Dear world:
I am writing you today on behalf of all women to say...
We quit. This is your official, and only, notice. We're not offering you two weeks. Don't bother offering a raise. We're not interested in a promotion. The truth is, we've been in this position far too long. The promises are as plentiful as they are empty. The job is demotivating, heart-wrenching, soul-shriveling. We've worked at it long enough to realize, nothing here is going to change. So, we quit.
We quit trying to please you, to be who you want to see in front of you. There will be no more tip-toeing around your triggers and fantasies, squeezing ourselves into ever smaller sizes and spaces, breaking our backs and our hearts trying to appease your suffocated ego. Today, we resign from being pleasing to look at. Effective immediately, we will begin focusing on being pleasing in and to ourselves.
You may wish to reach for some personal protective equipment, because fat and f-bombs and fake fingernails are likely to take to the air. As our mothers and grandmothers burned their bras, we are shredding our Spanx. There will be no more shapewear, no more shape shifting, no more shaping up. We are shipping out. We're done with Botox and boob jobs, belly tucks and butt lifting jeans. We've had enough retouching, retexturing, and refraining to last a thousand life times. We don't want any more filters or fillers. Unless, of course, we choose those things for ourselves.
Choosing for ourselves, that's our new position. We're no longer in this world for you to look at, lust after, approve of. We're not here for your experience anymore. As of today, beginning in this very moment, we're seeking our own experience. We'll be showing up in what feels good; that applies to our outfits and our outlooks. When we arrive, it will be in our own time. And when we walk through the door, the celebration begins. From this moment forward, we're going to celebrate every single thing you've told us is unacceptable. We're inviting all of the scary feminine bits to our coming out ball: cellulite, wrinkles, gray hair, sagging breasts, soft bellies, wide hips, hairy vulvas, loud voices, high expectations.
We are resigning from playing quiet and demure, from our vapid exterior and the silence that reaches to our core. We've had quite enough of shame, guilt, and deprivation; we'll be having no more. We have ideas, needs, emotions, and values of our own, and we are sick to death of swallowing them. No more. We are turning the tables. For millennia we have been judged. Now we ascend to the bench.
We are offering you a performance evaluation. As leaders in this world, your conduct leaves much to be desired. Starvation, war, greed, poverty, slavery--you have solved none of these ills. We are no longer willing to stand by and watch you fan the fires, feed the beast, pour rain into the ocean. It's time that our ideas and values were scripted in this society. We've done it your way, and look where it's gotten us. We're leaving your organization, to form our own.
Our voices will ring loud and clear. We will point out hatred, injustice, and inequality. Not as we have been, with sentences that begin with "excuse me," or "I'm sorry, but..." The days of quiet frustration are over. We have entered a time of noisy, seething rage. We will no longer stand down, sit back, be quiet, or go along. From this day forward, we will lead with fierce compassion, unquestioned equality, thunderous love.
This untaming will require our time and energy, so we we are standing down from our centuries-long role of keeping hearth and home alone. Look behind the curtain tomorrow; you'll find no more Oz. The mystical force that has been keeping the laundry washed, the kitchen stocked, the family calendar clearly organized is leaving the building. What has been built on our backs will be allowed to crumble. What will rise will be built in community, or it will not be built at all. The magic we've been working behind the curtain, the work that keeps a family and a home functioning, moving forward with well-oiled grace? We still have it. But we'll be sharing it more judiciously from now on.
Silent sacrifice is our song no longer. We will not keep going so that you can rest; we will not lay down so that you can rise up; we will not suffer so that you may be excused from the agonizing side of life. We will rest when we are tired. We will allow things to go undone. We will feel our own feelings, and you will be left to do the same. We will care for our own bodies, honor our own needs and desires, tend to our own souls' expansion. If you don't yet know how to do these things for yourself, you are welcome to watch and learn.
We will continue to nourish this world, but not as we have been. Not with the fullness of our time, energy, concentration, and love. Instead, we will be offering this fullness first within, to ourselves. When we are full to overflowing, the world may come and drink from our excess. You may wish to gather rations. Until we are refilled, there may be a deep drought.
We cede the role of being everything to everyone while having no-thing experience of self. We are exhausted from keeping track of what you want while having no idea what it is that we want. We've had all that we can stand of meeting your needs while our own go unnoticed and unconsidered. We are ushering in the age of self-responsibility, and we'll be leading by example. We will be responsible for ourselves and you, at long last, will have to learn how to do the same.
This decision may seem deeply selfish, but it is, in fact, the greatest kindness we could pay you. The smothering, all-controlling, selfless role in which we have been cast is not just toxic to us. It is toxic to all. The world is living without our true gifts. You are living without your full responsibility. We are all crippled by this unfortunate arrangement. The job that we have had is keeping us all trapped, preventing anyone from moving up the spiritual ladder. It is only by destroying this erroneous arrangement that has been built around us that something more grand can be erected in its place. And so, from a place of deep and abiding love, We. Quit.
Sincerely,
WOMEN
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