Fierce Girls of Mine,
Recently, I was in Costco when a man accidentally ran into me while I was standing in the frozen foods section. In fact, he hit me with such force that I fell against the freezer case. Do you know what I said to him when I finally regained my balance? I said, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry?! For what? For existing and buying frozen chicken? For standing upright? For letting the laws of physics affect my torso? To make matters worse, he didn’t apologize but instead rudely instructed me to “pay better attention” before walking away in an embarrassed huff. I then spent the next hour coming up with awesome retorts that I never gave. “Hey, I hear they are selling manners in bulk on aisle five. Go get some!” Mind you, this sounded better and cooler in my head than it does in black and white.
Once my anger over his affront simmered down, I realized that the person I was most angry at was me. My failure to stick up for myself in the moment was all too familiar. I couldn’t reconcile my inappropriate apology with my strong desire to be assertive. In any case, there I was in Costco looking forlornly at my three giant bottles of agave nectar thinking, “Amy – 0, Stupid Mansplainer – 1.” Why did I not turn around and say something like, “Oh no! Pardon you?” 1
The explanation for my passivity eventually came. In fact, it hit me like a bolt of lightning as I was reading a brilliant book about how to raise teenage girls (a subject in which I have an urgent interest at the moment). The author’s words rang so true. She wrote, “[A]s a culture, we do a terrible job of helping girls figure out what to do when they are mad. As far as girls know, they can either be a total doormat — think Cinderella — or a flat-out cruel like Cinderella’s stepsisters. We rarely help girls master assertion — the art of standing up for oneself while respecting the rights of others….Adult women struggle with how to stand up for themselves without being called ‘pushy,’ ‘bossy,’ or worse.” 2
Yes! This is so! I see it in myself and in my friends. I see it in my sister and in my mother. I see it in you girls. We get angry and then we feel lost because a big, hairy question arises: how can we be “good” and also be angry? Many of us never understood that this is a “both/and” proposition instead of an “either/or” dilemma. Therefore, we neglect to present our whole selves to the world. I’m still trying to overcome this hangup but I’m clear on this: I desperately want you girls to know how to be assertive. Here is my attempt to share everything I know about it at this point in my life.
First and most importantly, to be assertive, you have to be clear with yourself that your feelings are not the leaders in your life. The human heart resists all our efforts to chain it down and make it feel the things it ought to feel. In fact, the Bible says that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.”3 You may have noticed that your feelings just pop up without warning any ol’ time like uninvited houseguests with hygiene problems. This doesn’t mean you should ignore your feelings altogether. Your feelings should be considered because they help you understand what you need. However, they shouldn’t make your decisions for you. Once you separate the way you feel about a situation from the way you will act upon it, you are freed to feel everything without guilt. In addition, you are freed to act from principle and purpose, two weapons that command respect when you are trying to be assertive in a difficult situation. 4
Second, if at all possible, try to push back against an aggressor at the time of the event. When confronted with bad behavior from others, we girls love to deny that we are angry with a quick, terse, “I’m fine.” Sometimes we even convince ourselves that we aren’t mad when we really are. I occasionally lie to myself with phrases like, “I’m not mad at her. I am just…frustrated.” Then, I let anger build to volcano-like proportions before I finally blow up at my nemesis over something trivial. At that point, I look like a fool because my reaction was a ten while the situation was a three. After repeated mistakes on this front, I’ve learned that when someone hurts you, it is often best to immediately say something factual like, “That is not OK” or “That makes me mad” even if it causes some awkwardness. With those brief statements, you are resisting aggression in a proportional way and, more often than not, the bad behavior stops without an epic battle.
Third, to the best of your ability, stay calm. Calm people can problem solve with Darth Vader himself if they need to. Irate people can only hear the sound of their own voice and, therefore, often lose the real battle. When I am trying to work on something with a person who has gotten my goat, I often remember Ephesians 6:12. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the powers of this dark world.” That creepy language can be off-putting, I know. What it really means, however, is that when you are fighting someone, you are not really fighting them as a person. You’re fighting what has gotten crooked and dark in their soul. If you take a good look at yourself, you’ll find that you’ve also got places that are crooked and dark. This exercise will help you see that you and the person who made you angry have a common enemy — everything inside you and everything inside them that has gone wrong. It will enable you to focus on how to solve the problem instead of how to destroy your sparring partner. This is a much more attainable goal and one that doesn’t leave you up at night wondering who you’ve become and how you got there. Trust me when I say that those nights are the worst (despite the constant availability of I Love Lucy reruns).
In sum, if I could go back and tell my little girl self one thing it would be this: Put the full strength of your spirit out into the world no matter what the cost. If you do so, you’ll find that being known and respected is even better than being liked. You’ll also find that you can be both assertive and good. When you speak up, the bullies won’t like it and they’ll scream back louder than you’d hoped. No need to flinch. Just remember that you have no obligation to let people trample you under their feet. During a confrontation, “goodness” can look like a steely-eyed girl who says without hesitation, “Not today, sir. Not today.”
- I must give credit for this much more appropriate response to my Facebook friends who came up with awesome suggestions on how to deal with public rudeness.
- Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, (New York, Ballantine, 2016), 55.
- Jeremiah 17:9 NIV
- Parents, the Untangled book has a genius discussion of parenting your way through this dilemma if you want to learn more.
Chuck Barnes says
Right on Amy! Right on. Lovely clear distinctions just made. Proud of you ….
Jenny McDonnell says
I needed this today. I am quite glad that I am so behind in my reading, as this is when I needed to hear your words. People can be so disrespectful and hurtful, even when we are adults. Sadly, it doesn’t go away when we grow up. Thanks for your motivational advice.