What if our outrage IS the tender word?

Hello {{first name | Dear Reader}},

I can’t decide if these times call for tender words or for fucking outrage. I’m quite sure we need a measure of both as we navigate the profound transits of the outer planets, and the sobering scarcity of transpersonal empathy.

Up until this moment (this morning, January 28, 2026), I didn’t know what to write about. Everything felt too heavy, too hard. The weight of silence pressed up against the urgency of speech, and the words I didn’t have.

And then it hit me in the face: diplomacy as a mechanism of control. A fear-inducing structure that keeps us compliant, keeps us small.

I’ve been thinking about the expectation of diplomacy, how it shapes what we say, how we act, how we earn and spend. It determines the why, what, where, and how of our allyship. It governs how we advocate, and more insidiously, how we don’t.

Diplomacy asks us to soften our edges, to make palatable what should be indigestible. It demands we package our truth in language that won’t disturb, won’t offend, won’t threaten the comfort of those who benefit from our silence. We’re taught that rage is unseemly, that grief should be private, that resistance should be reasonable.

But whose reason?
Whose comfort?

And for women--especially when it comes to money--diplomacy becomes another tax we pay. We’re expected to negotiate gently. To charge diplomatically. To ask for raises with the right tone and impeccable timing. To be grateful for scraps while calling it abundance. To build empires quietly so no one feels threatened by our success.

The relationship between women and money is already fraught with centuries of exclusion and control. Diplomacy just adds another layer of performance to the exchange.

The outer planets don’t deal in diplomacy. They dismantle. They transform. They revolutionize. They ask us to look at what we’ve been avoiding, to feel what we’ve been numbing, to speak what we’ve been swallowing.

And right now, when transpersonal empathy is in such short supply, the gap between what we know in our bones and what we’re permitted to say has never felt wider.

What if our outrage is the tender word?

What if the most compassionate thing we can do is refuse to be diplomatic about our humanity, our dignity, our right to exist fully in this world?

Late last year, I chose my 2026 word of intention:

Unf*ckinghinged.
(which I know is not so tender)

I’m not choosing peace.

I’m choosing clarity, power, and the kind of chaos that comes from finally telling the truth, to myself and to everyone else.

Maybe being unf*ckinghinged is exactly the diplomacy we need right now. It certainly is for me. Diplomacy with ourselves, where we finally stop performing for an audience that was never going to applaud anyway.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen the state of the world. If you’re done with diplomacy and ready to take action, here are a few things I’m doing this week:

Take what you need.
Do what you have capacity for.
Rest, and leave the rest.

We’re in the endgame now… or maybe this is just the worst group project in history. Either way, we need you. 💛

Giving diplomacy the middle finger,
Raven O’Neal