Friday reflection
“The higher I go, the more I hurt.”
Oh, Nellie. (I know it’s “Whoa, Nellie,” but i feel like saying “oh, Nellie.”) A friend just shared an HBR article with me about 5 harmful ways women feel they must adapt to corporate America, and it has me feeling like I need a shower and a sage smudging ceremony. My god, what we go through. It took me back (and not in a good way) to my own brief foray into a full-time position in the corporate world. And I saw parts of so many of my clients in the experiences the authors recounted.
There aren’t enough showers.
There isn’t enough sage.
But in all seriousness, it got me thinking: What if we just inverted the whole thing?
What if instead of torturing ourselves to fit in and succeed in a rigged, toxic, patriarchal machine, we all decided to say “fuck it” and just be ourselves?
What would that look like?
What might we be able to create?
I have an amazing daughter, Ali, who is something called twice exceptional, and sometimes, when I catch myself feeling like some of her rough edges need to be sanded off to help her fit in socially, I remember: As Greta Thunberg has shown us, there is power in keeping your rough edges, in being unabashedly yourself. Why contort yourself to fit into a broken system? Why not force the system to reform, through the sheer expression of your truest self?
We need are a lot more Gretas, and a lot more Alis.
Where does that leave those of us who are older, who have already been conditioned to kill ourselves (truly, that is the picture the article above paints)? What is possible for those of us so conditioned to seek a glimmer of power and wealth inside a system designed to keep both of those things most decidedly out of our hands?
How do we find our revolution?
I think it has to do with unlearning how to play the game (the one that hurts us) and finding the courage to risk being unabashedly ourselves. The more of us who do this, who get loud with our real identities, who say what we really think, who share our own profound visions — the more it creates a sea change, and the more we become a collective and mighty force (you knew I had to say it) that changes the world.
It’s not easy. It’s not fair. But it’s essential. And the alternative is, as this article shows, exhausting, depleting, and literally unrewarding. If upending the system sounds exhausting, remember the alternative is even more so, and allow the possibility that standing up for yourself might be the most energizing path of all.
Or we can keep experiencing wha the women in this article experience. We can keep fighting to get to the top, only to realize, “The higher I go, the more I hurt.”
What will you choose?
Amanda