I almost didn’t post this week. Usually by Thursday I have a rough draft finished and I’m picking at sentences, moving paragraphs around and changing a word six times before inevitably changing it back. This week I’ve been living more than I’ve been writing. I’ve been gathering college information for three girls at the same time, filling out FAFSA forms, having conversations about futures that suddenly don’t feel very far away and trying to actually be present for all of it. I’ve slacked on my writing, but honestly, that’s okay. Living my life is more important than constantly breaking it down so I can write about it. Also, I am still recovering from my first shift as an aide…in kindergarten…all day! If you know, you know.
Being behind still makes me anxious because showing up here every week matters to me, but I almost didn’t show up this Friday at all. I had other things I could have written about. I just didn’t want to write about the thing happening in real time because writing about it felt dangerously close to giving someone space here that I don’t want them to have. This is Still Me in Here. This space is mine.
But this is part of my life too, and I know I’m not the only person living some version of it. Maybe refusing to talk about what it costs doesn’t actually protect our peace. Maybe it just leaves a lot of us quietly climbing the same hill wondering why we’re so tired. So I’m going to talk about the experience without posting screenshots, producing receipts or giving you ten years of context to convince you I have a reason to feel the way I do. The fact that I could say considerably more and am choosing not to is kind of the point.
In our family, the pattern tends to get louder whenever parenting decisions need to be made, especially when the answer isn’t the one someone wanted. Sometimes our household cannot financially commit to something being asked of us. We have six children, bills, responsibilities and finite resources like every other family. Saying we cannot commit to that isn’t the same thing as saying we don’t care, but sometimes a financial boundary becomes an accusation that my husband is a bad father. Sometimes information is demanded that isn’t pertinent to the parenting decision being made, and when those questions aren’t answered, the conversation stops being about the kids and becomes personal.
Then we’re talking about jobs, income, me, my appearance, my little beard balm business, our marriage and pieces of our lives that require enough attention (aka “social media stalking) to know about them in the first place. Suddenly there’s a whole lot of interest in people who desperately wish everyone involved would have considerably less interest in them.
GO AWAY.
Truly. Go live your life. Take up pottery. Learn to crochet. Birdwatching seems peaceful. I hear sourdough can consume an astonishing amount of a person’s time. Find literally anything that brings you joy because I’m tired.
Do you know how exhausting it is to spend years being hurt by things you could easily prove, while choosing not to expose them because the people you’re protecting matter more than being vindicated? If you do, I see you. I see the screenshot you didn’t post, the response you typed and deleted and the ten years of context required to explain something that happened in ten seconds. I also see the absolutely devastating comeback sitting patiently in your brain.
Believe me, I have them too. I have significantly more snark and sarcasm in my little finger than I think most people realize. At one point I genuinely considered doing stand-up comedy because apparently one of my coping mechanisms is taking something that pisses me off, turning it around in my brain for a while and eventually finding the punchline. My silence has never been because I don’t know what to say. I have responses. I have follow-ups. I’ve anticipated the rebuttal and prepared additional material. I’ve mentally taken this entire show on tour.
Make a dig about my beard balms? Actually, my beard balms do really well. Thank you so much for your inquiry. Comment on my appearance? My brain immediately goes, Oh, we’re doing this? Okay. Since apparently nobody else has told you, that sweatshirt doesn’t fit anymore and you look ridiculous.
And believe me, the sweatshirt is one of the nicer things my brain has produced. I’ve had considerably meaner thoughts about another woman’s appearance after she decided mine was fair game. I’m not going to write them here because that’s exactly the difference I’m talking about. I can see something, think something and have the perfectly cruel response sitting fully formed in my head while still deciding I don’t want to be a woman who teaches six daughters that another woman’s face or body becomes acceptable ammunition simply because she fired first.
That’s restraint.
It isn’t the absence of the ugly thought. It’s deciding what you do with it.
The comments about my short hair bother me in a way I don’t think they’re intended to. I changed my appearance because I wanted to. It took courage to stop worrying so much about whether I looked feminine enough, young enough, thin enough or whatever version of enough women are supposed to spend their lives chasing. So yes, there’s a particularly bitchy part of me that wants to respond to another woman criticizing my appearance by pointing out everything I could criticize about hers. I could. I’m not going to. Not because I didn’t notice, but because I’m helping raise daughters and I want them to see women differently than that.
I can’t tell my daughters that women deserve autonomy over their bodies, identities, relationships and how they choose to move through the world and then teach them through my own behavior that those principles disappear the second I don’t like another woman. Supporting women doesn’t mean liking every woman. Jesus Christ, it absolutely does not mean that. It means my values don’t become optional when somebody pisses me off.
