sorry

This article by Liv McConnell first appeared on Fairygodboss and has been republished with permission.

Not to contribute toward society’s habit of picking apart feminine communication patterns, but I’ll say it: in my own life, at least, the tendency to over-apologize was something I had to put effort into unlearning. 

Last month, I heard my kid say "I'm sorry" to a complete stranger at Target for no reason.

A New York Times editorial about women’s proclivity for apologizing for things that aren’t their fault has been making the rounds on social media this week. For many of us, the article hit home in a pretty profound way, especially the scene where the author, Sloane Crosley, described saying “sorry” multiple times for a restaurant messing up her order, something over which she had absolutely no control and in fact should have been receiving apologies for.