Earning your place, or the invisible and public work of women

I've been thinking about what right I have to write about anything, to spend time here rather than picking up toys or sleeping next to my sons or applying to some sort of graduate school program or sending out resumes, etc. Someone else is more eloquent or insightful or intelligent or experienced or fascinating.

This self-doubt is so commonplace, especially among women. I think we're raised and socialized to listen, to relate. Speaking out, just owning your voice feels transgressive. Someone has to be the bearers and soothers of children, to attend to the essential quotidian cares and home spheres. This requires a singular focus, unless you're exceptional. Then you lean in and try to have it all. To simply be a woman with something to say is not enough.

I tire of the necessary bravery and strength, of demanding the right to occupy this space, of constantly calibrating myself in a world that doesn't recognize how much weight women and other caregivers bear in holding up the frame for our society. We don't have to earn any place or prove our worth. It's not actually possible.

We were given life, and we may do with it what we like. And life is far more capacious than we've been led to believe. You can listen AND write. You can be a safe haven AND be intrepid. You can hold someone's hand and heart AND your own at the same time.