When helplessness turns to rage: A mom’s guide to channeling grief into action

My son was a kindergartner on Friday, December 14, 2012, the day Adam Lanza executed a classroom full of children his age. At my son’s arts-based school, Friday afternoons ended with a school-wide town meeting— a celebration of all they’d accomplished that week, complete with a dance, song, or performance. Parents, always welcome to attend, filed in that day in stone-cold silence, tears in our eyes, lumps in our throats. We hugged our babies. Some of us hugged each other. Others kept their gazes down, certain that looking another parent in the eye would be the thing that undid them.

I’ve had a rage burning ever since.

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That was over 12 years ago. Since then, we’ve lived through hundreds more mass shootings. Gun violence is now the second leading cause of death for children in this country. We’re living in a nation where people disappear off the streets, where a mother can be shot by masked men in broad daylight, where it’s becoming impossible to afford healthcare, where funding for childhood cancer research, education, and food assistance is being ripped away. Teachers shield students with their own bodies while buying classroom supplies out of pocket because school budgets matter less than tax breaks for billionaires.

And yet we’re still expected to pack the lunches, schedule the appointments, help with the math homework, calm the tantrums. To perform normal when nothing is normal.

Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and helpless isn’t weakness. It’s the only rational response to what we’re living through.

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The science of our collective grief

What we’re experiencing has a name: political grief. Dr. Darcy Harris, who has published research on the topic, defines it as “a poignant sense of assault to the assumptive world of those who struggle with the ideology and practices of their governing bodies and those who hold political power.”

And you’re not in the minority in feeling it. The American Psychological Association’s 2022 Stress in America survey found that 69% of adults reported feeling significant stress about the future of the nation, while 62% cited political divisiveness as a major source of stress. 

We are not overreacting. We are responding appropriately to genuine threats.

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Permission to feel it all

Sometimes you need to sit with that sadness. Hold your babies, cry, and feel. This isn’t indulgence—it’s necessary. Grief that isn’t processed doesn’t disappear; it calcifies into something harder and more difficult to carry.

But when the time is right,and when you’re ready, that sadness can turn to rage. And rage, when channeled correctly, fuels change.

The question becomes: what do we do with this rage?

From paralysis to power: What the research shows

Dr. Paul C. Gorski of George Mason University has spent years studying why activists burn out and abandon the fight. One critical finding: only one of 23 activists interviewed in his study had any in-movement mentoring on coping with the stressors of activism. We’re expected to figure this out alone, which is exactly how movements fail.

But research also shows us what works. When we find other mothers who feel the same rage, the same grief, the same exhaustion, we become stronger together. Studies show that nonviolent movements with broad-based participation are most successful when they maintain sustained, strategic disruption.

The path forward isn’t just about self-care. It’s about community care, and responding to our collective needs rather than treating burnout as an individual problem.

Grounding actions: When you need to process first

Rage rituals that offer a safe release 

Before you can channel rage into action, sometimes you need to let it out. Write letters you’ll never send, then burn them. Scream in your car. Find physical release through boxing, demolishing cardboard boxes, or kneading bread dough with aggression. Create a “rage playlist” for when you need to feel it all.

Community grief spaces

Start or join a local mothers’ grief circle, even just three or four moms meeting monthly. Create group texts where you can simply say “I’m not OK today” without explanation. Sharing the emotional load with others who understand is critical for long-term engagement.

Self-compassion practices

Be as kind to yourself as you are to your children. Dance. Laugh. Play in the woods. Seek pockets of joy and don’t feel guilty about indulging in them. This isn’t weakness; it’s sustainability.

Change-making actions: Channel political rage into fuel

Hyper-local impact: start where you are

The overwhelm of making change on a global scale is enough to make you quit before you start. In an interview with Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy, the late primatologist and icon Jane Goodall said, “Many people come up to me and say, well, I look around at all that’s going wrong in the world and I just feel helpless. And so I say, well, you can’t solve the problems of the world, but what about where you live, your community?”

