Erika returned to our dorm each day and recovered from her business boredom by painting. She graduated with a business degree, then fell in love with a fantastic guy and worked in a corporate office to put him through medical school. Next, the babies came, and she quit her job to stay home and care for them. All the while, she heard a voice nagging her to start painting again. One day, she told me she planned to honor that longing—to honor herself—by enrolling in art school. I heard fizz and fire in her voice for the first time in a decade.
So I answered the phone in celebration of Erika’s commitment and I said, “Hey! How is school going?”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Oh that. That was silly. Brett is so busy, and the kids need me. Art school just seemed so selfish after a while.”
Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves?
Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do?
Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people?
Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely?
Here’s why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere.
When we are little girls, our families, teachers, and peers insist that our loud voices, bold opinions, and strong feelings are “too much” and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities.
Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity.
The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in.
Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger.
Politicians insist that our judgment about our bodies and futures cannot be trusted, so our own reproductive systems must be controlled by lawmakers we don’t know in places we’ve never been.
The legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If twenty women come forward and say, “He did it,” and he says, “No, I didn’t,” they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every damn time.
And religion, sweet Jesus. The lesson of Adam and Eve—the first formative story I was told about God and a woman—was this: When a woman wants more, she defies God, betrays her partner, curses her family, and destroys the world.
We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless.
Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely.
That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.
I tried to control myself for so long.
I spent thirty years covering and injecting my face with potions and poison trying to fix my skin. Then I quit. And my skin was good.
For twenty years, I was attached to a hair dryer and straightener trying to tame my curls. Then I quit. And my hair was good.
I binged and purged and dieted for decades trying to control my body. When I quit, my body became what it was always meant to become. And it was good, too.
I numbed myself with food and booze trying to control my anger. When I quit, I learned that my anger never meant that there was something wrong with me. It meant that there was something wrong. Out there. Something I might have the power to change. I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker. My anger was good.
I had been deceived. The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself. We only control what we don’t trust. We can either control our selves or love our selves, but we can’t do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust.
I love myself now. Self-love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. I trust myself to have my own back, so my allegiance is to the voice within. I’ll abandon everyone else’s expectations of me before I’ll abandon myself. I’ll disappoint everyone else before I’ll disappoint myself. I’ll forsake all others before I’ll forsake myself. Me and myself: We are till death do us part.
What the world needs is more women who have quit fearing themselves and started trusting themselves.
What the world needs is masses of women who are entirely out of control.
I wrote to my community recently: Do with your Self whatever it is you want to do. You can trust your Self. Someone responded,
Isn’t it irresponsible to suggest that we should do whatever we want to do? Most nights, by the time I get home I want to drink an entire bottle of Malibu. Pretty sure I shouldn’t trust all of my desires.
* * *
I have a friend who has struggled mightily with money for decades. She recently told me that she was this close to renting an expensive beach house even though she was deep in debt. She knew from her roots that she couldn’t trust this desire of hers, but she wanted this vacation for her family so badly that she was prepared to allow her desire to override her Knowing.
When I asked why she was so desperate for this house, she looked down at her hands and said, “I see all the pictures on social media of families at the shore. They’re relaxing together. They’re off their damn phones and just being together. My family is so disconnected right now. The kids are growing so fast. Tom and I never really talk anymore. I feel like we’re losing each other. I want to slow down. I want to talk to my kids and husband more. I want to know what’s going on in their lives. I want to have fun together again.”
Instead of renting the beach house, my friend bought a two-dollar basket and placed it on a table in her foyer. She asked her husband and teenagers to leave their phones in the basket for an hour each weeknight. Her family began preparing, eating, and cleaning up after dinner together. There was a lot of grumbling about this new system at first, but then came the laughter, talking, and connection she’d yearned for. Her basket turned out to be a two-dollar beach house.
So, that woman’s nightly desire for a bottle of Malibu? That was just a surface desire. I know this because her Knowing didn’t trust it. A surface desire is one that conflicts with our Knowing. We must ask of our surface desires: What is the desire beneath this desire? Is it rest? Is it peace?
Our deep desires are wise, true, beautiful, and things we can grant ourselves without abandoning our Knowing. Following our deep desire always returns us to integrity. If your desire feels wrong to you: Go deeper. You can trust yourself. You just have to get low enough.
I have spent the last decade of my life listening to women talk about what they most desire. This is what women tell me they want:
I want a minute to take a deep breath.
I want rest, peace, passion.
I want good food and true, wild, intimate sex.
I want relationships with no lies.
I want to be comfortable in my own skin.
I want to be seen, to be loved.
I want joy and safety for my children and for everyone else’s children.
I want justice for all.
I want he
lp, community, and connection.
I want to be forgiven, and I want to finally forgive.
I want enough money and power to stop feeling afraid.
I want to find my purpose down here and live it out fully.
I want to look at the news and see less pain, more love.
I want to look at the people in my life and really see them and love them.
I want to look in the mirror and really see myself and love myself.
I want to feel alive.
The blueprints of heaven are etched in the deep desires of women. What women want is good. What women want is beautiful. And what women want is dangerous, but not to women. Not to the common good. What women want is a threat to the injustice of the status quo. If we unlocked and unleashed ourselves:
Imbalanced relationships would be equalized.
Children would be fed.
Corrupt governments would topple.
Wars would end.
Civilizations would be transformed.
If women trusted and claimed their desires, the world as we know it would crumble. Perhaps that is precisely what needs to happen so we can rebuild truer, more beautiful lives, relationships, families, and nations in their place.
Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model.
Own your wanting.
Eat the apple.
Let it burn.
