The Power of "No"
As a child, I was raised to be respectful and polite, as most of us are, and with that came the unintentional training to always give an excuse when saying no to something I didn't want or couldn't do. The practice was aimed, I'm sure, to cultivate social politeness, but nearly always came with guilt. Guilt for upsetting someone, guilt for disappointing someone, guilt for not being what someone expected. In doing so, I learned to skirt around saying no for anything that I didn't want to do. "Would you like some of your aunt's fruit salad (that tastes like feet)?" I'm full, thanks. "Can you spend the night at my house (with a stepfather that makes my skin crawl)" I can't, I'm sick. What started off as polite ways to say no, very quickly turned into feeling like I couldn't say no at all. "Want a beer?" (Eww gross) Umm sure.. "Let's watch Saw!" I can't handle watching something like that--it's going to give me nightmares... yea ok!
As I got older, I very quickly began to understand the repercussions of my inability to say no. I rarely told my friends or family members no to things I didn't want to do, or didn't feel comfortable doing--but didn't want to disappoint them so I did them anyway. If I did say no, it was always with an excuse. Sometimes legitimate, which always gave me a sense of relief, but mostly it was completely made up.
In time, I began to feel overwhelmed with anxiety by even the thought of saying no to something. Even silly things like, "Do you want some pomegranate juice" No I'm allergic. I'm definitely not allergic, I just didn't like it, or rather--didn't think I'd like it. The practice of always having an excuse came, no doubt, from my loving parents who never wanted me to feel the repercussions of facing conflict. I don't hold this against them, they were most certainly raised with similar intentions and tactics to avoid saying no. But as I became an adult, got married, and began my own life, I started to realize that saying no was really just easier than all the runaround of giving an excuse or avoiding. It didn't happen overnight, but slowly, and with a lot of reminding from my husband and best friend, I began to just start saying no. At first, I would give an honest justification for it. Do you want to go out tonight? No, I'm actually pretty tired, I'm just going to stay home. This revelation blew my mind. My friends and the people around me more often than not, genuinely understood. "Yea I get that, I was really tired last week. Rest up!" It was glorious. It was an incredible concept to be able to say no and be supported by it.
The next chapter of life was filled with the word no: parenthood. At first, there's not a lot of no action with a non-speaking newborn who doesn't understand anything but milk, poop, and sleep. But soon enough, no, is the word you say the most. No touching! No hitting! No throwing food! No pinching the dog! There are so many no's, you forget that you really aren't trained in using the word effectively. You're faced with endless decisions in a day about how to care for your child, and everyone has an opinion. You're overwhelmed by it all and trying to absorb all the information to make a good decision for your child. Meanwhile, you haven't slept in what seems like (or might actually be) 10 years, you've dropped everything that doesn't involve your child, and you're trying to maintain a healthy marriage (or not) in the process. How can you say no to the well-intentioned grandparents who buy the 100th stuffed animal that you don't have room for and somehow have to store so they don't get upset at you for throwing it out? How do you tell the doctor that you disagree with their plan to treat your child's recurrent ear infections with antibiotics? How do you tell your partner that you're not up for sex, even though you know it's been a while? I'll tell you what most of us end up doing. We don't. We don't say no, we just deal with the repercussions in order to keep the peace. I know it's not just me, I've heard it from many of my friends in the same boat. It just simply seems impossible.
Fast forward a few years. Your kids are now in school, getting invited to a zillion birthday parties, getting extraordinary amounts of treats at school for random reasons, and are beginning to deal with conflicts of their own. You spend nearly all of your weekends juggling birthday parties and school events and other kid's activities. You get asked to volunteer at nearly everything, and if you don't have a job working outside of the home (like me) you're pretty much expected to help out. "What else do you have to do anyway?" You spend gobs of money and time doing so many things that you don't enjoy and frankly--neither do your kids. They come home from these events overstimulated, over-sugared, and exhausted. Then you gear up for school the next week and do it all over again. Don't even get me started on holiday obligations, you all know what I mean.
We feel obligated to do all the things all the time. So we just keep saying yes, yes, yes, and our kids watch us in an endless cycle of overscheduling, people-pleasing, and intermittent breakdowns. Somehow we've been transported into our parents' shoes and are now facing the same dilemmas that shaped our inability to say no, but now as the parent. What are we teaching them? We somehow have to teach them ways to say no without causing conflict or blowing everything up. Right? How do we protect our kids from conflict and disappointment?
I've seen it circle a couple of times on social media, a parent quoted saying "the greatest gift my parent ever gave me was to use them as an excuse." Every time I read it I cringe and think no, this is not something we should be encouraging our kids to do. Of course, I understand the sentiment behind it, I myself used my parents many times as a way of getting out of things. But what did that teach me? How did I face the problem when I couldn't use them as an excuse? The answer is, I didn't know how, and honestly--a lot of bad things happened in my life because of it. I didn't know how to say no to the family member who sexually abused me. I didn't know how to say no to the boy down the street who forced me into a closet to touch him and look at pornographic magazines his father kept lying around. I didn't know how to say no to the guy in college who wanted to have sex when I was delirious with fever and lay there while he took advantage. And many other uncomfortable moments where I didn't want to cause a scene or be labeled as "difficult".
One day after dance class, my daughter confided in me that her friend asked her to do something silly in class--something like a full-body spin with her eyes closed where her arms flailed about. It made her dizzy and run into things and she didn't like it. But instead of saying no, she did it anyway. She said, "I didn't want to do it Mommy, but I did anyway because I knew she'd be sad if I didn't". Gut wrench! It hit me like a ton of bricks that she didn't know how to say no either. Such a simple thing, it wasn't even a dangerous ask from her friend, but she still responded in a dangerous way. Doing something that you don't want to do--whatever it may be, just to make someone else happy is such a slippery slope. Being the person I am, knowing the struggles I've endured facing the same problem, and also understanding what a terrible turn for the worst it can take, I knew the answer to the above question.
Which is this: We don't protect our children from conflict and disappointment. We empower them to be brave and say no in situations that make them uncomfortable and in doing so, we teach them to accept that conflict and disappointment are a part of life. We mustn't compromise our personal boundaries for the sake of others. And we should be celebrating others for doing the same.
I know I'm not the only one out there who has had this realization and who has made strides to say no without an excuse, just simply say no. I'm thankful for the movement of people understanding the importance of mental health and for the resources that are available to foster it. But the work is also in our home. As a person, as a partner, as a friend, and as a parent.
As I've illustrated through my own experiences, an inability to say no can have trivial consequences, but it can also be devastating. I never understood the power of saying no as a child or even as a young adult and suffered from it in a variety of different ways. I'm thankful for the difficult times I've spent digging up my past through self-reflection and therapy so that I could fully understand why things happened the way they did. It doesn't change them. In some ways, I'll forever be scarred by them. But this knowledge is so useful and necessary, that I hoped to share it with anyone who could use a little motivation and encouragement.
So. All of this is to say. There is such amazing power in the word no. Say no to the millions of obligations that suck away your time and money that you don't love to do. Say no to the well-intentioned people in your life who you're afraid to disappoint, they'll probably understand. Say no to the things and people who make you feel uncomfortable--trust those instincts, they're there for a reason. It's a simple word, but a necessary one. One that has taken me a long time to understand and to come to terms with. One that I will use to teach my children to use bravely and unapologetically. And I hope you do too.
Special thanks to the people in my life who challenge and empower me to say no so that I could pass along the sentiment to others. You're the real MVP's here. <3
The cover photo is a sweet reminder of the little me I see in my own daughter and hopes that she continues to be as strong as she is beautiful.
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