Sarah Flourance

I gave up nice a long time ago. Nice did me no good as a woman. Niceness is a lie they teach you to keep you sweet and compliant while you’re screaming inside. You know what I picked instead? Kindness. I chose to be kind. Kind means I respect your boundaries and you respect mine.

When we speak about abuse and we don’t use names and we don’t give clues, there is a reason for that. Do not DARE question our choices to tell our stories and to use anonymity and discretion to protect ourselves and the people we love. We do not owe it to you to name names. We do not owe it to you to be the heroine. We are not cartoon characters. We are not fairy tale princesses. We are not imagined fearless, flawless brave warrior women sent from on high to do battle with dragons while you sit from afar and say, “Yeah girl, get it!”

Women get endless requests for help and assistance in various ways at various times. Everybody in the world thinks they have the right to our time, our money, our emotional labor, our business contacts, the works. This is true whether you are A Gal Of Note On The TeeVee or A Gal Who Is Awesome And Definitely Of Note With Zero Interest In Having Her Name In the Newspapah. We can field those requests with grace if we wish. Or we can ignore them. That does not make us rude. That does not make us ungenerous. That does not make us bad people.