To be a woman, for me, means carrying within me an entire lineage of silences. Growing up hearing “shhh” before “I love you.”
To be a woman, for me, means to write. To turn words into walls, roofs, windows. To build a world where wounds are not shameful. Where every person I have loved has a place. To write to understand myself and to be understood. To write so I do not lose myself.
To be a woman, for me, means to write as if etching my scars into paper. To seek recognition in words, to heal through them, to lay upon the writing desk not just my body, but the storm within me.
To be a woman, for me, is to write as if I have something to prove. As if every word is an apology for all the times I swallowed my voice. As if, if I could find the perfect sentence, I could change something. I could fix something. Maybe even myself.
To be a woman, for me, is to know the sound of a child’s silence when they no longer cry. To recognize the slow fading of a person no one notices. To carry on my skin the imprints of unspoken words and of hands that never learned how to hold gently.
To be a woman, for me, is to carry in my womb a home I abandoned at fourteen, with a suitcase larger inside than out. To learn to leave before I learned to stay. To leave without knowing how to return. To learn that sometimes home is just a place you revisit, but never remain. That some people exist only to be left behind.
To be a woman, for me, is to be an island. Shipwrecked between who I was and who I could have been. With empty hands and a heart brimming over. Waiting to be found. Or maybe, to find myself—and simply be.