On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

What’s me, versus the me I think I’m supposed to be?

what we’ve missed in the equation that time is money is that time is a nonrenewable resource.

Apathy, not sloth, would be the more appropriate “sin,” the one against which we should collectively rail.

Jealousy is about fear and threat of loss, and there’s typically a reasonable target.

Because it requires us to own our wanting, envy is the fulcrum, or hinge, for all the other Deadly Sins:

Envy tests our tolerance for watching other people get what they want—and reminds us of what we’ve been too afraid to pursue.

‘Follow your envy. It tells you what you want,’

Women, she had noticed, “are very cautious about feelings they believe are unacceptable.”

Envy is often an arrow, pointing me to a breadcrumb on my own path, my future self, tapping me on the shoulder to say, “Pay attention to this.”

the women who grate on our nerves are typically telling us what we want.

Wanting, in many ways, is humiliating. For one, it suggests you think you’re deserving, that you’re worthy.

Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear…and Why.

“Self-confidence is gender-neutral, the consequences of appearing self-confident are not.”

My body said no because my throat wouldn’t open to say it for me.

Kate Fagan,

If you build it, they will come; if you’ve got it, you’ll be found.

you can’t hurt us when we’ve hurt ourselves first.

It is a denial of source, or the universe, when we try to be something less than what we are.

He was telling me not to become something before I had the chance to even try.

When women raise their voices, ears are at best plugged—at worst, said women are denounced as awful.

It’s telling though, that in the mythmaking, Medusa turned only men to stone, never women.

anger stems from our overlooked needs;

“I am angry because I am needing….”

We fear that we must be bad, that an imperfect step means we’ll lose everything.

Anger points us to what we care about deeply—our

Getting on your knees is paramount to being able to get up again, an essential component of resurrection—to die to little things like hope, dreams, relationships, and jobs, again and again, to feel the loss, to understand that it meant something to you, it mattered.

It’s not about achieving balance; it’s about being balanced.