Let Your Inner Boss Bitch Fucking Breathe

“You have an inner boss bitch inside you, and you need to let her fucking breathe.” I said that to my sister today, and the second it came out of my mouth, I knew there was an article hiding in it. I have spoken with hundreds of women over the years who spent decades being somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s caretaker, and somebody’s eAverything, only to wake up one day and realize they have no fucking clue who they are when nobody needs dinner at six.

I’m talking specifically about women who became homemakers and built their lives around their husbands and children. They raised babies, cooked meals, cleaned houses, managed schedules, remembered birthdays, handled appointments, stretched budgets, organized holidays, settled arguments, supported careers, attended school functions, kept track of everybody’s shit, and somehow became the person everybody depended on while continuously putting themselves on the back burner. Their work was real. Their contribution was real. Their responsibility was enormous. It simply happened inside a home instead of an office building.

Then the marriage ends. Sometimes he leaves. Sometimes she finally leaves. Sometimes he finds a younger model and suddenly decides the woman who spent decades helping him build his life is replaceable. However it happens, she can suddenly find herself standing in the middle of a life she helped create without knowing what belongs to her anymore. She spent years knowing exactly what needed to happen every morning, who needed to be where, what needed to be bought, what needed to be cooked, which kid had practice, when the bills were due, and what everybody expected from her. Her identity became attached to responsibilities, and then those responsibilities changed.

Now somebody asks her, “What do you want?” What the fuck kind of question is that when you haven’t seriously asked yourself what you wanted in twenty years? Some women discover they don’t know what music they like anymore. They don’t know what they enjoy doing alone. They don’t know what they would study, where they would travel, what kind of work they would enjoy, or what they would do with an entire Saturday that belonged only to them. They became incredibly skilled at knowing everybody else and completely unfamiliar with themselves.

Some women get stuck there for years. They replay what happened until the story becomes their new identity. They become consumed by resentment, drink too much, judge everybody around them, or spend every conversation talking about the asshole who ruined their life fifteen years ago. Their children eventually stop wanting to hear it. Their friends get exhausted by it. Their entire existence starts orbiting the person they supposedly want to be free from. I know that sounds harsh, but continuously talking about somebody who hurt you gives that person an incredible amount of space in a life they no longer deserve to occupy.

You can acknowledge what somebody did to you. You can be furious about it. You can grieve the marriage, the years, the sacrifices, the betrayal, and the future you thought you were building. You can cry, scream, talk about it, go to therapy, write about it, and process every ugly piece of it. You can also fill out an application while you’re pissed. Processing what happened and building what comes next can happen during the same damn chapter.

Before anybody wonders what qualifies me to tell another woman how to rebuild her life, let me make something very clear: I am one of those women. I came to America and had to learn a new language, a new culture, and an entirely different way of navigating life. I dealt with ridicule and racism while trying to understand a country everybody around me already seemed to know how to navigate. Things other people took for granted required conscious effort from me because I was learning how everything worked while simultaneously trying to build a life.

I also lived inside a religious cult and eventually had to deconstruct beliefs I had been taught about God, women, marriage, obedience, morality, family, and who I was supposed to be. When somebody has handed you the rules for your entire life, throwing away the rulebook leaves you with a shitload of questions. You suddenly have to decide what you believe, what you value, what belongs to you, and which parts of your identity were handed to you by somebody else.

Then I had to figure out how to survive in America without the support of the man who brought me here and begged me to stay so he could see his children, while supplying very little of what I actually needed to build a life here. I had children to raise. Bills still showed up. Food still cost money. Life kept moving whether I felt prepared for it or not. Nobody arrived with instructions explaining how to rebuild an entire life when the original plan falls apart.

So I figured shit out. I worked, learned, made mistakes, took opportunities, changed directions, developed skills, gained experience, and kept moving. Some decisions worked beautifully. Some taught me exactly what I never wanted to do again. Some opportunities were stepping stones. Some became entire chapters of my life. I learned how to function in a country that once felt foreign to me and eventually built a life that belonged to me. I made it, and I know exactly how much work went into getting here.

So yes, I am entitled to give advice on this subject. I know what it feels like to look around and realize the life you thought you were going to have is gone. I know what it feels like to carry responsibilities while having no clear road in front of you. I know what it feels like to enter spaces where everybody seems to know what they’re doing while you’re quietly trying to figure out the rules. I also know you can learn the damn rules.

You start where you are, and sometimes where you are is going to hurt your pride. Imagine you haven’t worked outside the home in twenty years because you raised children and managed a household. Now you need a job. You know you are intelligent. You know you can handle responsibility. You have managed an entire household for decades. You know damn well you are worth more than twelve dollars an hour, and then you look at your résumé.

On paper, you are 16. Think about that before getting offended. A sixteen-year-old can be intelligent, capable, responsible, creative, resourceful, and hardworking. An employer still wants evidence that the kid can show up, learn the job, handle responsibility, work with other people, and keep doing it. Intelligence and ability exist long before a résumé can prove either one.

The same thing can happen when you return to the workforce after decades away. Your résumé doesn’t show the thousands of meals you planned, household budgets you managed, emergencies you handled, children you raised, appointments you coordinated, problems you solved, schedules you maintained, or years you spent keeping everybody else functioning. It sees an employment gap. The person reading that piece of paper has no idea what you are capable of yet.

