Clarity Isn’t Aggression
Last week at a PTSA meeting, I said: “I’m just going to be the asshole here.”
It wasn’t a blow-up. It was a warning.
We had been talking about the same thing for months. Circling it. Adding nuance. Refining language. Making it more and more complex. And nothing was actually happening.
I could feel it in my body before I said anything: that tight, forward-leaning sensation when a room is pretending it’s moving but it’s not.
So I interrupted. “We’ve been talking about this for months and nothing’s changed. What’s going to be different this time?”
Silence.
Someone tried to pivot to another agenda item. My kids were climbing on me. I kept going until it got clear.
And afterward, my body started shaking. That’s not panic. It’s discharge. It’s what happens when I hold heat in a room instead of smoothing it over.
There’s still a part of me that thinks I won’t belong when I do that.
That I’m too much.
Too direct.
Too disruptive.
That part is old. It was trained into me. Trained into most of us.
Be collaborative.
Be nice.
Don’t destabilize the structure.
Even when the structure isn’t working.
But here’s what happened.
People were relieved.
They thanked me.
They said they’d been waiting for someone to say it.
And I thought: of course.
This isn’t about PTA.
This is about how rooms operate.
I see this everywhere in corporate environments. High-capacity women managing the temperature of the room. Softening what they really want to say. Reframing other people’s half-formed thoughts so no one feels uncomfortable.
Overfunctioning is rewarded. Especially in women.
We get good at anticipating needs.
We get good at diffusing tension.
We get good at carrying what isn’t ours.
And then we call that leadership.
But the cost shows up in the body.
Tight jaw.
Shallow breath.
Chronic vigilance.
Resentment you can’t quite name.
You start abandoning yourself in small, polite ways.
You see the pattern.
You don’t say it.
You wait.
You manage.
Meanwhile, nothing changes.
Right now, the world is shifting fast. Systems are straining. Corporate structures are tightening and cracking at the same time. Women are being asked to hold more: more output, more emotional intelligence, more containment.
We cannot keep managing rooms while the ground is moving.
Clarity is not aggression.
Interrupting a loop is not dominance.
Accountability is not cruelty.
But it does require nervous system capacity. It requires being able to feel the spike of discomfort and not backpedal. Not soften. Not apologize for existing in full dimension.
This is how I work.
I interrupt patterns.
I name what’s happening underneath the conversation.
I hold the discomfort long enough for something real to move.
Not because I like conflict. I don’t.
But because circling is expensive. And overfunctioning is unsustainable.
If you’ve been called “too much.”
If you’ve learned to tone yourself down to stay included.
If you’re exhausted from managing rooms that won’t move.