I Surrendered

Agency IRL

When my husband, Bo, and I bought our house over 40 years ago, I immediately noticed that the door to the back porch opened into the great room, blocking the entrance to the kitchen and the main traffic path through the house.

I wanted to flip that door.

Instead, I got an eye roll and “Why on earth would we do that?”

So we didn’t do it. I didn’t ask again because I hate feeling stupid – and who doesn’t?

For 29 years, when the weather was good (I live in Georgia so the weather is great) we all navigated around that darn door.

Then, in 2012, Bo looked at it, standing open, blocking the kitchen and said, “Why don’t we flip this door? It’s such a pain to walk around it.”

Naturally, he didn’t remember our previous conversation — but I never forgot it. You don’t forget when someone makes you feel stupid.

photo by author

Bo died unexpectedly in January 2013.

Six months later, while getting ready for 60 of my family members to descend on our house for a family reunion, I had a contractor flip the door.

It was heavenly. Every single person noticed.

The Plan

That door wasn’t the only time I surrendered my agency.

In the late 1980s, Bo and I started a software company. He asked me to be the product manager — to get the product running and ready to deliver to customers. I had no experience in tech so he made sure to set me up for success, finding friendly experts for me to work with, and gave me some authority over the work.

And I did the work. I also ran the business, paid the bills, hired an assistant, managed the developers, and ported the product to the different operating systems (it was a mainframe system that ran on PC’s, too) - while learning the tech parts on the job.

Then, in 1988, I flew to Washington, DC (on Eastern Airlines!) to work with a seasoned female strategic planner Bo had known for years. We spent 2½ days developing plans on butcher paper and taping them to the walls of her office (before laptops and in the time of dial-up internet).

We mapped out exactly what it would take to deliver a product that would (a) run and (b) we could sell.

I was proud of that strategic plan. I learned that I understood more about our business than I thought I did.

Strategy vs $$

Then I went home to Atlanta and the plan was ditched. I don’t even remember showing the plan to Bo or even talking about it.

Why? When I got home from the airport I found out that an investor showed up with capital and said to focus on sales instead of product. So, we did.

And I never said a word. I acquiesced to the whole thing because I didn’t trust my own work.

We failed. Hugely, painfully, hurting several people. It still makes me cringe.

That failure belonged to all of us — my husband, the investor, me.

I had a plan. I could have presented it, yet I said nothing.

I did exactly what I’d done with the door.

I stepped aside, surrendering the agency I had so purposefully cultivated while developing the strategic plan.

I Surrendered My Agency

I’ve been writing about agency for 16+ years. But I was living it — and surrendering it — long before I had the nuanced language to describe it.

What is agency? It’s the fundamental belief that you have the right to make your own choices and exert control over your own life.

It represents the difference between “I can do something about this” and “I’m going to do something about this.”

I could have flipped the door. I could have insisted on presenting the plan. I always had the agency.

I just kept surrendering it to my insecurities, instead of claiming it.

Here’s the thing.

Look, I know I’m not the only person who’s felt this way. We all have a version of this story.

Maybe it’s about a door. Maybe it’s about a plan. Maybe it’s about a sentence we swallowed in a meeting because we didn’t want to feel foolish.

Maybe you’re still navigating through it. I know I am.

Practice Makes Permanent

After years of working on this in my own life, as a teacher, and, now, with the women I coach, I know that reclaiming our agency is a practice. It’s about building the muscle that makes our sense of agency stronger.

Because, while agency is our birthright, sometimes we have to reclaim it.

Reclaiming it starts with “I’m going to do something about this.”

And I did. I flipped the door. Six months after Bo died, in the middle of grief and before a family reunion, I had the door flipped. I smiled every time I opened that door to the porch. Still do.

I work every day to shut down the voices in my head that tell me I can’t claim the agency to do the things I want and know I can do. That I have to ask for permission. That I don’t want to risk looking stupid.

To keep from settling for navigating around the door instead of making it right.

Practice makes permanent. I own my agency.

So do you.

Where’s your agency?

Never settle,

Becky