Tailgating (and your healing journey)
I’m in the car with my kids yesterday and I’ve got a tailgater crawling up my bumper.
Now, I’m a fast driver and I have an almost religious appreciation for traffic flow, so I never hang out in the left lane unless I’m passing cars and I immediately switch right if someone behind me clearly wants to go faster.
But I can’t move into the right hand lane because there are cars in my way and I’m unwilling to go faster because I’m already above the speed limit.
The man driving behind me gets even closer. Obnoxiously, making-a-point close. Closer than I’ve ever had someone while at this speed. We’ve left the territory of “maybe he’s not paying enough attention” and moved into the territory of “maybe my kids will die if a coyote runs into the road I need to do a full stop.”
So I do what I usually do in such a situation: I briefly - and quickly - hit the brakes.
For me, this accomplishes three things:
It communicates my need for safe space in the only way possible to someone driving behind me.
It communicates my dislike of the situation.
It offers the other driver the chance to change their behavior to create a safer, more mutually beneficial experience.
Unsurprisingly, the situation escalates.
After momentarily slamming on his brakes to keep from crashing into me, I can see him in my rearview mirror angrily flailing his arms.
Finally, I’m able to slide over to the right. He speeds up next to me, presumably shouting, etc, but I refuse to face him so I can’t see him turning around and forcefully giving me the middle finger until he’s a bit further ahead. At which point he pulls in front of me and slams on his brakes multiple times until he zooms off. When I pass him at a light a minute later, he’s still shouting and gesturing and honking.
~ ~ ~
None of this felt good. Not having a tailgater. Not sensing my discomfort about needing to set a limit with him by hitting my brakes. Not being yelled at. Not having to explain the middle finger to my nine year old. Not even writing about it now.
Despite the calm I held on the surface, my face got hot, my breathing shallowed, I could feel tension throughout my body.
I just wanted to get away.
~ ~ ~
On the rest of the drive, I was musing on the familiarity of this experience. But not just the familiarity of having men, in particular, react violently toward boundary setting. I found myself feeling the familiarity of this experience within the context of my healing path, within the context of my aliveness, within the context of my personal liberation.
Which is what I really want to talk about here.
My tailgater had a perception of himself in relationship to me, based not just on his own personal experiences in his own small world, but rooted in a centuries of white male privilege and power. I don’t know what has happened to him throughout his life or even in the moments before we met, but I do know that he has been told in myriad ways that he deserves to get what he wants at the expense of other people. These people might be the children who dangerously mine for the components in his cell phone or the wife or daughters he may have or the farm workers who inhale pesticides as they grow his food. Or me, the female driver in front of him.
In the “natural order” of things, I’m supposed to back off, stand down, make it easier for him to get what he wants. I’m definitely not supposed to voice a complaint or interfere with his perception of himself.
To hit my brakes and then to not engage in some sort of inter-vehicle shouting match was to interrupt his fundamental understanding of his place in the world and my place in the world and any agreement he imagines that we hold as such.
Here’s the thing: Every woman I’ve encountered, when embarking seriously on her path of liberation, disrupts the “natural order” of things, thereby creating an environment in which defensiveness and rage and confusion and grief erupts in those around her. This is true whether she seeks the healing of her pelvic floor or a recovery from birthing trauma or the standing in her deepest beliefs about Life.
As with the tailgater:
~ they are not supposed to request more space
~ they are not supposed to set a safer boundary
~ they are not supposed to disengage from violent threats
~ they are not supposed to say no without copious explanation
~ they are not supposed to center themselves in their own lives
~ they are not supposed to want more, ask for more, insist on more
~ they are not supposed to question authority
~ they are not supposed to be bigger and louder
~ they are not supposed to more conscious and alive
~ they are not supposed to do what they want
~ they are not supposed to say what they really mean
In fact, if they do any of these things, they often discover that they have one or many belligerent tailgaters driving way too close for comfort. The tailgater may be a parent or a spouse or a co-worker or a child or a doctor or best friend or a complete stranger or an in-law or.…
If I could offer you anything today as you forge ahead moving out of captivity, it might be this: expect backlash. Expect dismissal. Expect discomfort. Expect blame. Expect amnesia. Expect concern. Expect uncertainty. Expect aggression. Expect resistance.
I don’t mean this in a ruminating, othering way, but in a normalizing way. To become more YOU is to disrupt the way things have always been and there will be plenty of people who respond forcefully to this.
It’s okay. You’re still not responsible for how other people feel or react. Just because someone else is upset doesn’t mean you’re wrong for standing in your own truth. Your liberation is no less beautiful or requisite.
Sometimes, to be persistent in your healing path is to silently move over when the other drive is being a jerk. Sometimes, it means to hit the brakes. Sometimes, it means to ignore it and keep doing what you’re doing. But eventually, at some points, you can expect that your disruption to how things have always been will elicit a pretty strong reaction in those around you.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, “If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time."
In sum: keep on.
Would you like to create a plan for how to stay more connected to your body - and your deepest knowings - throughout each day?