I’m Not Well-Behaved

Well-behaved women rarely make history. – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I love that.

A bumper sticker with these words is tacked on to my bulletin board at work. It keeps me going when complicated questions are asked and when the seeker isn’t willing to talk about living in the grey. If there’s one thing I wish for the world is a larger capacity to sit with the grey. Things are not black and white. Life is far from neat. Stop going for straight and accept the dashed, crooked, incomplete, and faded lines that we must live with.

This week, my goal was to be able to deal with not being liked. My words are misquoted, colleagues are miffed by my answers, and I refuse to form alliances simply based on gender. Equality must first begin as a wake-up call.

We’re still waking people up.