That their houses shall be unroofed and that the rain, the thunder and lightning shall find the innermost recesses of their home and that the foundation shall crumble and the floods tear it asunder. I pray that the sun shall not shed its rays on them in benevolence, but instead shall beat down on them and burn them and destroy them. I pray that their friends shall betray them and cause them loss of power, of gold and of silver, and that their enemies shall smite them until they beg for mercy which shall not be given them.
O Man God, I ask you for all these things because they have dragged me in the dust and destroyed my good name; broken my heart and caused me to curse the day that I was born. So be it.
I recently learned that these prayers are part of a long tradition of “conjure” among Black women in particular — spiritual practices and spells rooted in protection and revenge. These curses were recited over and over by spiritual leaders at gatherings of enslaved people preparing to revolt or escape.
Imma keep it real. Learning this history, I felt a deep, deep connection to my ancestors. Because times are heavy and tough, and good people are suffering — Black and brown women disproportionately so. I love that I come from a cultural tradition that holds space for anger as a spiritual practice. I love that these prayers helped people who may have felt hopeless and helpless channel their rage into action.
Because I know these practices are in direct opposition to the forces of evil in this world. White supremacy and patriarchy require politeness. The repression of completely normal and healthy emotions that should be a part of every human experience. The acceptance of things that should never be acceptable. When systems are harmful and exploitative, societal rules built around politeness, professionalism, and niceties ensure that the line between coercion and consent gets blurred.
It is a form of resistance to stay angry.
The justified — and justifiable — response to centuries of abuse, neglect, erasure, theft, rape and more is righteous rage. And I, like my ancestors before me, am not ashamed to channel it for change.
Earlier this week, I woke to the sound of our chickens in distress — loud, frantic squawking and clucking, all four of them flapping and freaking the fuck out.
I woke Lucas, and he ran to the window to look out at them in the yard. They were still in their coop, he said. Safe. No threat that he could see. But when he went downstairs to give it a closer look, our youngest daughter followed close behind. She’d heard the same ruckus from her window, which has a better view of the coop — and from there, she’d seen something we’d missed.
A bobcat, creeping along the fence line. Crouched. Waiting.
A predator lurking just out of view. How could we have missed it? We were so damn close to letting it slaughter everything.
When I’m getting a little too conspiratorial, ranting about all of society’s ills, I’ll start speaking about all they’ve done to us. And Lucas will say, “Who is they?” I’ve always answered that I don’t actually think there’s a group of cartoon villains scheming in a boardroom — more like centuries of different systems converging, rules created over time that serve those in power.
But it turns out there were actually a group of very real, not-cartoonish-at-all villains sitting in a boardroom — or on an island — deciding what the rules for the rest of us would be. And there long has been. Shaping our views on everything from the economy to our own bodies. Most of us have worked very hard to please them, thinking we were working toward some greater societal good, and as a result we’ve gotten sicker and sadder.
And for what? So they could use our conditioning to abuse us? So they could exploit the labor of some children in cobalt mines while raping and murdering other children in torture chambers? So they could use that information to blackmail each other and create more methods of torture, more destruction, commit more genocide for profit and use our governments and tax money to do it? Fuck that.
When are you, when are we going to stop buying it?
Doesn’t it enrage you enough to at the very least cancel all of your subscriptions, smash your Ring camera, and never, ever, ever again order anything from Amazon? No, I will not Live Laugh Love, Hobby Lobby. And no, Chik-Fil-A, no chicken sandwich is worth bankrolling queer folks’ suffering around the world. Or have you really bought into the lie that you could never, even if you tried, take them down — so you might as well enjoy your fast delivery and your heightened sense of security and your mediocre chicken sandwich while the world burns?
Whether you’ve spent your money on skin bleach or fillers, kept your head halfway down the toilet for half of the nineties or all the way until today, worked every day of your life for an employer who slashed your job without a second thought, or been drowning in student debt since the moment you left college — when are you going to be fed up enough to stop spending a single cent you don’t have helping them reach their goals? When are you going to learn that some anger is justified and some grudges should be held forever and ever?
This is what they said about us (the plebes) in one email, released as part of three million pages of Epstein files — evidence of widespread sex trafficking, abuse, torture, and murder of children:
“The group that should be in the streets has been bought off.”
Have we?
We’re not angry enough.
What I’m reading/watching/thinking about/listening to:
Conjuring America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic | Lindsey Stewart
Did you know Texas’ first abortion ban was passed in order to stop enslaved women from practicing birth control on plantations? Me neither. I learned this, and much more jaw dropping history (including my reference to “conjure” above) from Conjuring America.
Why I won’t be “friction-maxxing” this year | Hailey Huget
I was prepared to hate this article when I saw Lisa Sibbett share it a few weeks ago, mostly because my Gen Z kids have been using the term “social friction” to refer to their own desire to increase their discomfort in social settings (a good thing, imho.) But damn, Hailey Huget nailed it. We’re searching for convenience wherever we can get it because a lot of shit sucks (especially tech) and it sucks on purpose.
Do me a favor and watch this movie. And then read this review and this one. This a movie that in 2026 is wracking up award nominations. It is a movie by and for white men. And it exposes the limits of so many folks’ imagination right now when it comes to dreaming of a better future. This is (coincidentally) a movie that is afraid of anger, that does not understand the power of the experience and wisdom of Black women or nonwhite people in general, and that cannot see the value of anger when rooted in love. And, that’s a conversation I want to have with you IRL if you watch it. So, if you have or if you do, let me know or better yet: comment here.
Fun fact: While researching the word “hothead” for this piece, I learned the etymology of the word is actually “hātheort” or “hot heart.” If that doesn’t perfectly describe me (and likely many people who struggle with justice sensitivity induced rage), I don’t know what does. To my fellow hot hearts: I see you. I love you.
And finally, one small thing you can do for me:
Please like, comment, subscribe, and share! As always, thank you for reading. It means so much to me.
Love this post, Diana! And FYI every post Hailey writes is that good. She doesn’t publish very often, but that means everything that comes out is gold. Check out her archive!
Also I would LOVE to discuss one battle after another with you. I came very close to walking out of that movie.
Thanks for the shout out!! “I thought I would hate it but didn’t” is very high praise in my book! :)