It's Not Healthy to Suppress Your Wanting to Feign Gratitude

You can be grateful and dissatisfied at the same time.

You will not really feel free until you stop making your desires make sense to everyone.  A woman becomes uncommonly empowered when she stops explaining herself.

She wants to move somewhere she's never lived. She wants to change careers after spending twenty years becoming very good at the one she has. She wants a beautiful house, or a smaller house, or no house at all. She wants to spend more time alone. She wants to fall in love again. She wants to learn Italian, buy an outrageous coat, grow roses, write a book, or spend six months doing absolutely nothing impressive.

And almost immediately, the negotiations begin.

Is it practical? Is it responsible? What will people think? What about the money? What about everything you've already invested? What if you change your mind?

Some of those are perfectly reasonable questions. A grown woman understands that choices have consequences.

But notice how quickly a desire can be dragged into a courtroom and required to defend its existence.

We have become remarkably comfortable asking women to explain what they want.

And women have become remarkably skilled at producing explanations.

I want to suggest that wanting something is already information worth having.

It may not be an instruction. You don't have to act on every desire. Some desires are fleeting, some are contradictory, and some would create consequences you aren't willing to accept.

But they tell you something about the person you are, the life you're living, and the possibilities you can still imagine.

A desire can be inconvenient without being foolish.

It can be impractical without being meaningless.

It can contradict everything you thought you wanted five years ago and still deserve your attention.

There is a difference between making a considered decision not to pursue something and training yourself not to want it in the first place.

I think a great many women have become so accomplished at the second that they mistake it for maturity.

You can be responsible and still be hungry for something extraordinary.

You can love the life you've built and still want parts of it to change.

You can be grateful and dissatisfied at the same time.

You are allowed to be a woman whose desires continue to evolve. And you are allowed to find out where they lead.