Burn Your Crocs

There is a memory from my childhood that has stayed with me for years.

My mother had gotten her hair done.

That alone made the occasion memorable because she didn’t get her hair professionally done very often. Most of the time, I remember her wearing French braids or wigs. But this time, she had done something different.

And she looked beautiful.

I remember looking at her and thinking just how pretty she looked. There was something about seeing her differently that made me notice her, not simply as my mother, but as a woman.

At some point, we started talking about hair color. She saw a particular color that she really liked, and because I thought it would look beautiful on her, I said something simple:

“You should dye your hair that color.”

Her response surprised me.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think your father would like it.”

I don’t remember what happened immediately after that.

But I remember what I thought.

Why wouldn’t you do something that makes you happy because your husband might not like it?

I didn’t have the language for autonomy, self-concept, conditioning, or self-abandonment then.

I just knew something about it bothered me.

Sometimes the Lesson Isn’t Spoken

We tend to think about the lessons our mothers teach us as things they deliberately sit us down and explain.

But daughters are always watching.

Sometimes the most powerful lessons about womanhood aren’t spoken at all.

We watch what our mothers wear.

We watch what they tolerate.

We watch what they apologize for.

We watch what they dream about.

We watch whether they spend money on themselves without guilt.

We watch whether they make themselves smaller to keep other people comfortable.

And we notice whose opinion enters the room when they make decisions about their own lives.

My father wasn’t standing there telling my mother not to dye her hair.

He didn’t have to be.

His preference was already present in the decision.

And that distinction matters.

Consideration Is Not the Same as Permission

There is nothing inherently wrong with caring about what your partner likes.

Partnership requires consideration.

You might wear a perfume because your husband loves it. He might grow his beard because you think he looks handsome with it. You might choose the dress you know makes his eyes light up.

There can be something incredibly intimate about knowing what your partner enjoys and occasionally choosing it because bringing them pleasure also brings you pleasure.

But consideration and permission are not the same thing.

There is a difference between:

“My husband loves my dark hair, and sometimes I enjoy wearing it that way for him.”

and

“I would love to dye my hair, but I don’t think my husband would like it.”

The first is a choice.

The second can become a boundary around the self.

And when enough of those tiny boundaries accumulate, a woman can wake up one day and realize she doesn’t actually know what she likes anymore.

The Quiet Ways Women Abandon Themselves

Self-abandonment isn’t always dramatic.

Sometimes it looks like hair.

Sometimes it’s the dress you put back.

The hobby you never pursued.

The trip you didn’t take.

The opinion you swallowed.

The career you convinced yourself wasn’t practical.

The version of yourself you keep postponing because somebody else might be uncomfortable meeting her.

And sometimes nobody explicitly asks you to make these sacrifices.

You simply learn to anticipate what will keep everyone comfortable.

That is what makes it so difficult to recognize.

You can call it compromise.

You can call it being a good wife.

You can call it keeping the peace.

You can even call it love.

But there comes a point when every woman has to ask herself:

How much of me am I negotiating away?

Receptivity Is Not Submission to Someone Else’s Preferences

I think this distinction is especially important in conversations about feminine energy.

Femininity is often discussed as receptivity, softness, creativity, sensuality, intuition, nurturing, and openness.

I believe there is tremendous power in those qualities.

But receptivity does not mean erasure.

Softness does not require powerlessness.

Being loved does not require becoming endlessly agreeable.

And partnership should not require a woman to hand another person authorship over her identity.

There is nothing particularly feminine about disappearing.

A woman can receive love without surrendering herself to it.

She can consider her partner without organizing her entire identity around his preferences.

She can be soft and still have boundaries.

She can be receptive and still say no.

She can love someone deeply and still change her hair.

What Daughters Learn From Their Mothers

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that daughters don’t only inherit what their mothers teach them.

Sometimes we inherit the self-doubt.

Sometimes we inherit the fear.

Sometimes we look at the women who raised us and think:

I understand why you became this woman. But I want to make a different choice.

That isn’t necessarily rejection.

It can actually be compassion.

Our mothers existed inside their own cultural expectations, marriages, financial realities, religious beliefs, family structures, fears, and ideas about what being a “good woman” required.

We don’t have to judge them to learn from them.

Sometimes a mother teaches her daughter freedom precisely because the daughter witnesses the places where her mother didn’t feel free.

And perhaps that tiny conversation about hair stayed with me because some part of me made a decision that day.

I didn’t know exactly what kind of woman I would become.

But I knew I wanted to remain recognizable to myself.

I Belong to Myself

Love should expand you.

Partnership should introduce another person into your life without requiring you to evict yourself from it.

There will naturally be compromises. There will be moments when your partner’s needs matter more than your preferences, just as there should be moments when yours matter more than theirs.

But underneath all of that should remain something sacred:

Your relationship with yourself.

Your body.

Your creativity.

Your curiosity.

Your preferences.

Your evolution.

Your right to meet new versions of yourself.

Maybe you’ll dye your hair and hate it.

Maybe you’ll love it.

Maybe you’ll eventually decide that your original color suited you better.

But there is something beautiful about knowing the decision belonged to you.

Because perhaps one of the greatest lessons a woman can learn is that loving someone doesn’t require handing them ownership of herself.

You can belong with someone.

You can build with someone.

You can love someone.

You can receive from someone.

You can consider someone.

And still be able to look into the mirror and say:

I belong to myself.