Becoming Through Refusal

Sor Juana's becoming as an intellectual was inseparable from her refusals: she refused marriage, refused silence, refused to accept the boundaries imposed on women's knowledge. For parents in crisis—those losing identity to the role—this concept reframes becoming not as acceptance and surrender but as active, sometimes fierce refusal. Refusing to lose yourself entirely in parenting is not selfish; it is the ground of authentic parenthood. This means refusing diminishment, refusing invisibility, refusing to accept the narrative that parenthood erases prior identity. Sor Juana teaches that becoming who you truly are often requires saying no to what others expect. Parents navigating the loss of pre-parental self can learn that strategic refusal—of total availability, of abandoning interests, of accepting inferior treatment—is itself a creative force. Refusal becomes the practice through which a new, integrated parental identity emerges.