But other times—when I turn on the news or watch closely how people treat each other—I raise my eyebrows and think: Actually, maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you, world. Maybe my inability to adapt to the world is not because I’m crazy but because I’m paying attention. Maybe it’s not insane to reject the world as it is. Maybe the real insanity is surrendering to the world as it is. Maybe pretending that things around here are just fine is no badge of honor I want to wear. Maybe it’s exactly right to be a little crazy. Maybe the truth is: World, you need my poetry.
I’ve got these conditions—anxiety, depression, addiction—and they almost killed me. But they are also my superpowers. The sensitivity that led me to addiction is the same sensitivity that makes me a really good artist. The anxiety that makes it difficult to exist in my own skin also makes it difficult to exist in a world where so many people are in so much pain—and that makes me a relentless activist. The fire that burned me up for the first half of my life is the exact same fire I’m using now to light up the world.
Don’t forget: We need their science because they need our poetry. We don’t need to be more pleasant, normal, or convenient, we just need to be ourselves. We need to save ourselves because we need to save the world.
I used to stay brokenhearted like it was my job and destiny. Like pain was what I owed to the world and staying sad was how I stayed safe. Self-denial was how I earned my worthiness, my goodness, my right to exist. Suffering was my comfort zone. I decided, at forty years old, to try a new way.
I chose Abby. I chose my own joy. I chose to believe—as Mary Oliver promised—that I don’t have to be good, I can just let the soft animal of my body love what it loves.
I made this choice out of love for myself and Abby and also out of curiosity. I wondered if joy had as much to teach me as pain did. If so, I wanted to know.
I am not sure what the path of joy will teach me in the long run. Choosing joy is new for me. But I’ve learned this much: It’s nice to be happy. I feel lighter and clearer and stronger and more alive. I haven’t been struck down yet. One thing that has surprised me is this: The happier I become, the happier my children seem to become. I am unlearning everything I’ve been trained to believe about motherhood and martyrdom. In our wedding book, my son wrote, “Abby: Before you came, mom never turned our volume up past 11. Thank you.” I hope that my new belief that love should make you feel both held and free is a belief my children will keep.
I’ve also learned that while choosing joy makes it easier for me to love myself and my life, it seems to make it harder for the world to love me.
I was speaking at an event recently, and a woman stood up in the audience, looked at me onstage, and said into the microphone, “Glennon, I used to love your writing so much. When you talked about your pain and how hard life was, I felt so comforted. But lately, with your new life, you seem different. I have to be honest: I am finding you harder and harder to relate to.”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.
“I’m happier now. I’m not doubting myself as much, and that is making me confident and stronger, so I’m suffering less. I have noticed that it seems easier for the world to love a suffering woman than it is for the world to love a joyful, confident woman.”
It’s hard for me, too.
I was at one of Tish’s soccer games, and there was a girl on the other team who was just rubbing me the wrong way. I could tell by the sideline body language and eye rolling that she was also rubbing several of my soccer-mom friends the wrong way. I watched her carefully, trying to figure out why this girl was activating us. I noticed that she walked with her head held high and with a bit of a swagger. She was good, and she knew it. She went in for the ball often and hard, like a girl who knows her own strength and talent. She smiled the whole time, like all of this was easy for her, like she was having the time of her life. All of this just annoyed the hell out of me.
She was twelve.
I sat with my feelings and I realized: The knee-jerk reaction I’m having to this girl is a direct result of my training. I have been conditioned to mistrust and dislike strong, confident, happy girls and women. We all have. Studies prove that the more powerful, successful, and happy a man becomes, the more people trust and like him. But the more powerful and happy a woman becomes, the less people like and trust her. So we proclaim: Women are entitled to take their rightful place! Then, when a woman does take her rightful place, our first reaction is: She’s so…entitled. We become people who say of confident women, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it—it’s just something about her. I just don’t like her. I can’t put my finger on why.”
I can put my finger on why: It’s because our training is kicking in through our subconscious. Strong, happy, confident girls and women are breaking our culture’s implicit rule that girls should be self-doubting, reserved, timid, and apologetic. Girls who are bold enough to break those rules irk us. Their brazen defiance and refusal to follow directions make us want to put them back into their cage.
Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We do not accept compliments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, “I feel like” instead of “I know.” We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for…everything. Conversations among brilliant women often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected, but we want to be loved and accepted even more.
I once sat with Oprah Winfrey at her kitchen table, and she asked me what I was most proud of in my life as an activist, writer, mother. I panicked and started mumbling something like “Oh. I don’t feel proud, I feel grateful. None of it’s really me. I’m surrounded by great people. I’m just incredibly lucky and…”
She put her hand on mine and said, “Don’t do that. Don’t be modest. Dr. Maya Angelou used to say, ‘Modesty is a learned affectation. You don’t want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out.’ ”
I think of what she said to me every day. She was saying: Playing dumb, weak, and silly is a disservice to yourself and to me and to the world. Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully. Don’t mistake modesty for humility. Modesty is a giggly lie. An act. A mask. A fake game. We have no time for it.
The word humility derives from the Latin word humilitas, which means “of the earth.” To be humble is to be grounded in knowing who you are. It implies the responsibility to become what you were meant to become—to grow, to reach, to fully bloom as high and strong and grand as you were created to. It is not honorable for a tree to wilt and shrink and disappear. It’s not honorable for a woman to, either.