“On a car ride home, a woman thinks she is being followed, only to find an unexpected driver in the car behind her.”

[Jawahir Al-Naimi/Al Jazeera]

by Amy Doyle

“I have always tried to keep my fears a secret from my daughter. I want her to believe that I am the fierce woman I pretended to be in college. A poster on my dorm wall said, “Don’t be scared; be scary.”

“This prescription, I am learning in middle age, is limiting not just because it does not fit my particular psychology, but because it ignores the unique powers of most women. That is, we are trusted precisely because we are not scary.

“My daughter learned this lesson with me one night while we were driving 30 miles (48km) away to check out a piano we had seen on Craigslist.”

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