We Are Not Going Back: A Pep Talk for Women Who Are Done Playing Small

by Dr. Lauren Young | The GRL Initiative

The Cultural Context of being a woman in 2026.

The show had just ended. I was walking out into the dark, that particular kind of dark that exists in parking lots after concerts — loud energy suddenly dropped, crowd thinning, your eyes still adjusting. And I felt it before I saw it.

Someone behind me.

Not close enough to say anything. Not far enough to ignore. Just — there. The kind of presence that every woman reading this knows, because we have all felt it. That prickling at the back of your neck that isn't anxiety. It isn't paranoia. It is your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do by a lifetime of being a woman in the world.

I stepped to the side. Casually, like I was checking my phone. I made eye contact.

It was a woman.

And I felt my whole body exhale.

Not slowly. Instantly. Like a switch flipped. The threat calculation my brain had been running in the background — without my permission, without my conscious awareness — just stopped. Because she was a woman. And that meant I was safe.

I stood there for a second and sat with what had just happened. Not the stepping aside part — that was smart, that was trained instinct, that was the right move. The part that stayed with me was the exhale. The speed of it. The completeness of it.

Because what does it mean that we live like this?

That our baseline is vigilance? That safety is the exception we exhale into, not the air we breathe?

There is a website — not a dark web rabbit hole, a website — that 62 million men have visited to learn how to sexually assault their partners while they sleep in one month, twice as many people than logged into gmail. Sixty-two million. And we know, because the data has always told us, that every woman knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. Every single one. Which means the math we're not supposed to say out loud is this: every man also knows a perpetrator. We just keep acting like he doesn't.

Add to this a political moment that is openly, loudly, enthusiastically calling for women to return to submission. To silence. To smallness. Leaders who want traditional wives. Legislation that wants compliant bodies. A cultural undertow that wants you to stop taking up so much room.

This is not background noise. This is the context in which you are trying to lead, to raise daughters, to exist at full volume.

Your anger is not an overreaction.

Your anger is the most rational response in the room.

The Glow-Up

Stop apologizing for being alert. Your hypervigilance is not a personality flaw — it is a completely reasonable adaptation to an unreasonable reality, and you do not owe anyone a softer version of it. Get loud about what you know. Name it in rooms where people are pretending not to see it. Refuse to couch your rage in qualifiers so it's easier to swallow. Use your platform — whatever size it is — to say the true thing, not the safe thing. Protect the girls in your orbit with information, not innocence. They already know something is wrong; give them the language to say what it is. And lead anyway — not in spite of this moment, but directly through it — because your presence in leadership is not just about your career. It is a signal to every girl watching that she does not have to go back either.

Practicing Real, Not Perfect

If this resonated with you, then tomorrow, Practicing Real, Not Perfect looks like this: notice when you have already put protective measures in place — in real time, without thinking about it.

The way you angled your body away from someone on the subway. The way you texted a friend "I'm walking to my car" so someone knew where you were. The way you stepped to the side in a dark parking lot and made eye contact, just to be sure. Letting your partner know, “I’ll be home in 20 minutes.”

You have been practicing safety so long it feels like instinct. It is instinct. And that instinct is wisdom, not weakness.

Notice it tomorrow. Don't pathologize it. Don't minimize it. Just see it clearly — the constant, quiet, exhausting work of being a woman who is paying attention — and let yourself feel whatever comes up when you name it.

That feeling? That's where this work starts.

You are not paranoid. You are not dramatic. You are not too much.

You are a woman who is paying attention.

Lead anyway.

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Dr. Lauren Young is the founder of The GRL Initiative — a platform dedicated to empowering women and girls through leadership, athletics, and radical honesty. Her book, Lead Anyway: The Glow-Up Guide to Leadership That's Real, Not Perfect, publishes July 2026.

If this landed, share it with every woman in your life who is paying attention too.