What if there's no such thing as a good grudge?

I came across a quote that really resonated with me in the most recent issue of The Atlantic:

Now, I’ve never been particularly resistant toward therapy, but those final two sentences sound like something I absolutely would have said five years ago if someone suggested I let go of the anger I held toward my stepfather. 

It was jarring to see this shadow of my past self in those words, and that’s because of who said them: Micki Witthoeft, who is the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police after entering the White House on January 6, 2021.

In the three years since this happened, Babbitt has become a martyr in a certain corner of our nation’s political landscape. Her mother, who was fairly apolitical prior to her daughter’s death, has moved to Washington D.C. and become a fairly prominent figure within this corner, standing in opposition to the current government in general and Democratic Party in particular. She’s known as Mamma Micki.

I’m not going to spend a ton of time explaining Witthoeft’s story nor judging the merits of her claims. If you want to dig more into that, I highly encourage you to read “The Insurrectionists Next Door” and even seek out the podcast “You Won’t Believe Who Our Neighbors Are.” I will say that while I feel very badly for the obvious and understandable pain Micki Witthoeft has experienced after the loss of her daughter, I feel her current course of action is misguided and not rooted in fact.

The reason I’m writing about this is because after reading her quote, and being struck by how similar her feelings were to sentiments I’ve had, I began to wonder if the merits of a grudge – i.e. whether it’s justified or not -- have all that much to do with the effect they have upon the person carrying them.

More specifically: Does having a grudge that is considered warranted and understandable have the same sort of corrosive and harmful effects as a grudge that is considered to be rooted in fallacy or even a conspiracy?

When I hear about an instance of resentment in general or a grudge in particular, my first impulse is to find out the underlying cause.

I do this so I can assess whether I think it’s valid or not.

Essentially, I sort them into “good” and “bad” grudges. This sorting is conducted on their underlying justification.

By “good” grudge, I mean one I believe to be warranted, maybe even appropriate, given the circumstances.

For instance:

• My stepfather was a hard-ass who demanded perfection from me as a teenager, sucked up resources from my family and turned out to be dishonest and deceitful and never had the decency to apologize. It’s my right to hold a grudge. It’s my anger and I’m gonna hold onto it. 

A “bad” grudge is one in which the anger is either disconnected from or out of proportion to what actually occurred. It may grow from a misunderstanding or an exaggeration or perhaps even a crazy-assed conspiracy theory, and consequently the actions that flow from this hostility will be misguided or inappropriate. A “bad” grudge is one you should let go of.

The question of whether a judge is “good” or “bad” depends entirely upon perspective, though.

I’m going to guess that Mamma Micki absolutely believes her grudge to be a “good” one. I’ve also talked to people – including one teacher in a writing class – who was fairly unsympathetic and even critical of the animosity I harbored toward my stepfather. She absolutely considered my grudge to be “bad.”

This is part of the reason people tend to spend so much time explaining the context of their resentment. They want others to see the underlying reason. To recognize — and thereby validate — the reasons for holding a grudge.

But what if we took the value judgment out of it? Instead of trying to judge whether the grudge itself is justified or warranted, we just accept it as an incident one that has caused pain. Harm has occurred.

My stepfather – whom I did not really like after the first year of his marriage to my mom – turned out to be fairly first-rate scoundrel. This made me very angry.

A daughter – whose mother clearly loved her – is killed during a politicized mobilization. This made her both incredibly sad and very angry.

The result is pronounced emotional pain.

The shape and temperature of this pain is going to depend on our own unique histories, though. Both in life in general and toward that person in particular. We all have our sensitive spots, our vulnerabilities and our regrets, which will influence the emotions we experience following a painful event.

But pain is pain, and the question of whether it’s justified or warranted or rational doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s a feeling. We are having a powerful emotional experience to something that has occurred. We are hurting.

The question is what we do with it.

Are we going to act on this pain or are we going to hold onto it? 

Of course, there are many different increments in between these poles. Acting on it can mean talking through your feelings in the protected space of a therapy session. It can also mean declaring “Capitol Police suck ass!” to television cameras after being arrested for blocking traffic on the two-year anniversary of her daughter’s death just as Mamma Micki did.

Holding onto it can mean sitting with that feeling until it becomes less potent, more manageable, or it can mean bottling it up and stashing it in the dark corner of your psyche, allowing it to ferment along with any other resentments that accrue over time. This was an absolute first-rate specialty of mine.

The justification for a grudge affects how we see our anger and how others judge it, but I’m not sure it affects the intensity with which we experience it or what it does to us when we carry it around for years and years.

Actually, I’m understating that. I don’t believe the justification for a grudge determines its effect on the person who holds that grudge. Having a “good” grudge can cause problems in the exact same way that a “bad” grudge can.

In the years after my Mom divorced my stepfather, I would fantasize about all the ways I might confront him over what he’d done.

I would imagine writing a story spelling out what had happened in his term as a public-school superintendent in San Jose, showing just what led to his ultimate resignation. Or maybe I’d go deeper, more personal and explain exactly why my mom felt that he had been not only unfaithful, but dishonest about it.

 Did this make the pain I felt any less pronounced or more manageable?

No. It absolutely did not. In fact, it’s quite possible — perhaps even likely — that I got MORE angry as time went on.

The fact I believed my anger was warranted, maybe even appropriate, didn’t make it any less harmful. It just added a layer of righteousness to my view of the situation. I thought I deserved to be angry given what had happened.

To quote Snoop from Season 4 of “The Wire”: Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

Things happen to us in this life. Things that hurt, and when this happens the challenge is to figure out how to deal with them, ideally without adding to or compounding the pain that we feel.

That last part is what makes grudges so tricky especially when we feel like we’re right. We end up doing things that increase our suffering, and this can happen regardless of whether that grudge is considered justified.

In fact, believing the grudge against my stepfather was justified made it MORE difficult for me to let go of it in part because I felt that letting go – without him ever acknowledging let alone apologizing for what happened – would be letting him get away with it.

I’ve stopped asking whether I was right or wrong to be angry with my stepfather.

It is simply a fact: I was angry.

Carrying this anger, however, was not helping me in any way. In fact, it was the one thing that was keeping me tied to my stepfather.

I had a choice: I could act on this anger and see if that helped dilute the potency. Or I could work with my therapist to process it. That latter path is the one I chose.

It was — going back to that quote from the story in The Atlantic — my anger, and I finally decided to dispose of it.