Is that all that there is?
A generation of women were told decades ago, “You can have it all” by feminist leaders.
They could have,
Career.
Children.
Independence.
Sexual liberation.
Happiness.
World travel and romance.
Brunch with bottomless mimosas and the meaning to life.
Gloria Steinem handed out empowerment advice like candy, and Ms. Magazine practically yelled from the rooftops:
“You don’t need a man, you need ambition!”
Six-figure jobs, one bedroom apartments with no natural light, a cat named Simone de Beauvoir, a tiny dog in a bag named Luna and a therapist on speed dial.
These daughters of ambition, traded their pumps for sneakers to climb the corporate ladder, dodging monogamy like it was gluten and turned “self-care” into a full-time job.
Prophetess, preaching the gospel from the altar of Ms, Sojourner, Sinister Wisdom, Heresies, and other men hating magazines dressed in liberation for their younger counterparts looking to brainwash the recruits.
Consistently bashing the patriarchy, saying they could do it better, not realizing the irony due to most of the modern conveniences they enjoy, even their maxi-pads were created by men. They also benefited from the education system which was created by the same people they loathe.
And yet, here they stand and protest, on streets they haven’t paved and bridges they didn’t build. They flush toilets they didn’t engineer, posting selfies and anti-men rhetoric from satellites launched by the very minds they now scorn.
But now, mid-40s, two houseplants dead and many relationships ghosted, they’re sitting in traffic on the way to their hot yoga class asking themselves…
“Is this all there is?”
Because somehow, “liberation” started to become the same as exhaustion.
She were promised freedom. A freedom found in a romance novel.
What she got was the privilege of paying rent in the echo of her own footsteps and assembling IKEA furniture alone with a bottle of Chardonnay.
And having a panic attack in aisle 5 at Target…legs shaking, alone with her service animal.
Always ready for a fight, arguing about a dollar overcharge or an unspoken word, as she’s looking to release frustration of broken promises from empowerment slogans she said over and over while marching in lock step.
Now, she knows how men have felt for decades.
Overworked.
Overstimulated.
Underappreciated.
And quietly wondering…
Is this all there is?
“Am I just… a resource?”
Congratulations, they now have his salary, but also…
his stress level,
his cholesterol,
his health issues,
his spousal payments,
and surprise, his dreaded existence.
She got everything she asked for as reality has set in.
And somehow…
She still feel like something’s missing.
Maybe fulfillment wasn’t hiding in a job title and it’s large salary.
Maybe it wasn’t in the yoga retreat in Sedona.
Maybe it wasn’t in the third Master’s degree or the yearly retreat to wine country.
Maybe it was in the things she rolled her eyes at and told to avoid by a feminist mentor.
Family.
Connection.
Faith.
Quiet.
Commitment,
But hey, don’t worry.
There’s a podcast to help.
A YouTube life coach who swears it gets better after the planet Saturn finally stops clashing with Mercury’s retrograde.
Just keep swiping on TikTok for answers you refuse to implement.
And in the end, it wasn’t feminism that failed.
It was the leap into the unknown, with certainty where there should have been humility, conviction before comprehension.
The belief that she understood, before she ever truly knew what it was she were stepping into.
The fine print and warning label on modern life, that one needs reader spectacles to see.
That small line at the bottom of the ad that said:
“Happiness sold separately.”
So here we are.
Tapped out.
Disgruntled.
Divorced.
At odds,
but side by side.
Burned out.
In the drive-thru at Starbucks.
Alone.
Forgetting what it was all about and wondering the same damn thing:
What happened?
“Is this all there is?”
c 2025 Chu The Cud
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Chu The Cud 