Now I understand what the fuss is all about. Mona Lisa is the patron saint of honest, resolute, fully human women—women who feel and who know. She is saying for us:
Don’t tell me to smile.
I will not be pleasant.
Even trapped here, inside two dimensions, you will see the truth.
You will see my life’s brutal and beautiful right here on my face.
The world will not be able to stop staring.
When I got pregnant with Chase and quit drinking, drugging, and purging, I thought it might be my last chance to stop being bad and start being good. I married Chase’s father, and I learned to cook and clean and fake orgasms. I was a good wife. I had three babies and put all their needs so far ahead of my own that I forgot I had needs at all. I was a good mom. I started going to church and learned to fear God and not ask too many questions of folks who claimed to represent God. I was a good Christian. I watched beauty trends carefully, and I dyed my hair and paid to get poison injected into my forehead so I wouldn’t look too tired from all the effort it takes to be good at beauty. I started writing and released bestsellers and spoke to sold-out audiences all over the country. A woman isn’t allowed to do well unless she also does good, so I became a do-gooder for the world. I raised tens of millions of dollars for people who were hurting, and I lost a decade of sleep writing back to strangers.
You are a good woman, Glennon, they said.
I was. I was so good. I was also exhausted, anxious, and lost. I assumed that was because I wasn’t good enough yet; I just had to try a little harder.
My husband’s infidelity was a jagged gift, because it forced me to see that being a good wife wasn’t enough to keep my marriage together. Being a good mother wasn’t enough to keep my kids from pain. Being a good world saver wasn’t enough to save my own world.
Being bad had almost killed me. But so had being good.
I was talking to a dear friend around that time. She said, “G, remember that amazing Steinbeck quote? ‘And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.’ I’ve kept it on my desk for years. I looked at it last night and thought: I’m tired of being good. I’m so tired.
“Let’s change it to:
“And now that we don’t have to be good, we can be free.”
A few years ago, Alicia Keys announced to the world that she was done wearing makeup. She said, “I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles…Nothing.”
That’s it, I thought.
A while later, I read an interview with Adam Levine. He said that while they were filming a show together, he poked his head into Alicia Keys’s dressing room. She had her back to him, and she was leaning into the mirror, putting on lipstick.
He smiled and said, “Oh! I thought Alicia doesn’t wear makeup.”
She turned around, looked at him, lipstick in her hand.
She said, “I do what the fuck I want.”
That’s it.
My daughters are different. I raised Tish while I was still trying to be a good parent, but then I got tired. By the time Amma exited the birth canal, I just handed her an iPad and wished the child godspeed on her journey. One way to describe Amma is independent. Another is on her own. This parenting approach (retreat?) has served her well. She wears what she wants and says what she wants, and mostly she does what she wants. She has created herself, and she is a glorious invention with which she is well pleased.
Recently we were sitting around the kitchen table, and Tish mentioned her need to train more if she ever hoped to be great at soccer. We asked Amma if she felt the same way. Amma took a bite of her pizza and said, “Nah. I’m already great.” She is twelve. Maybe eleven, actually. I have three children, and their ages change every single year. All I know is they are in the phase that comes after crawling but before college. Somewhere in that sweet spot.
Years ago, when I was in the thick of deciding whether I wanted to save or end my marriage, the girls began begging to get their ears pierced. I was grateful for the distraction, so I said yes. I took them to the mall, and when we arrived at the piercing kiosk, Amma ran ahead of me, leaped into the piercing chair, and announced to the surprised twentysomething piercer, “Let’s do this.” When I finally caught up, the piercer turned to me and said, “Are you her mother?”
“I am trying to be,” I said.
“Okay, do you want me to pierce her ears one at a time or both at the same time?”
Amma said, “Both. Do it! Let’s GO!” Then she squinted her eyes, gritted her teeth, and flexed all her muscles, like a tiny Hulk. As they pierced her, I saw a couple of tears that she wiped away immediately. I looked at Amma and thought: She is so awesome. She is also six years from a felony. She jumped down from the chair, buzzing with adrenaline.
The women working at the kiosk laughed and said, “Wow! She is so brave!”
Tish stood next to me, taking all of it in. She motioned for me to lean down closer. She whispered, “Actually, Mom, I changed my mind. I don’t want to get my ears pierced today.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She looked over at Amma’s earlobes: swollen grape tomatoes.
Amma said, “C’mon, Tish! You only live once!”
Tish said, “Why does everyone say that when they’re about to do dangerous things? How about ‘You only live once, so don’t get dead early’?”
Then she looked back at me and said, “I’m sure.”
The piercer turned to Tish and said, “Your turn, honey.”
I waited for Tish to speak. She said, “No, thank you. I’m not ready today.”
The piercer said, “Oh, c’mon! You can do it! Be brave! Look how brave your little sister was!”
Tish looked at me, and I squeezed her hand as we walked away. She felt a little ashamed, and I felt a lot annoyed.
I don’t think brave means what we’ve been saying it means.
We tell our children that brave means feeling afraid and doing it anyway, but is this the definition we want them to carry as they grow older?
When she is seventeen, headed out in a car driven by her teenage buddy, saying she’s going to the movies but actually going to that kegger down the street, imagine calling to her, “Bye, babe! Be brave tonight! What I mean by that is: If you’re in a scary situation, and you feel afraid to do what your friends are encouraging you to do—I want you to ignore that fear and do it anyway! Just plow right through that gut instinct of yours!”