That doesn’t mean the thoughts disappear. Sometimes you think the mean thing. Sometimes the mean thing is hilarious. Sometimes you tell your husband or the friend who knows the whole story. And sometimes, after years of doing the right thing, the most emotionally evolved thought you have available is simply, Eat a bag of dicks.
I think we’ve confused emotional maturity with emotional purity. Being committed to protecting your peace doesn’t mean you eventually stop getting angry or having ugly thoughts. It means those thoughts don’t automatically become actions. Restraint requires an impulse in the first place. Otherwise there’s nothing to restrain.
There have been one or two times over the years when I’ve actually said the thing. Nothing I regret or believe was particularly out of line, but I learned that it doesn’t change anything and can make things harder for my bonus girls. My twelve seconds of satisfaction aren’t worth that. That’s the part that stops me now. Not fear. Not weakness. Not because I’ve reached some enlightened level of personal growth where insults bounce harmlessly off my aura while I cleanse my house with rosemary. Please. I’m still me.
People love telling you to take the high road. Don’t engage. Be the bigger person. Protect your peace. Focus on the kids. It’s all good advice, but the high road is exhausting because it’s all uphill. Sometimes I’d like a bench. Maybe a snack. Possibly an Uber.
There’s also a very fine line I walk as a bonus mother between acknowledging what I see and understanding what isn’t mine. Someone asks how the girls are and sometimes the honest answer is more complicated than the one I give. Not because I’m pretending everything is perfect, but because those stories belong to them. Their relationships belong to them. Their feelings belong to them. I don’t get to hand those things to other people just because explaining them would make me feel understood.
I can love these girls fiercely and still understand that I am not their mother. I can show up, drive, research colleges, fill out forms, listen, protect, celebrate, worry and love. Their mother’s acceptance may still matter to them in a way mine never will. I understand that, and sometimes it still hurts. Both things can be true. That’s part of the emotional math nobody gives you when you become a bonus parent.
Choosing silence isn’t choosing compliance or acceptance, and it sure as hell isn’t approval. There are screenshots. There are years of them. I could make this essay considerably longer and much more convincing if my goal were vindication. It isn’t. Children who didn’t choose divorce, remarriage, custody arrangements, financial disputes or complicated adult relationships don’t deserve to become evidence in them. I’m not going to tell pieces of their story to prove mine.
But protecting them doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to acknowledge what that protection costs. After almost a decade, I know exactly what I could say and where I could aim if hurting someone back were the goal. When I actually imagine engaging with that energy now, though, my throat tightens like my body is trying to stop me from vomiting. It isn’t nerves. It’s disgust. I don’t want to participate in it. I don’t want to become fluent in cruelty just because someone keeps inviting me into the conversation.
Even talking about it gets exhausting. Sometimes I don’t want to call someone and explain what happened, pull up the screenshots or provide the backstory. I don’t need someone to reassure me that I’m right because now I’ve given the situation another hour of my life. I’ve called all those emotions back to the front and asked them to perform again.
Sometimes I just want my fucking Tuesday back.
Maybe that’s the part of protecting your peace we don’t talk about enough. Peace isn’t never being disturbed. It’s deciding how much more of yourself the disturbance gets to have. I have six daughters, a husband, animals, a house, writing, work, friendships and approximately eleven thousand other things capable of occupying my attention. I don’t need to understand why another person behaves in ways I wouldn’t choose for myself. I don’t need to solve it. I just need to decide what I’m going to do with what lands in front of me.
And my goodness, if I’m this exhausted from trying to do the right thing, being an asshole all the time has got to be tiring. Where does anyone find the energy? I’m tired just filling out FAFSA.
Maybe that’s why I decided this needed to be written after all. Not to call anyone out, prove anything or have an audience tell me I’m right. I wrote it because there are people quietly doing this every day who probably need someone to say that taking the high road doesn’t mean you have to enjoy the hike.
I’m helping raise six daughters, and I don’t need them to believe good women never get angry. That’s bullshit and they’d see through it anyway. I need them to know that having the thought doesn’t require becoming it. You can be angry. You can think the bitchy thing. You can dislike another woman without attacking her womanhood. You can write the comeback down, laugh at it and still decide it doesn’t need to leave the room. Kindness isn’t weakness. Boundaries aren’t cruelty. Restraint isn’t acceptance.
That’s not being fake. That’s having values.
So yes, say the snark somewhere safe. Laugh because the comeback really was excellent. Be angry. Be human. Then decide how much more of your life this deserves and go live the rest of it.
The high road is exhausting because it’s all uphill. Apparently I’ve developed some pretty strong legs.
Continue the conversation
If today’s essay felt like someone put words to something you’ve been carrying, I think you’ll find a little more of yourself in The Unguided Woman.
It’s not a roadmap. It’s an honest conversation about perimenopause, identity, grief, and finding your footing again when life feels unfamiliar.
Download The Unguided Woman here.
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