One morning, I called my friend Martha and began telling her all the reasons I could not leave my marriage. Then I began sharing all the reasons I could not stay in my marriage. I kept talking, talking, talking, weighing every angle, arguing myself into corners and then around and around in circles.
Eventually she said, “Glennon, stop. You are in your head. The answers you need this time aren’t in there. They’re in your body. Try dropping into your body. Right now on the phone. Drop lower.”
This was becoming a theme in my life, all this sinking and dropping.
She asked, “You in there yet?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Okay, now consider both decisions. Inhabit yourself and feel. Does saying good-bye to Abby feel warm to you?”
“No. That feels cold, actually. It feels icy. It makes me feel like I’ll die of cold.”
“Now consider being with Abby. How does that feel?”
“It feels warm. Soft. Spacious.”
“Okay, Glennon. Your body is nature, and nature is pure. I know that’s hard for you to accept because you have been at war with your body for so long. You think your body is bad, but it is not. It’s wise. Your body will tell you things your mind will talk you out of. Your body is telling you what direction life is in. Try trusting it. Turn away from what feels cold. Go toward what feels warm.”
Now when I sense danger, I believe the cold and leave. When I sense joy, I believe the warm and stay.
These days, in business meetings, when I request an explanation for a decision someone has made, the women on my team know that I’m not looking for justifications, judgments, or opinions. I’m looking for Knowing. So the decision maker will say, “I did the research and sat with these options for a while. This option felt warm to me. The alternative felt cold.” That will be the end of the discussion. I trust women who trust themselves.
For a long while I pretended not to know that even though I had only one life, I was spending it inside a lonely marriage.
When the Knowing threatened to rise, I’d shove it back down. There was no point in admitting I knew what I knew, because I would never do what the Knowing would require me to do. I would never leave my children’s father. I’d just pretend not to know forever. I was a mother, and I had responsibilities.
In middle school we learned about parenting by caring for an egg. In order to pass the unit, we had to return the uncracked egg to the teacher at the end of the week. Those who left their egg home in the dark all week fared best; some of their eggs went rotten, but that didn’t matter as long as they remained uncracked.
I parented Tish like she was an egg. I’d say, “She is so sensitive, so fragile.” I worried about her and counted that as love. I protected her and counted that as mothering. I’d have kept her at home in the dark forever if I could have. She and I were living in a story I had written, and I was the hero. I would never let her crack, and I would pass parenting.
* * *
I am drinking coffee on Tish’s bed, watching her get ready for school. She is brushing her yards of Rapunzel hair.
I watch her look at herself in the mirror and then back at me. She says, “My hair is too babyish. Can I cut it like yours?”
I look at the two of us in that mirror. Right there in front of me, I can finally see that Tish is not an egg. She is a girl, becoming a woman.
Every time she looks at me, she is seeing herself, too. And she is asking:
Mom, how does a woman wear her hair?
Mom, how does a woman love and be loved?
Mom, how does a woman live?
Tish asks, “Will you put my hair up in a pony, Mom?”
I walk into the bathroom, find a ponytail holder, come back, and stand behind her. I have pulled her hair up a thousand times, but all of a sudden, she’s too tall. I can’t even see the top of her head. She has grown at least an inch overnight. When she was a baby, every day felt like a year. Now every morning, another inch.
I look at Tish and I think:
I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.
But would I want this marriage for my little girl?
When Craig and I moved to our home in Naples, we bought a gigantic silver mirror that we found on clearance. We never got around to hanging it. We just leaned it against our bedroom wall and hoped the leaning looked purposeful and artsy.
The day my therapist insisted that my feelings weren’t real, I decided to say good-bye to Abby and remain in my marriage. She was the expert, and she was right. Good mothers don’t break their children’s hearts in order to follow their own.
I sat on my bedroom carpet cross-legged, looking directly into my own eyes in that mirror.
It’s important to take a good look at yourself every once in a while. Not the way you look at yourself while you’re getting dressed or putting on makeup. Not the way you look at your thighs or sunspots or chin hairs. Not that way. I mean you need to look dead into your own eyes—at your real self. You need to make sure there are no lies there. You need to make sure the eyes in the mirror are the eyes of a woman you respect.
As I looked deep into my own eyes, the woman in the mirror and I had a reckoning.
I asked myself: Is the decision to continue abandoning yourself really what your children need from you?
Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.
What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.
If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.
What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model?
Right there, on the floor, I looked deep into my own eyes. I let the Knowing rise and stay.
My children do not need me to save them.
My children need to watch me save myself.
I’d quit using my children as an excuse to not be brave and start seeing them as my reason to be brave. I would leave their father and I would claim friendship-and-fire love, or I would be alone. But I would never again be alone in a relationship and pretend that was love. I would never again settle for a relationship or life less beautiful than the one I’d want for my child.
I’d divorce Craig. Because I am a mother. And I have responsibilities.
* * *
I stood up off the carpet and called Abby. We had not seen each other since the night we met in Chicago.
I said, “I’m in love with you. I’m leaving Craig. I’m telling him today.”
She said, “Glennon. Oh my God. I am so in love with you. I’m so happy right now. And I’m so afraid for you. Are you sure you’re ready to do this? We’ve never even touched.”
I said, “I know. But I’m not leaving just because of you. I’m leaving because now that I know this kind of love exists, I can’t pretend it doesn’t anymore. I can’t unknow what I know, and I can’t unbecome who I am now. So I’m leaving—not just because I love you but because I love this version of me. The one that woke up when we met. I have to either leave him or myself. I’m going to leave him. Now that I know this, I have to tell him that I know. I don’t owe Craig the rest of my life, but I do owe him my honesty. It’ll be hard, but it’ll finally be the right kind of hard.”
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