The TRUTH about Gen X!

I’ve been so busy doing life that I sometimes forget to look up and take inventory.

Classic Gen X behavior.

We were the kids who learned early that no one was coming to rescue us — the ignored generation who solved our own problems, negotiated resources with siblings, figured out how to get places, managed boredom, bruises, and breaking the rules. I rode my bike 10 miles each way to get to dance class on Saturday mornings — a class that I found and paid for with my babysitting money.

People say Gen X “doesn’t care.” And in some ways, that’s true. But it’s not apathy — it’s a survival skill.

When you grow up as a kid in an adult world, you learn to toughen up fast.

I’m a middle child in a middle generation — sandwiched between two cultural giants: the Boomers and the Millennials. There aren’t many of us. The Pill and abortion access made sure of that. If you weren’t conceived, there was a high chance you were aborted — facts.

Gen X is small in number, but we learned to be fierce because we had to be.

In my family, resources weren’t handed out — you fought for them. I figured out early that money was the gatekeeper, so I started working at 11. My husband did too — both of us born in the fall of 1966.

We grew up navigating real life before we had the vocabulary to explain it.

Drugs, alcohol, no curfews, violent playgrounds, and absolutely zero parental supervision. Teachers complimented me with lines like “she’s the boss of the playground,” today the super soft call it bullying.

We’re the generation raised on Cold War bomb drills — heads under desks, knowing damn well that wood and metal legs weren’t going to save us. Crawl under the desk, tuck your head between your knees and kiss your _ss goodbye.

We weren’t shielded. Not emotionally. Not physically. Not socially.

No band aids for those bloody knees - school budget cuts. No helmets and sometimes not even brakes — literally.

So spare us the soft language.

The “I’m sorry you feel that way.” The “self-care,” “authentic self,” “gaslighting,” and “me too/me time” scripts.

We didn’t grow up expecting anyone to take care of us, watch over us or to validate us. We didn’t expect the government to feed us. If you were hungry, you found a way to eat — or you learned how to be hungry. And that wasn’t trauma — that was life.

And guess what? That hardship created the most resourceful, inventive, quietly powerful generation of the modern era. Google? YouTube? Tesla? Amazon? Yeah — Gen X built those.

We don’t need applause either. We just want you to suck it up, do the work and do it without fanfare.

We don’t need to be understood.

But if you want to work with us or befriend us, here’s the cheat code:

Be real.
Be direct.
Don’t flatter, don’t preach!
Don’t assume we think like Boomers.
Don’t assume we align with Millennials.

We are independent.
We are entrepreneurial.
We are focused.
We are unapologetically self-reliant.
We keep our politics, our money, and our beliefs to ourselves — because we were raised to know those things are personal.

The absolute worse thing you can do to Gen X (at work) is be a tattle tell — this is considered the WORST of the WORST of human qualities to a Gen X person.

Shut yo mouth. If you tell on me, you’re canceled. Period.

We perceive this as a full on betrayal, as petty and a total utter waste of time.

And for the record?
We can still out-dance every generation in the room.

Gen X: strong, steady, hungry, capable, inventive, unbothered — and absolutely amazing!