Respond to Terror Like This

You’re not afraid, you’re enraged

Jun 11, 2025

Leanneisalive is a weekly reflection on embodied liberation and unleashing our aliveness in a world of oppression. Sometimes it’s a rallying cry, sometimes it’s a teach-in, sometimes life is life’ing and I don’t post that week. But I’m always glad you’re here. 👋🏾💗

Do not stop.

The liars have to lie. The hiders have to hide. The fakers have to fake.

But all of life yearns to be free.

Do not stop your sacred work to free yourself. No matter how much tenderness, fierceness, ferality, power, surrender, or dancing in the unknown it takes.

Do not stop until you are free.

The colonized people will laugh at you. Exclude you. Punish you. But their power will not work out here in the institutionalized liberation of life on our planet. Their rules only work inside the human-built cage of oppression. Once you are out, they cannot reach you. They are too scared to leave their cages.

So rejoice now! Your liberation has come!

Your experience of liberation is on the other side of your courage and confusion. You have saved yourself with your sacred defiance and sacred surrender. You will feel free the moment you refuse to abandon yourself to earn the approval or respect of the liars and thieves.

I promise you, what you feel in your body is not terror. It is the tediousness of their bullshit. You’re not afraid, you are exhausted. You’re not afraid, you are enraged.

Stop stifling the fury. Use it to free yourself.

Colonized people want you to think that privileged people are the predators and marginalized folx are the prey. But the terrifying thing about humanity is that each of us is a human predator in a world of other human predators.

You are terrifying too.

They’ve just taught you to pull out your fangs, paint your claws red, and hide your spines under a silky dress. But you are a predator too.

That’s why you’re scared of your power. You know just how powerful you are. So powerful you could destroy the world if you wanted to. As you learn to trust that you will use your power for good and not evil, you will let yourself access your power. Once you know that you will use power to receive your justice, but never to unleash vengeance, you will give yourself your power back.

Once you know you will not become an oppressor, you will let yourself have your wildness. Predators are mostly napping, snuggling, resting, or frolicking. They only occasionally eat or defend themselves. Their obvious power is a deterrent so they do not have to fight too often.

Let the world know your power, and they will they will think twice about coming for you.

Find your Firmesa, your Haka, your sacred fierceness and un-move-ableness that makes would-be attackers think twice and head home. Stop appeasing the monsters; remember you have fangs, and claws, and venom too.

Here is some international inspiration. This protest made international news and the bill she ripped up was defeated.

If you cannot find this fierceness in your body yet, see if you can find the humility and willingness to learn.

We start from where we are.

We are enraged. But can we expresses the full intensity we feel? Or will we let our fire burn us, and not the systems our fire was born to incinerate? I watched this video on repeat for weeks trying to find this level of power in my body. 🔥🔥🔥🔥