250 Years Later: What Does Freedom Mean for Women Today?

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, many of us are being invited to reflect on the country's history, its ideals, and the ways it has changed over time. There will be celebrations, commemorations, and plenty of conversations about freedom, independence, and progress.

Yet anniversaries like this can also invite a more complicated kind of reflection.

While the United States was founded on principles of liberty and self-determination, those promises were not originally extended to everyone. Women, enslaved people, Indigenous communities, and many others spent generations fighting for rights and opportunities that were celebrated in theory but denied in practice. For that reason, the story of America is not simply a story of freedom. It is also a story of people demanding that the country live up to its own ideals.

Two hundred and fifty years later, many women continue to grapple with a version of that same tension. We have access to opportunities that previous generations could only imagine, yet we still navigate cultural expectations that shape who we are supposed to be, how we are supposed to live, and what kinds of choices are considered acceptable. While the barriers may look different than they did in previous centuries, the pressure to conform remains remarkably persistent.

The American story is often told as one of expanding possibilities. And in many ways, that is true. Women can pursue education, build careers, own businesses, remain unmarried, choose whether or not to become parents, and shape lives that would have been unimaginable to many women who came before us.

But freedom has never been simply about having options.

The harder question is whether we feel free to choose the lives that are genuinely right for us.

The Weight of Modern Expectations

Many women arrive in therapy convinced that they are the problem.

They think they need to become more organized, more disciplined, less emotional, less anxious, more productive, or somehow better at managing the demands of their lives. They assume that if they could just find the right planner, morning routine, meditation practice, or productivity system, they would finally feel calm, confident, and in control.

But often what emerges in therapy is a different question altogether.

What if the problem isn't that you're failing?

What if the problem is that you're trying to succeed inside a system that keeps moving the goalposts?

Women today are expected to build successful careers, maintain meaningful relationships, stay politically informed, care for aging parents, support friends, contribute to their communities, exercise regularly, eat well, manage their finances, and somehow remain attractive while doing all of it. We are encouraged to be ambitious but not intimidating, confident but not arrogant, nurturing but not self-sacrificing, independent but always available to others.

Then we're told that if we're overwhelmed, burned out, anxious, or exhausted, we probably just need better self-care.

At a certain point, many women realize they don't need another productivity strategy.

They need permission to acknowledge that this is fucking impossible.

Not because women are incapable. Not because we're weak. But because we've been handed a set of expectations that no human being was ever meant to fulfill.

Freedom and the Childfree Experience

For childfree women, these pressures often show up in particularly complicated ways.

Despite growing numbers of women choosing not to have children, motherhood is still treated as the default path. Women who choose otherwise are frequently met with questions, assumptions, and subtle messages that their lives are incomplete, selfish, or somehow less meaningful.

Many childfree women spend years explaining their decisions to family members, coworkers, acquaintances, and even strangers. Some are confident in their choice. Others feel more ambivalent. Many experience both certainty and grief at different points in their lives.

What often goes unrecognized is how exhausting it can be to continually defend a life that feels right to you.

Men are rarely asked to justify their decision not to become fathers. Women, on the other hand, are often expected to provide explanations, reassure others, and demonstrate that they are still contributing to society in acceptable ways.

Even now, freedom for women is often conditional. We are free to choose—as long as the choices we make remain familiar, comfortable, and understandable to everyone around us.

When Personal Struggles Aren't Just Personal

One of the most helpful shifts that can happen in therapy is recognizing that our struggles do not exist in isolation.

Anxiety does not emerge in a vacuum.

Neither does perfectionism, burnout, chronic self-doubt, or the feeling that no matter how much you accomplish, it is never quite enough.

Many women have been taught, directly or indirectly, that their value comes from what they produce, how much they give, how useful they are to others, or how successfully they perform the roles expected of them. When those expectations become internalized, it becomes difficult to distinguish between what you genuinely want and what you've been told you should want.

A feminist perspective does not suggest that every struggle is caused by society or that personal responsibility doesn't matter. Rather, it asks us to consider the larger context in which our struggles develop.

Sometimes the question isn't, "What's wrong with me?"

Sometimes the better question is, "What have I been taught to believe about myself, and is that belief still serving me?"

That question can be profoundly liberating.

What Kind of Freedom Are We Creating?

As America celebrates 250 years, I find myself thinking less about patriotic slogans and more about unfinished work.

The story of this country has always been shaped by people who refused to accept that freedom belonged only to a select few. Every expansion of rights in American history happened because ordinary people challenged the status quo and demanded something better.

For women, that work is not finished.

Not while reproductive rights remain contested.

Not while women continue to carry disproportionate caregiving burdens.

Not while motherhood is treated as both an expectation and a liability.

Not while childfree women are asked to justify choices that men rarely have to explain.

Not while so many women still feel compelled to earn their worth through achievement, self-sacrifice, and endless productivity.

Freedom is not simply the right to choose from a menu of socially acceptable options.

Freedom is the ability to build a life that genuinely reflects who you are.

It is the freedom to question inherited expectations. To redefine success. To create relationships, families, careers, and identities that align with your values rather than someone else's vision for your life.

Perhaps one of the most radical acts available to women today is deciding that our lives belong to us—not to tradition, not to politicians, not to productivity culture, and not to anyone else's expectations.

Two hundred and fifty years into the American experiment, that still feels like a revolution worth participating in.

Therapy for Women Seeking a More Authentic Life

At Rebuild and Grow, I work with women navigating anxiety, perfectionism, life transitions, identity questions, and the pressure of living up to expectations that no longer fit.

If you're ready to explore what a more authentic, values-driven life could look like, therapy can help. Together, we can make space for the questions that matter most—and help you build a life that feels like your own. Contact me today and we can get started.