Essays Stories
[ Stories We Live ]
I've Officially Entered My Villain Era
For most of my life, I have made a conscious effort not to become the kind of person who hurts me. I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone’s anger, cruelty, and disregard, and I never wanted to make another person feel the way I have felt. So I learned to consider people’s feelings, even when they weren’t considering mine. I learned to choose my words carefully, extend grace when I probably shouldn’t have, and walk away from conversations with things I desperately wanted to say without ever uttering a word.
I’m 37 now, and I’m beginning to wonder what all that consideration has actually gotten me. Somewhere along the way, my determination not to hurt other people became an expectation that I would keep letting them hurt me. I got so used to being the bigger person that I rarely stopped to consider why everyone expected me to “do the right thing.”
When Wholeness Is Treated as a Liability
It didn’t take long for me to notice how often good motherhood was conflated with self-abandonment. How devotion was measured by willingness to surrender. How visible, unapologetic success was treated as suspicious once a woman became a mother, as though drive and creativity were indulgences rather than capacities. As though wholeness itself was something to be negotiated down.
I wasn't willing to make that trade. Not because I misunderstood sacrifice, but because I understood the difference between sacrificing for your child and sacrificing yourself to an idea of motherhood that requires erasure. One builds a legacy. The other builds resentment under the guise of virtue.