Here’s the thing I may be an ‘alpha’ female but that doesn’t mean I want to lead anybody anywhere. I think that’s the misnomer for all people labeled ‘alpha.’ The assumption is we just want to take over the place. But the reality is mostly we just want shit done right the first time.

In my life many assumptions have been made about me, about my motives and intentions. There have been times when I have found myself in confrontations with people who I legitimately had no problem with. The ‘offended’ party would usually leave the conversation dumbfounded because they truly thought I was out to get them and discovered in our conversation that I hadn’t been thinking of them at all.

I ain’t never been out to get nobody. Ever.

I’m not Erica Kane. I don’t do drama. It gives me gas.

But because of something others see in me, there is an assumption that I’m there to get something that rightfully belongs to them.  Which is whack-a-doodle crazy.

The thing is anyone who is truly an alpha, truly a leader, will not waste their time posturing for position.

Leaders lead.

It is instinctive. When I enter a situation and it is chaotic, I immediately feel the need to bring order. Most of the time, I don’t shout out, “THIS SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND IM HERE TO FIX IT!”

No.

That would make me an asshole. So I sit back and I watch the situation. Internally I analyze it, get the lay of the land, and locate the moving pieces. And then I develop a plan to repair the parts that are broken.

I don’t force pieces to go into places they don’t belong. I don’t demand to be acknowledged for fixing, I just do what I can to make a bad situation better.

When you see alphas, true pack leaders, that’s what they are doing. Their leadership style is very much watch and wait, adapt and proceed. Alphas that forge ahead without a plan know that in doing so they will bring more chaos and perhaps even harm to those who follow them.

That’s why I’ve never understood folk misinterpreting my intentions. And I especially have never understood those who have actively acted to undermine me.

I remember this one time when I was a teenager and a girl walked up to me and told me, “I’m gone steal him away from you! You don’t deserve him anyway!”

She was so high and mighty with her eighties hair smelling like Jean Nate and hairspray. At the time she was referring to a boy who liked me but who I did not have any interest in. I laughed at her and said, “If he can be stolen, he was never mine in the first place.”

She later told me when we were alone that she felt dismissed by me. She said it was like she was just a fly on my food that is swatted away and she wanted me to notice that she was important too.

A lot of women I know dismiss the experiences of other women. They dismiss their feelings and perspective and casually say, “I just don’t get along with women.”

I find statements like that to be more reflective of an individual’s own self-hate, then anything else.

A woman who doesn’t like women is probably struggling to like herself. A woman who dismisses other women has most like felt dismisses. A woman who finds that she struggles to befriend other women is most likely a woman who doesn’t understand what friendship entails.

 Today someone made a joke about ‘The Women of Brewster’s Place’. The joke was along the lines of all those women were ‘alphas’ and none of them got a happy ending.

Now I love Gloria Naylor and feel that there is genius in her writing. But LORD how I hate the tale of the downtrodden woman. And the movie starring Oprah Winfrey is a leap from the novel into downtrodden womanhood.

But even with that being said the story could very well be a story of ‘how to find the alpha in me.’ And how in communities of women who consciously embrace their inner leader there can be harmony and authentic sisterhood.

All alphas really don’t want to lead. But every alpha definitely wants to be a member of a community. Every alpha needs their tribe.

At 45 I believe I’ve finally found mine.