Untamed

It’s important to take a good look at yourself every once in a while. Not the way you look at yourself while you’re getting dressed or putting on makeup. Not the way you look at your thighs or sunspots or chin hairs. Not that way. I mean you need to look dead into your own eyes—at your real self. You need to make sure there are no lies there. You need to make sure the eyes in the mirror are the eyes of a woman you respect.

I was afraid of what was inside me. It felt powerful enough to destroy every bit of the lovely life I’d built. Like how I never feel safe on a balcony because: What if I jump?

It wasn’t enough for women to have equality with men; they needed equality with each other.

This means that the last thing I say to my prophet daughter every single night is a bold-faced lie. In this life of unknowables, there is one thing I know for sure, and that is that someday my girl is going to lose me.

I used to lie to Tish all the time. I used to promise her things that would temporarily dazzle her, placate her, protect her.

Yes, I’m certain that heaven is real. Yes, I believe in Santa! No, your parents will never, ever get divorced. Yes, life is fair and there are good guys and bad guys. Mommy knows best. Everything happens for a reason. You are safe, honey. I will keep you safe.

That was back when I thought my job was to keep Tish safe instead of allowing her to become brave. Back when I thought I should make Tish’s life easy instead of allowing her to learn that she can handle life’s hard.

I love myself now. Self-love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. I trust myself to have my own back, so my allegiance is to the voice within. I’ll abandon everyone else’s expectations of me before I’ll abandon myself. I’ll disappoint everyone else before I’ll disappoint myself. I’ll forsake all others before I’ll forsake myself. Me and myself: We are till death do us part.

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.”

“Mona Lisa and her husband lost a baby. Sometime later, her husband commissioned this painting from da Vinci to celebrate the birth of another baby. Mona Lisa sat for Leonardo to paint her, but she wouldn’t smile during the sitting. Not all the way. The story goes that da Vinci wanted her to smile wider, but she refused. She did not want the joy she felt for her new baby to erase the pain she felt from losing the first. There in her half smile is her half joy. Or maybe it’s her full joy and her full grief all at the same time. She has the look of a woman who has just realized a dream but still carries the lost dream inside her. She wanted her whole life to be present on her face. She wanted everyone to remember, so she wouldn’t pretend.”

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.

Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.

Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.

When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.