The price of feeling free to be your entire self is people judging you. Extra judgment if you are a woman or hold any marginalized identity. Heaps of judgment if your choices are counter cultural in any way!!! That really freaks people out, bless them.

It’s important to name that you may always care to varying degrees about what some people think. We are communal creatures and how other people feel about us can impact our sense of belonging in a very real way. There may also be certain areas of your life that you feel more free of judgment in or feel more apt to handle that and let it roll off versus a different aspect of yourself or your life. That is all normal.

I am not a cool girl. I am not chill. I am not down to Earth. I do not go with the flow, I’m not up for whatever and you will almost never hear me say, “I don’t care, whatever you want is fine by me.” I have strong opinions, personal preferences, wants, needs, desires and my own ideas about most things. A man in my grad school program described me as “strong willed” when I repeatedly pushed back on his problematic viewpoint in class