Womanhood & Growth
The "have it all" narrative was, in its origins, genuinely liberatory: the assertion that women could have professional ambition and domestic life, could be mothers and professionals, could be fully human in all the dimensions of their existence.
The problem is what it became in practice: a new standard that simply added all of the new expectations to all of the old ones, without removing any of them. The woman who "has it all" must be professionally excellent, a present and devoted mother, a loving and engaged partner, a well-maintained physical presence, a nourishing home-maker, a socially engaged community member. All simultaneously. All well.
This is not liberation. It is a more elaborate form of the same demand.
For many women who pursue it, "having it all" produces:
Chronic exhaustion. The energy required to maintain all of these domains simultaneously is simply not sustainable for most people, most of the time.
The sense of failing everywhere. When the standard is perfection across all domains, the ordinary gaps between aspiration and reality feel like constant failure rather than normal human limitation.
The suppression of genuine preference. The pressure to want all of it — career, family, social life, personal development, perfect health — can suppress the genuine question of what you actually want. What if your genuine desires are simpler? What if you genuinely want a large, loud family and a modest career? What if you genuinely want an extraordinary career and a quiet personal life? These preferences are not failures. They are genuine human variety.
If this resonates, the book goes deeper into what it means to live a life that is genuinely yours — get The Good Girl Delusion →
You do not have to want everything. You are allowed to want what you actually want.
This is harder than it sounds — because the genuine desire has often been suppressed by the accumulated should-haves of family expectation, feminist expectation, cultural expectation, social media expectation. Finding what you actually want requires the self-knowledge practices that are the foundation of this entire pillar.
But the permission is there: you are allowed to live an uncommon life. A life that does not conform to any prescribed version of what a modern Nigerian woman is supposed to want. A life that is genuinely, specifically, honestly yours.
Related: What Does Success Look Like for a Nigerian Woman? · The Life You Were Told to Want · On Being a Woman Who Wants More
Nancy GLO
Reflective storyteller & style curator for women becoming
Continue Reading
Womanhood & Growth
One of the most disorienting discoveries available to a woman in her 30s is that the life she has been pursuing is not actually the one she wants. Here is the honest guide to making that discovery — and deciding what to do with it.
ReadWomanhood & Growth
Ambition, for women and particularly for Nigerian women, often comes with a specific coating of shame. Here is a direct, honest engagement with that shame — where it comes from and the permission to want what you genuinely want.
Read