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A review by pangnaolin
Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Honestly, this was definitely a beautiful book with a lot of really important things to say, but I did feel a bit bored by it simply because it was repetitive and I knew most of the objective information he gave both from my own practices & journeys in therapy and from just having taken a year-long course on mindfulness & meditation in school.
Regardless, Lama Rad Owens did a wonderful job describing really complex emotions and ideas surrounding noticing and creating space for emotions, anger, pain, the trauma of humankind, communication, and so much more. It was all so simple to understand, though definitely hard to listen to at times because of how open and vulnerable it could be.
His guided meditations and practice were really wonderful and helpful, especially in audiobook form (as I read and listened to it simultaneously), and including those was such a great call on his part.
I think the biggest takeaways from this are absolutely that anger is an emotion that tries to protect our wounds and that marginalized people do significant amounts more of emotional labor in the United States just by existing, so we must work to reduce this suffering in our communities. Relatedly, he also talks a lot about creating space for our emotions and allowing them to exist, noticing what wounds they're pointing to and how we can address them and grow.
I think I gained the most from when he talked more personally and from his suggested practices and when he talked about how it intertwined with activism [it was affirming to see someone make the same connections I did], again just because I already knew a lot of what he talked about, and they were often my favorite parts. If you're interested in learning more about mindfulness and meditation and want to connect it back to marginalization and activism in the US, this is absolutely the book for you! It's a really good intro.
Regardless, Lama Rad Owens did a wonderful job describing really complex emotions and ideas surrounding noticing and creating space for emotions, anger, pain, the trauma of humankind, communication, and so much more. It was all so simple to understand, though definitely hard to listen to at times because of how open and vulnerable it could be.
His guided meditations and practice were really wonderful and helpful, especially in audiobook form (as I read and listened to it simultaneously), and including those was such a great call on his part.
I think the biggest takeaways from this are absolutely that anger is an emotion that tries to protect our wounds and that marginalized people do significant amounts more of emotional labor in the United States just by existing, so we must work to reduce this suffering in our communities. Relatedly, he also talks a lot about creating space for our emotions and allowing them to exist, noticing what wounds they're pointing to and how we can address them and grow.
I think I gained the most from when he talked more personally and from his suggested practices and when he talked about how it intertwined with activism [it was affirming to see someone make the same connections I did], again just because I already knew a lot of what he talked about, and they were often my favorite parts. If you're interested in learning more about mindfulness and meditation and want to connect it back to marginalization and activism in the US, this is absolutely the book for you! It's a really good intro.