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Learning To Say ‘No’ - Wise Woman

By Pearl Cleage

You've done it. We all have. Gone to a church banquet that you knew would bore you to tears. Smiled and agreed to do your girl a favor that completely inconvenienced you. Let him skip the condom "just this once." You've said yes to things you wanted to say, needed to say, should have said no to. For many sisters, "not being able to say no is our secret weakness, our continuous challenge, our final frontier," says Pearl Cleage, Atlanta novelist, poet and playwright. Here she offers some advice on learning to say no.

I am a recovering yes-woman. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that years of my life have been spent doing things that would never have occurred to me if I'd been left to my own devices. That happens a lot when you can't say no. We don't consciously think that each time we say yes when we mean no we're placing another brick in the wall we erect between who we are and who we're pretending to be. But that's exactly what we do, until finally the transformation is complete and our own thoughts are as closed to us as the doors of a locked temple with all the mysteries hidden away inside.

I didn't always understand this, but I remember the night it became clear to me. I was 27 years old, and it was a Wednesday evening like any other during that hectic period when I was starting a family, starting a career and starting to feel pulled in too many directions by too many people.

I was distracted and irritable when I pulled into the grocery-store parking lot in my cream-colored, recently waxed Volvo. It was already starting to get dark outside and I was still wearing the brown silk dress and uncomfortable heels I had dashed out of the house in at six o'clock that morning, already late for a breakfast meeting. My boss was the first Black mayor of Atlanta and his schedule--and his staff's--was grueling.

My daughter, not quite 2, was still with the babysitter, and my husband, a rising star on the local political scene, was still at his office, not yet expecting dinner, but certainly assuming that when he finally did drag himself home at eight o'clock or so, there would be food on the table, a recently bathed baby to toss in the air before bedtime and a smiling wife who made all this happen.

This was not the career path I had in mind, but I had been so busy writing speeches and press releases for the mayor that my own writing projects sat untouched, and the voice inside my head that only wanted to write love poems was regularly being drowned out by the need to craft remarks in praise of a new sewage-treatment plant or the peaceful settlement of a union dispute. I loved being a part of history, but was this the work I wanted to do?

That question opened the floodgates to so many more. Why was I so unhappy? Why wasn't I writing? Why was I working 12 hours a day? Why was I buying the ingredients to make pasta from scratch when I didn't even like to cook? Why was I wearing high-heeled shoes that hurt my feet? How did I get here?

The produce aisle at the grocery store is no place to realize that you're living somebody else's life, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I got so distracted that I bumped my grocery cart into a pile of potatoes and started a small landslide. I just stood there, potatoes bouncing around my feet, and realized that the answer to my questions was as simple as it was profound: I was here because I didn't know how to say no. I didn't know how to distinguish between who I was and who the people around me wanted me to be. I was allowing other people's ideas about how I should spend my time to shape and control every aspect of my life, from where I worked to how I spent my money and how I dressed. I looked down at my beautiful dress and my perfectly polished shoes, and I felt so miserable that I burst into tears right there among the vegetables.

Walking quickly across the parking lot, I realized that I was too upset to drive home. I made myself close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I had identified a problem. The question now was, what was I going to do about it? I needed a plan. I reached into my purse, found an old copy of the mayor's schedule, turned it over, and started writing. Sitting there in the dark with the dashboard lights to guide my scribbling hand, I realized there was only one way to stop saying yes when I meant no, and that was to understand that I wasn't just giving up an hour or two here, or a Saturday afternoon there, but the precious, irreplaceable moments of my life. And I decided to stop doing it.

That night I came up with six questions that I hoped would help me reclaim my life. I call them The Big Six, and I offer them here for one simple reason: They work. Next time someone asks you a question that requires a yes or no answer, ask yourself the following:

1. What am I being asked to do?

2. Who is making the request?

3. Who will benefit from this activity?

4. What do I want to do?

5. What will happen if I say no?

6. What will happen if I say yes?

When I started using The Big Six consistently, I was surprised to find that the hardest one for me was always #4: What do I want to do? It had been so long since I had asked myself that question that it took me a while to figure it out. Once I did, I was amazed and exhilarated by the new possibilities that opened up. My writing and my life began to reflect a new energy and a new sense of purpose. Saying no got easier because I had so many things I really wanted to say yes to. Six months after weeping among the potatoes, I quit my job as the mayor's press secretary and started work on a play that would be my passport into the life I had only imagined--the life of a full-time writer and free woman.

Over the years The Big Six have changed very little, and although I'm a lot more conscious now than I used to be, I still use them when I find myself in situations like family gatherings, or book tours, or passionate discussions with my husband, times when I might be tempted to give away a chunk of my life before I even realize I'm doing it.

Learning to say no is a process that can take a lifetime. The good news is that it gets easier the more you practice. I can testify to that. My more spiritually advanced friends tell me that it is even possible to arrive at a place where saying what you mean becomes second nature. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it

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Pearl Cleage has been a full-time writer ever since she left the mayor's office in 1977 and has never looked back. She is a Contributing Writer to ESSENCE Magazine, and in 1998, her novel, What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day was an Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

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