oh to be a woman

oh to be a woman

oh to be a woman so soft and fierce. to birth & stretch & carry & express the achy beating, breathing parts of life. It is so wildly wonderful & impossibly disheartening to be a woman. I’ve lived most of my life as a deeply emotional & sensitive female. as I think is relatively common for young girls, the adults in my life frequently framed this as a character flaw, perhaps not always verbally. I observed that to have a soft heart in the face of so much cruelty was not, in fact, a strength, but an embarrassing weakness of self.

Thank goodness I don’t believe what I witnessed. There was a brief chunk of my life where I hardened. I let the mushy parts of me grow callous & cold, until all I felt was deep apathetic indifference. But along with such hardening came the absence of feelings. Numb & apathetic & alone & stuck. Life lost so much flavor, drained & paled of color. While it didn’t last long, that was my least favorite version of me; and to think it’s one that so often women are pushed into becoming. Feelings & honesty, truth & vulnerability are too scary for so many; to soften & stay is the greatest strength womanhood has taught me.

one of my biggest fears is to grow so inwardly stagnant that the tender parts of me harden to a place where the curious little girl has no place else to go but deeply darkly hidden. I am so humbly grateful for the women in my life. The times where I felt the darkest & most in need of a hiding space, you rescued me in your snuggly warm, comfy cozy, mama arms. You held me in the dark. You stayed. You have taught me the ferocity of remaining gentle & true, the ability to soften through discomfort & pain; to choose closeness & honesty over resistance to empathy; to hold yourself tight & tall when so much of the world would prefer you hid.

Women are fierce. To hold joy & loss so eloquently messily. To use our voices & spines when our bodies have been objectified. To sing while hot tears burn our cheeks. To run into the dark for those we love. To cartwheel on a beach with a broken heart. To try, to remain, to hope & to heal.

oh to be a woman