How to Handle a Hate Email: 3 Tips From a Real Experience
By Violette de Ayala, Founder of FemCity
The Day It Happened
This week, my daughter fell at work. I heard about it the way every parent dreads: a call, a shaky voice, and the words "I heard a snap when I fell." I did not think twice. I canceled two meetings, picked her up, and took her to urgent care. She is okay.
I had also sent a short note to the FemCity community that day, letting them know I had to cancel a session and apologizing for the short notice.
What I did not expect was the email waiting for me after.
A FemCity member had seen that I stepped away from something to go get my daughter, and she wrote to tell me I was a bad mother, that by rushing to help my daughter I was raising kids with "no accountability," and that my children would never be successful because of the way I was parenting them. She added more hate filled comments about me and FemCity for good measure.
I sat with that for a minute. Then I did what I always try to do when something like this lands in my inbox. I did not react. I processed. And out of that came three things that genuinely helped me get through it, not performative positivity, just what actually worked.
Tip 1: Get Curious About Them, Instead of Angry at Them
My first instinct was not to defend myself. It was to wonder about her. What kind of day, or year, or life leads someone to sit down and write a stranger a message like that? And what leads someone to reread it four times in two days?
I thought about the time it must have taken her. The energy. The anger she was carrying that needed somewhere to go, and apparently needed to keep going back to.
Honestly, I just felt sad for her. Not in a superior or dismissive way, in a real way. Because carrying that much anger toward a woman helping her injured daughter is not about me at all. It is about whatever she is holding. That reframe did not erase the sting, but it moved me out of "why is she attacking me" and into "I hope she finds some peace," which is a much easier place to sit.
Tip 2: Check In With Yourself, and Let the Receipts Speak
Before I let one email tell me who I am, or who my children will become, I did something simple. I reviewed my own mothering. Not defensively, honestly. I thought about the ways I show up for my kids, the moments I have chosen them over everything else, the version of motherhood I actually live, not the one a stranger imagined in two sentences.
I came back with a clear answer. I am a good mother. My three children are adults now, and they are successful, grounded, and living genuinely great lives. Not because I need to list that to convince anyone else of it, but because I have the receipts, the actual lived proof, in my own memory and in front of my own eyes, of who I am and what I have raised.
That step mattered more than anything else. You have to let your own truth outweigh someone else's projection.
Tip 3: Respond From Love, Not From Defense
This was the hardest part, and also the most important. I did not reply to prove her wrong. I did not reply to explain myself. I wrote back and thanked her, for caring enough about my children to say something at all. I also acknowledged the handful of real conversations we had before this, and told her honestly how much I had enjoyed talking with her those times. I wanted her to know I remembered a version of her that was not filled with anger, and that somewhere along the way, I hoped she could find her way back to that. I told her I sent her love, and that I genuinely wished her well.
Not because she deserved a gracious response. Because I did. Responding with love is not about the other person, it is about who you want to be on the other side of a moment like that. Bitterness would have cost me more than her email ever could.
And then I removed her from our community.
Love and boundaries are not opposites. They live together. I could genuinely wish her peace, and still know she no longer had a place in a space I have spent 17 years building on trust, safety, and heart centered leadership since founding FemCity in 2009. So I removed her from our list and blocked her from FemCity. Not from anger. From clarity. A soul aligned community only stays soul aligned if you protect it, even when the person you are protecting it from is someone you also hope heals.
The Takeaway
If you are a mother, a business owner, a creator, or just a human being who has ever received a message like this, I hope these three tips give you somewhere to land. You do not owe anyone a defense of your character. But you do owe yourself curiosity, honesty, and the choice to lead with love, while still protecting your peace, your family, and your community, without apology.
My daughter is better. I am too. And that member? I genuinely hope she finds some peace, just not inside the community I have built for women who lift each other up.
Violette de Ayala is the founder of FemCity, a global community for women entrepreneurs built on trust, safety, and heart centered leadership since 2009.