A plethora of emotions ran through me while I watched Serena Williams defend herself, show extreme frustration, and ultimately get downright angry at the U.S. Open Umpire, Carlos Ramos. I’m ashamed to say that I felt uncomfortable at first then my emotions moved to embarrassment, and finally, I felt angry. As a child, my role in the family was, don’t rock the boat. My mother was pulled tight with her career, being a single parent, and attempting to have some semblance of a private life. I learned at a young age to squelch my anger because it was a negative feeling and might upset her. I’m still working on expressing anger and address this subject in depth in my debut novel. What tore me up was Serena’s comment about being a mother and how she would never cheat because that would set a bad example for her child. As a mother myself, this created a bond between us. I related to this because most mothers want to be well regarded by their children. We aren’t perfect but what Serena did for her daughter that day is to show her it’s okay to get mad, to defend yourself, and to stand your ground. From what I have read and seen on the news, it appears that Serena was treated differently than a male tennis player. Some have reported that the protocol was not what they had seen with male players. When I witnessed Serena stand beside Naomi Osaka, honor her win, praise the game she played, and accept her loss, I was impressed. In all reality, we can’t understand what it would be like to have that kind of pressure in such a massive venue with something you’ve worked your whole life to achieve. I can only imagine how I would have reacted and yeah, I might have smashed my racket. I’m glad this happened because it allowed the world to witness a woman defend herself under pressure, get angry, and show good sportsmanship.

Anger is an important emotion and critical to healing from things like childhood trauma, sexual assault, and PTSD. The mere act of expressing anger can release a tremendous amount of toxins. The body feels anger, pain, love, joy, passion, guilt, and fear and if we suppress any of these emotions, we become a vessel of poison. My pent up anger resembled a dam about to break. Often a woman who expresses anger is deemed crazy which is enough to make anyone avoid this emotion. I was afraid to let mine out until I understood that anger is a critical feeling, and when expressed appropriately it can be quite positive. I believe something significant happened on the tennis court the day Serena Williams expressed her anger to the Umpire. We started a dialogue about this difficult to understand emotion and one that many women are terrified to reveal.