Give them receipts. Take the twelve-dollar-an-hour job if that is the door currently available and you need the opportunity. Learn something. Build a reference. Get experience on paper. Show up. Learn the technology. Ask questions. Take the class. Apply somewhere else when you have more evidence behind you. Your first job after twenty years at home does not have to become your career. It can simply become the first new line on your résumé.

Are you worth more? Absolutely. You already know that. Your sister probably knows it. Your children probably know it. Your friends might know it. The woman sitting in Human Resources looking at a résumé with a twenty-year employment gap doesn’t know shit about you. Give her something she can see.

And for God’s sake, start saying yes. If you have never watched Yes Man with Jim Carrey, watch it. Please use common sense while applying the idea because I am obviously not suggesting anybody say yes to something dangerous, illegal, reckless, or likely to get their ass killed. I’m talking about the little opportunities people automatically reject because they feel unfamiliar, inconvenient, intimidating, or slightly outside the life they have known.

Go have coffee with somebody. Go to the event. Take the class. Apply for the job. Learn the software. Go somewhere by yourself. Talk to somebody you normally wouldn’t talk to. Try the hobby. Accept the invitation. Let somebody help you. Sometimes you have to do something you don’t particularly want to do to open a door to something you desperately want. You have no idea which conversation introduces you to somebody who changes your career, which starter job teaches you the skill that gets you the next one, or which random class introduces you to something you’re ridiculously good at.

You have spent enough years knowing exactly what tomorrow looks like. Go find out what else exists. You are allowed to experiment with your own life. You can try something and discover you hate it. You can change your mind. You can take a job and leave it for a better one. You can learn something at fifty, sixty, or seventy that you never imagined learning at thirty. Nobody gets to declare your discovery phase finished because you reached a certain birthday.

And yes, I’m going to say this with my full chest: fuck patriarchy. For generations, women were sold a deal. Get married, have children, take care of your husband, stay home, raise the family, be godly, be loyal, be supportive, keep everybody together, and you will have a good life. Then marriages ended, and society somehow decided that the twenty or thirty years she spent doing unpaid labor counted as almost nothing when it was time for her to support herself.

Excuse the fuck out of me? If a man marries a woman, has children with her, and their family structure requires or expects her to stay home while he builds a career, her labor contributed to his ability to build that career. She spent years outside the paid workforce while he accumulated experience, promotions, professional connections, retirement contributions, Social Security credits, credentials, and earning power. Meanwhile, she was performing the labor required to keep their household and children functioning.

That work had value when everybody needed it, and divorce does not magically erase that value. A woman should not spend decades performing unpaid family labor and then be treated like she simply forgot to develop a career. A man who benefited from an arrangement where his wife sacrificed her own earning potential to raise their shared children and maintain their shared household has a responsibility to acknowledge what her labor made possible.

I’ll go even further. Starting over after dedicating your adult life to a family that can easily dismiss you after a job well done has become far too normal. Society celebrates the devoted mother while she is useful and then lectures her about independence when the marriage falls apart. I have a serious problem with that arrangement, and I’m perfectly comfortable saying so.

Unfortunately, arguing about what society should do doesn’t pay your electric bill tomorrow, and this is where the boss bitch has to come out. Woman, you are where you are. Take your time, but move. Accept help. Say yes. Learn. Ask questions. Be the oldest beginner in the room if necessary. Take the little job and build from it. Change your mind when something doesn’t fit. Try something else. Make your own money. Meet people. Discover what you like. Figure out what makes you curious. Find out who you are when nobody else gets to write the job description.

You might discover that you hate things you spent decades doing. You might discover talents nobody ever asked you to use. You might discover you are ambitious as hell. You might want to travel. You might want to build a business. You might want to go back to school. You might want a quiet apartment, a garden, three cats, and absolutely nobody asking you what’s for dinner. You won’t know until you start giving yourself permission to find out.

Starting small does not make you small. Taking a starter job doesn’t determine your worth. Asking for help doesn’t erase your intelligence. Learning something at fifty doesn’t mean you missed your chance. Being inexperienced in one area doesn’t erase decades of experience in another. You are learning how to use what you already know inside a life that finally requires you to think about yourself.

There is probably a version of you that never got the chance to exist because everybody needed something. Maybe she is creative. Maybe she is loud. Maybe she loves business. Maybe she wants to dance. Maybe she wants to write. Maybe she wants to spend Sunday morning drinking coffee in complete silence. Maybe she wants to date. Maybe she never wants another man living in her damn house. You get to find out.

You spent decades learning how to take care of everybody else. You learned how to stretch money, solve problems, handle emergencies, improvise, negotiate, organize, comfort, teach, manage, and keep shit moving when everybody else was falling apart. Those skills belong to you. Take everything you learned while building everybody else’s life and start using some of it to build your own.

You already know how to build a life. This time, you get to find out what happens when the woman you’re building it for is you. You have an inner boss bitch inside you, and she has been waiting long enough. Let her fucking breathe.

— Ocean~Spirithealer

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