Stop Being So Damn Available
Going quiet—on your own terms—isn’t passive. It’s power.
→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED
Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.
There are days I want to throw my phone out the window while driving 75 mph on the highway and watch it shatter behind me.
Not out of some romantic fantasy about simplicity. Just because the noise is relentless and none of it, when I actually look at it, is as urgent as it feels.
But I’m running a business. I want the text from my husband, the call from a friend, the photos of my grandsons. Fine, and yes, the limited-time offer from Bloomingdale’s.
And I’d be lying if I said the thought of “going off the grid” didn’t stir up anxiety akin to letting a blind squirrel steer my car.
So the phone stays, and the noise stays with it.
When writer Linda Wattier pitched this, it was pretty much the only email that came into my inbox that day that didn’t make me want to disappear. Mostly because I knew I would need to hear this. And if I felt that way, our audience likely would too.
Because women are expected to be available as a baseline condition of being good.
Not as something we offer when we have the capacity, but as proof of who we are. A woman who doesn’t respond quickly is negligent. A woman who goes quiet by choice is difficult. A woman who protects her time is selfish, or checked out, or thinks she’s too important for the people who need her.
One reader wrote: “I’m exhausted from being everyone’s emotional ATM.”
That’s it exactly.
Most of us don’t lack connection. We lack permission to stop performing availability as a damn virtue.
Linda’s piece has the science, the framework, and the practical tools. But what it really offers is something harder to find: the argument that quiet isn’t something you earn after you’ve handled everything else.
It’s something you’re allowed to take.
"I'm exhausted of being everyone's emotional ATM." Genius.