Show up to school board meetings about budget cuts. Bring other moms. Make noise. Organize mutual aid in your neighborhood: community fridges, supply drives, meal trains for families struggling. Join or start a local Moms Demand Action chapter. Consider running for local office or school board yourself, or support another mom who will.

Related Mutual aid 101: How to start or join a community food sharing network

Make legislators uncomfortable

Make weekly calls and send emails to your representatives. Not sure what to say? Download the 5calls app and they practically do everything but dial the phone for you. Make it a habit like paying bills. Yes, it feels futile sometimes. But sustained pressure compounds over time. Organize phone banking parties with other moms. Make it social. Make it sustainable. Attend town halls and ask the questions they don’t want to answer. 

Teach your kids resistance

Have age-appropriate conversations about injustice. Pretending it’s not happening doesn’t protect them. Model engaged citizenship. Let them see you make the calls, write the letters, show up to meetings. Volunteer together at food banks and community organizations.

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Use your voice and your platform

Write op-eds for local papers. Share information on social media. Use your vote AND your voice. If you have professional skills, offer them to movements that need them.

Financial resistance

Stop buying from companies that donate to politicians who vote against child welfare, education funding, and healthcare access. Use resources like Goods Unite Us (an app that lets you scan barcodes while shopping to see companies’ political donations) or OpenSecrets.org to research where your money actually goes.Switch your grocery budget from chains that lobby against workers’ rights to local co-ops or farmers markets when possible. Cancel subscriptions to companies that fund anti-education candidates. Redirect even $10 a month from your usual spending to mutual aid funds, local food banks, or grassroots organizations. Spend your money with companies that share your values. Shop small and support locally. Support candidates and causes with recurring small donations. Organize parent boycotts of companies funding harmful politicians. Make it public. Make it count.

The both/and approach: Honoring the full range

Some days, all you can do is survive. Pack the lunch. Do the homework. Hold it together. And that’s enough. Movements need people who show up when they can, not people who burn out trying to do everything at once.

But on the days when the rage is clarifying rather than paralyzing, you have options. Small actions compound. Consistent pressure works. Your voice matters because collective action, sustained over time, is how every major social change has happened.

Building or joining a mothers’ collective, whether it’s three friends meeting monthly or a larger organization, is critical. When we perceive others sharing our emotions, it validates our perceptions and creates support that redefines hardships as collectively borne challenges. In plain language: you’re not crazy for feeling this way, and you’re not alone.

Sustaining the fire without burning out

The difference between rage that sustains and rage that consumes is community and strategy. Find the right way to turn your anger and passion into lasting, sustainable action.

Build your collective. Find your people. The moms who get it, who feel it, who won’t gaslight you into thinking everything is fine. Meet regularly, even if it’s just a monthly text check-in.

Celebrate small wins. One school board member who actually listens. One mutual aid network that feeds ten families. One town hall where you made them squirm. These matter.

Set boundaries. You cannot be at every protest, every meeting, every action. Sustainable activism means knowing your capacity and respecting it. Create “action hours” in your schedule. When that time is up, step away.

Remember the long game. Social progress takes time. The civil rights movement wasn’t a single march, and women’s suffrage took decades. Your children are watching, and they’re learning that when things are wrong, we don’t just accept it. We act.

A final word

Our rage is rational. Our exhaustion is justified. Our action, however small, matters.

On that Friday in December 2012, I stood in my son’s school and felt helpless. For years after, I carried that helplessness like a stone. But somewhere along the way, helplessness calcified into something harder, something useful: rage.

Rage, when held in community and channeled toward action, becomes the fuel that sustains movements. The fire that burned that day still burns, but now it lights the way forward.

You don’t have to carry this alone. You don’t have to fix everything. You just have to show up when you can, however you can, and trust that thousands of other mothers are doing the same.

Pack the lunch. Help with the homework. Calm the tantrum.

And then, when you’re ready, call your representative. Show up to the meeting. Organize the meal train. Write the op-ed. Join the collective.

The work of building a better world for our children happens in both places: in the daily tending of their immediate needs and in the sustained fight for their futures.

source https://www.mother.ly/health-wellness/mental-health/how-to-channel-political-rage/