A Little Life List: When Mean Girl is on Your Shoulder

Imposter syndrome and your other quieter voice, trying to be heard

Little Life Lists are for the complicated, unruly things life throws at us. I encourage you to write your own, too. With coffee. xoxo

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Perhaps the loud voice whispers: you can’t write, or why are you doing this job anyway, or wow, terrible parenting… it’s obvious you can’t really do that…

But I think, when we quieten that voice, we have another voice underneath. One we don’t talk about much. It’s a softer voice, less brash and bossy. And while Mean Girl gets loud when I’m writing, writing also helps me turn her down so I can hear that other voice, too.

Most writers I know (most women I know…all women I know?) deal with Imposter Syndrome in some form or another.

Your Inner Critic can sound like a nagging voice, questioning decisions, undermining accomplishments, leaving feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or shame. Even if you’re doing just fine. Even if you’re killing it.

One of my great friends runs a massive organization, lightly puts together huge conferences and inspires conversation and connection with people from all over. Yet. She doubts herself. Oh.

The name Imposter Syndrome was coined by two female psychologists in 1978: Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. They described it as not feeling success internally—feeling as if you’re about to be found out.

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When my daughter was born, our second child, we took her home from the hospital that same day. Our first son was in Intensive Care for the first six weeks of his life. Forty days and forty nights of heart-ripping waiting. So bringing our daughter now was something I needed to do. That moment.

Elated and exhausted, I tucked our tiny, baby girl into her carseat.

As I looked at her face, I heard: you can’t really take a baby home. How will you manage? How will you know what to do? You’re not a parent. Who do you think you are???

Pick a name: Hugo. Inner Critic. I call mine Mean Girl. She sits on my shoulder with quiet, unkind commentary. She’s there when I’m writing, and when I screw up with my kids, or when I’m overtired. Etc. Etc.

Mean Girl is loud when I’m working on a book. Especially when I sit down and open an empty page, starting a writing session. Call yourself a writer. This is awful. I show up to my laptop most days, with ideas and trepidation. Because there she is with my coffee and quiet. In twenty years as a writer, successful from the outside with fourteen published books, Mean Girl is still regularly so loud that I freeze.

But. I have a theory that writing is how I get better at being myself. This is because when I’m writing, I get the chance to practice. Everything.

Over the years, I’ve taught myself to take a few minutes to actively tune her out. I’m not saying that in a wishy-washy, oh, it’s so great, I’m about to bully myself kind of way. No. When she arrives, I get into the ring, pulling on my gloves, and pummel her back into her corner.

There I let her babble.

What does the boxing ring look like? For me: I open the page, write a sentence.

It feels crappy. An inadequate sentence.

I keep going.

And word-by-word Mean Girl becomes water, a brook: not gone, but background.

Then another voice, a far quieter one, begins to murmur because she has space to be heard. She’s the whisper in the wind, a charge of magic and beauty. And this is what she says:

It’s okay to get it wrong

Make a mess and see what happens

Have fun, be silly

Write, write, dream

Turning Mean Girl down is hard. Really hard. All the time. But when I write, the writing itself turns her down. In fact, it’s when I’m off the page that I have to hone my tender skill of pushing Mean Girl back so that I can hear my quieter, kinder whisper. As a parent, in my other work, Mean Girl sometimes goes wild.

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Kids have a mean voice, too. Maggie Smith is a gorgeous writer and she wrote a Pep Talk on Feb 5th reminding us to ignore that voice in your head.

The truth is, even if no one else tries to stop us, we can be our own worst enemies. It reminds me of that 1979 horror movie When a Stranger Calls, and the famous line from it: “The call is coming from inside the house!” Imposter syndrome, or insecurity, or fear of judgment, or doubts about our own talent or ability…all of these things have the power to stop us from creating, if we let them.

—

Maggie Smith

The idea she suggests is to turn the voice down. And she powerfully shares how a group of children were motivated to do so when they worked with her. I love her post so much. Check out the messages from kids. See how easily they heard her advice. It seems harder—perhaps because we’ve been living with that voice for a long time—as an adult to separate Mean Girl from ourselves.

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My daughter wanted some space the other day. Most parts of me resisted—we had guests, she needed to visit with them. But I didn’t say a word as she sloped up to her bedroom and lay down, reading a book. Hard as it was for people-pleasing me, I admired her decision as I served glasses of wine and chatted.

My daughter already hears her quieter voice and it told her: rest, recover, heal.

When I witness her listening when she doesn’t want to socialise but instead wants to curl up with a book, I realise how often I’ve quieted my kind voice in my own life. Yes, I’ve learned to listen when I’m writing, but off the page, I’m finally starting to hear. Something in me is letting her free. Perhaps it’s growing older. Perhaps it’s all those years of showing up to the page, over and over, turning down Mean Girl and discovering how, now, to hear kindness to myself.

Say no and shut the door

Lay down

Look out the window

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One last thought. I used to be a smoker. Still now, I dream of smoking and wake up with the taste of ash on my tongue. When someone lights up beside me, I’m pulled like a magpie to a shiny gift. If I’ve had a drink or two, I smoke hungrily. Mean Girl is addictive: she feels bad-but-good, like smoking. Some days, I avoid getting to the page and Mean Girl gets louder.

When she’s louder about my writing, she’s louder in everything else.

I took good advice from

Anna Brones

yesterday. She suggests coffee outside.

I sit down, place my coffee cup on the wide arm of the chair. I take a moment to feel my way into my surroundings. The air feels cool, and when I move my arm to take a sip of coffee, the slightly stiff waterproof fabric of my rain jacket makes a rustling sound. There are a few drops of rain, enough to create an artistic look as they drop onto the words penned in my notebook.

—Anna Brones

In Saskatchewan, at this time of year, it’s often bitter cold (minus fifty is a number we’ve seen), but yesterday was only minus six. I stepped outside, chilled but curious, and a raven flew past. I heard the flap of its wings, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. It sounded like my quiet voice does, when I listen, resonating across the snowy lake.

I said this was a list. It’s imperfect, because I’m still working on it. But.

Pick a name

Practice

Open the page, write a sentence

Keep going

Turning Mean Girl down is hard

Kids have a mean voice, too

Turn the voice down

Listen

I took this photo later in the day. As I stood by the lake earlier, I had no camera, no pen, just the open sky, my coffee outside, and the glimmering sound of magic and beauty.

xoxo

Alice

Share this with someone you know who is a writer or a dreamer or a women changing the world. And please share in the comments if you read someone on here who inspires you so I can read them, too.

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Reading more: Maggie Smith and Anna Brones both run gorgeous Substacks. I’ve also been loving

Victoria

who runs Care Mentor and

Luisa Skinner

who makes me feel braver.

I’ve been casting about for the next good novel so I streamed Dublin Murders in the interim because I adore the work of Tana French. I want to read something both dark and big-hearted. Please suggest a read if you’ve found a book you love.

xox

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If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.

Join me for a coffee break on my Substack: Confessions & Coffee.

Xoxo