12 Rules for Life, Lady Version

Almost exactly a year ago, I began publishing essays to a website that I created called White Girl’s Burden. It was the culmination of a long, drawn-out process of ‘coming out’ as a writer. Being a writer is something that over the course of my life I have devoted a substantial amount of energy and capital trying to avoid. So I am both proud and surprised to find myself here, a year later. At the starting line.

Thanks mostly to two friends — one old, one new — I finally overcame my self-imposed blockade last summer and started publicly sharing my essays. This was the first of them. Inspired by Jordan Peterson, who also said (according to a meme shared on Facebook, anyway): when you have something to say, silence is a lie.

How to Not F*@k Yourself Up: 12 Rules for Life, Lady Version

1. Have children. And when you have them,  don’t teach them to be good. Teach them to respect themselves and others. Don’t teach them to be kind. Teach them to be competent. And then leave them the hell alone. They can figure the rest out by themselves — goodness and kindness flow naturally from a well-ordered, mature mind.

2. Let your boys be boys. Let them break things, let them play with toy guns, let them keep their natural defiance AND their natural tenderness (they need both). But make sure there is a grown man in the family to discipline them.

3. Let your girls be girls. Let them play with dolls or play in the dirt. Be gentle with the fierce female spirit that is within each and every one of them, but don’t let it rule the roost.

4. Don’t teach your daughters they can fight like a man. — they can’t. Teach them to withstand emotional warfare. They will encounter it.

5. Don’t judge your man by his opinions or tastes. Judge him by his actions and his abilities. 

6. Have you done something that has tangibly and directly harmed another person? If so, apologise, make it right, move on. If not — do NOT feel guilty. For anything.

7. The world is full of problems, only try to solve your own.

8. Do not fill your own emotional void with drama that does not belong to you.

9. If you do have children, do it for its own sake. Not to make the world a better place, or to be Insta famous.

10. Stop worrying. Right now. Just stop. 

11. Let your man lead and win. Admit that sometimes he knows better than you do. And if he doesn’t sometimes know better than you, dump him.

12. Learn to live without the approval of your peers, and be alone if necessary.