![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb58ceeb2-2956-4114-8291-6d5412bcf0c2_1315x1830.webp)
There is no place in the corporate world for rage. But that day, my LinkedIn feed was full of mothers laid off during maternity leave. I refreshed it, and it was full of pictures of mothers and fathers brokenly cradling small bodies wrapped in cloth. That is the day my vision turned black.
I sat in front of my laptop, still bleeding from the birth of my first child (it goes on for weeks), breasts aching from the onslaught of the tiny, wild, screaming, clawing thing that sucked and sucked as if her life depended on it. And I thought, what have I done? What kind of world have I brought her into. Nowhere is safe, not the office, not the war zone.
You men, who run this world. You can have your wars, you can have your squabbles over what piece of land is what color on a map, you can build your airplanes and drop bombs on each other for all I care. But don't you DARE mess with the children.
Have you forgotten where you came from? You were not always like this, safe in your palaces on your hills. One upon a time, you, too were a child. Once upon a time, you too were a fragile, wet, helpless thing. Who kept you safe then? That's right, your mother.
We rolled our eyes, amused, but faintly annoyed, when you used us as punchlines in your jokes. Oh my old mom, you'd say, she doesn't understand these modern times we live in. Young man, we understand more than you ever will. We know what it took to keep you alive, to keep you happy, to grow you, to keep you safe. Do you know those things? How many of you can keep an infant alive? How many of you can keep an infant alive and calm? How many of you can keep an infant alive, calm, and safe? Alive, calm, safe and happy?
How dare you disrespect us.
You play with your big machines, you destroy the land that grows the food you need, you break the hearts of the ones who feed you. You build your glittering skyscrapers on our backs.
How dare you forget what you stand on. How dare you forget the decades you spent being nurtured, before the decades you spent on your "professional experience?" Self made? Bullshit. Boy, your mother made you. Never forget that.
It will all be okay, you said. Trust us, you said. Work in our systems, you said.
Fools.
What kind of system forgets that cycles - death, birth, rebirth, are the only things that last forever? Even in quantum physics, which describes the nature of reality itself, the wave is the only thing that propagates forever. None of this "Newtonian" bullshit. None of these points and tangents. Nothing lasts longer than a cycle. The ancients knew this, and we still remember.
These systems of violence, war, punishment, imprisonment, shareholder value, growth at all costs - all in the name of order, all in the name of progress. Shall we turn them on you? Wet, hungry and mewling, as you fell from between our legs? Shall we tell you that your tone is too insistent? Punish you for disturbing our sleep? Demand that you wait, hungry, until a mechanical device moves into a certain position? And then tell you that you are not meeting your quarterly growth expectations? Shall we lay you off to fend for yourself?
You were never thinking of the children. You were never thinking of your mothers. Or you would have placed every business plan, every long-term strategy at her feet to review.
You have no idea what you are doing. You never did. It was bullshit. All of it. Your mothers see it now. I dare you to ask them, if they are still alive. I dare you to do to your own mother what you are doing to the mothers who work for you.
Shame on you. Shame on all of you.
Breathe… Breathe… Breathe
[Whew! At this point, I had to take a break, so dear reader, you probably need one too.]
Thank you for letting me rage. Thank you for letting me spit my grief and frustration at you. Thank you for listening to me exaggerate and use absolutes like “all” and “never” and blame “the men who run the world” when in reality nothing is ever fully one thing or another. Leadership under constraint requires impossible choices, and we will never know all the even worse fates they saved us from.
Because now that my angry burst has been released, what remains is the cleared-eyed certainty that we humans will figure this out, and a steady flame of determination to do what I can to contribute.