Why I Stopped Asking for Permission

A family member once told me the article I wrote on perimenopause was “stupid.”
>> They said it shouldn’t be shared.
>> That it was embarrassing.
>> That it made people uncomfortable.

That wasn’t feedback.
It was * possession.*
A thinly veiled way of saying: Your body is inconvenient. Your voice is optional. Your timing is wrong.

The truth is this:
I didn’t write about perimenopause to be agreeable.
I wrote because silence comes at a cost we cannot afford.

When women’s bodies are a punchline, their pain is a footnote, and their wisdom is dismissed, something bigger breaks in culture. Something structural. Something that insists women be small, tidy, and quietable.

I realized I wasn’t being told to stop writing — I was being told to stop existing fully in the world.
To shrink.
To apologize.
To pause ambition while I attended to expectation.

But this world doesn’t pause for women.

You bear the children.
You keep the emotional books.
You hold the labor that never gets credited.
And then you step into the room where decisions are made.

As Beyoncé reminds us in “Run the World (Girls),”

“Strong enough to bear the children, then get back to business.”

That line isn’t about pop glamour.
It’s a declaration of impossibility and possibility at the same time:
You can do both.
You must, because the world needs you.
Not silent. Not moderate. Not half-tuned.

This magazine exists in that breach: between body and ambition, vulnerability and agency, personal truth and cultural narrative.

I didn’t get louder because I wanted attention.
I got louder because silence became unbearable.

If you’ve ever been told your story is too much, too emotional, too personal, too loud, or too unladylike - this is for you.

Let’s get loud.