Sometimes a run, sometimes a crawl

A few weeks ago my manicurist said to me, “I can’t imagine you getting angry.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

When I had my last day job, at a big multi-national PR agency serving a big multi-national client, there was almost never a moment when I was NOT angry. I wrote a whole essay about those years: Leaving the Bitch Behind.

Before the wonderful Multiplicity Magazine published that essay, I posted a draft excerpt of the beginning of that essay in my October 2019 newsletter/blog. Three years later, though, it’s not how I became a bitch that’s on my mind, it’s how it feels not to be one. Here is the end of the published essay:

Even though I peeled away my armor, my fiery core is still part of me. It gives me the courage to write, to tell vulnerable truths, to embrace the revived parts of myself.

I haven’t launched a world-changing technology or headed a global team in years, but the pure and peaceful satisfaction I feel now is sweeter than every masterful but miserable triumph that came before. When I found the strength to unbraid power, ambition, and anger everything became so clear.

I don’t need the bitch anymore. Perhaps I never did.

Our (almost?) post-pandemic world requires so much of us – stamina, resilience, sheer determination to cling to hope. I’m glad that I still have that fiery energy inside of me. I’m using it to create the capacity to pitch my first novel to literary agents. I never thought I’d need this much courage this badly, but I do. We all do.

As always, I’d love to hear from you via Instagram at lisa_poulson_writer.