the life of a well-behaved woman:

Well-behaved women seldom make history, so they say.

I guess that’s why they hush us young. I guess that’s why they compliment us on the way we look rather than encouraging us to be curious about the world around us.

There are hands on our throats and over our mouths from birth.

The message to girls and young women is clear and constant: your worth is determined in equal parts by your ability to secure male attention and remain compliant.

Don’t rock the boat.

It starts young. It starts in most homes. It starts with media. It starts with patriarchy.

Hush little darling.

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

I’m here to tell you a little bit of what hush culture gets you.

People always said she was quiet. Maybe she was. I understand that my experience with her wasn’t typical.

Sure, she was soft-spoken and a little socially anxious. Sure, people often joked about where the hell I came from because I was so exuberant in contrast to her calm.

What she did she did, she did without fanfare.

She did very much say what she needed though.

My mother knew what she valued and knew what she wanted. She advocated for herself and she said plenty about the things that bothered her.

She didn’t want to hurt or disappoint people so often her solution was not to say much about certain things.

It wasn’t that she didn’t speak out, you understand. It’s that no one bothered to listen.

My mom’s entire life was a struggle to be heard.

She knew she was sick. Anyone can tell you that. She knew she was sick and she was chasing a diagnosis for a year.

No one bothered to listen.

My mom had a will made up a couple of years ago. She took the time and spent the money to tell us what to do.

For five+ days my mom was kept alive with machines against her will. Every day I asked people far more educated than myself, “to what end?”

I didn’t see the directive order but I didn’t need to to know what she’d asked. My mom took the time to make a decision and write it out and no one bothered to listen.

Even in the end, no one listened.

So maybe it’s off-putting for some people that I do my thinking right out loud. Maybe it makes some people uncomfortable when I call out injustice with a spiritual megaphone. Maybe you’re sick of hearing the sound of my voice and wouldn’t blame you for that one bit.

It isn’t just that well-behaved women seldom make history, friends.

It’s that well-behaved women seldom get what they need. It’s that “well-behaved women” is actually code for women who will let go of their needs, sacrifice their own well-being and give away their power without a fight.

Tabling our own needs only invites the world to do the same. Standing for bullshit only invites more bullshit.

The world’s had a great deal of time to make the most of well-behaved women. Take a look around.

Time to get loud and rowdy, ladies.