BYE BYE Reader 👋 Mother Knows Best ❤️

You ever say something out loud at a social gathering that is SO completely you…and immediately realize someone in the room is not your people?

You know the look.

The lips purse.

The eyebrows go up.

They look for the exit.

Meanwhile, you're standing there thinking:

*What?*

*I thought it was funny.*

Well, this happened to me in one of my emails.

I think I got my first hater.

“Hater” might be a little dramatic.

But a woman emailed me after last week’s email to tell me she didn’t want to read “these types of emails” and asked me to take her off my list.

Not unsubscribe herself.

That would've been far too efficient.

She took the time to email me and ask me to remove her from....

"these types of emails"

🤣🤣🤣

Which made me wonder if she wanted to make sure I knew she didn’t like it.

YAY!!!!!!!

Now, last week’s email did contain the words “fuck” and “pussy.”

So there’s that.

But come on, people. We’re all of age here.

Still, for about 14 seconds, the old people-pleasing part of my brain showed up for work.

Was it too much?

Am I taking this new writing thing too far?

Should I tone it down?

(just kidding)

And then something interesting happened.

My mentor, Ash Ambirge, read the exact same email.

She wrote:

“I LOVED your email!!!!!!! Your email was fantastic!!!!”

Then she told me I have a human writing style, that it’s going to take me far, and said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:

“No one can take your stories. No AI can replace that.”

Well.

That felt pretty damn good.

But then I got another email.

From my mother.

Oh…SHIT!!!!!!.

Am I going to get a lecture on profanity and being a lady??????

Well, my 94-year-old mother wrote:

“What a wonderful job you did writing this email about your goals and life and wondering what comes next. You definitely should write more. You’re so talented.”

*phew*

Yes, I know.

She’s my mother.

There is a slight possibility of bias.

I could write the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle, and she'd probably tell me Vidal Sassoon better watch his ass.

But I sat there looking at these three reactions to the exact same piece of writing.

Professional writer:

Keep going.

94-year-old mother:

Keep going.

Woman on my email list:

For the love of God, make it stop.

And I realized something.

This might actually be progress.

Because when you try to write for everyone, you usually end up writing for no one.

You sand off every interesting edge until you're left with something perfectly acceptable.

And perfectly forgettable.

Slop.

And God knows the internet has enough slop.

We don't want to write like that.

And I don't think this is only about writing.

How much of our lives do we spend making tiny adjustments to ourselves because somebody might not approve?

The thing we don't say.

The opinion we soften.

The idea we don't pursue.

The person we make a little smaller because somebody else might think we're a little too much.

I've decided that's a colossal waste of time.

Especially after the year I've had.

Which brings me back to one of the words in last week's email:

Pussy.

You knew I wasn't going to leave that alone, right?

The book I'm writing is called Cancer Picked the Wrong Pussy.

I've had people laugh when I tell them the title.

I've had people gasp.

I've had people immediately say, “Oh my God, I want to read it”

And I'm sure some people won't pick up the book because that word is sitting right there on the cover (If I have anything to say about it, Penguin Random House)

That's okay.

Because I didn't choose it to make everyone comfortable.

I chose it because it means something to me.

In fact, I've been writing a section of the book about exactly why I chose that word.

So instead of explaining it here, I'm going to let you read a little piece of the book.

Consider this your first unofficial sneak peek.

-----------------------------

People get weird about the word pussy.

Some hear weakness.

Some hear insult.

Some clutch their pearls so hard you'd think I walked into St. Patrick's Church and asked if they would like me to do a book signing.

But let me explain something.

I'm not using the word pussy as an insult.

I'm using it as a challenge.

Because historically?

“Pussy” has been used to describe someone soft. Weak. Fragile. Emotional. Too delicate for battle.

Which is ironic, considering the pussy is literally built to push out human beings while men pass out giving blood.

So no.

This title isn't self-deprecating.

It's a warning.

Cancer picked the wrong pussy.

The wrong woman to underestimate.

The wrong body to try to break.

The wrong woman to hand a paper gown.

The wrong woman to tell, “Be strong,” like she hasn't been strong her whole damn life.

The wrong woman to test with pain.

The wrong woman to mistake tears for weakness.

The wrong woman to think softness means surrender.

The wrong woman to shove into waiting rooms, surgeries, radiation, medications, and endless uncertainty, expecting her spirit to quietly fold.

Because women like this become dangerous.

Not because they're fearless.

But because they keep going while terrified.

They learn how to laugh in the middle of hell.

How to survive humiliation.

How to function while falling apart.

How to rebuild themselves from ash, fear, darkness, and pure spite.

The wrong woman to count out.

The wrong woman to pity.

Because sometimes the women who look the softest are carrying a kind of strength nobody sees until they're forced to use it.

This book is for them.

The ones who got called “too emotional” right before surviving something that would flatten most people.

Honestly, the older I get, the more I think pussy might be one of the strongest words in the English language.

Soft and savage.

Tender and terrifying.

A damn contradiction with excellent intuition.

Cancer didn't pick something weak.

It picked something that bites back.

---------------------------------------------

Maybe that woman who emailed me last week got as far as the word pussy and thought:

Yeah. I'm out.

Fair enough.

She gets to choose what she wants in her inbox.

And I get to choose what I want to put in mine.

Actually, that's not quite right.

I get to choose what I want to put in yours.

You get to decide whether you stay.

That's the deal, isn't it?

Not everybody is going to like your writing.

Your business.

Your opinions.

Your sense of humor.

Your book title.

Or you.

And maybe the goal was never to convince them to.

Maybe the goal is to become more yourself, not less, so the right people recognize you when they find you.

Ash said something else in her note that I keep coming back to:

“No one can take your stories.”

She's right.

Nobody else has lived them.

And apparently, not everybody wants to read them.

That's okay too.

Because there are worse things than losing a reader.

Like losing your voice trying to keep one.