When I was a young, I learned a very important lesson. I learned that things are different.
I learned that the rules are rewritten, the expectations redirected. I learned that there are good things and bad things that come with being a man; I learned that there are good and bad things that come with being a woman.
I learned that women are braver than what men, society and global community often give them credit for. I learned that my body is viewed through different lenses by different people.
I learned that I'm expected to apologize, even when you're not wrong, and you learn that sometimes I'm just to be seen and not heard.
I learned that life is not always fair and that it is less important to be smart and driven and talented and more important to be pretty and ditzy and to smile wide fresh white teeth and glossy, gooey lips.
I learned that it is not the color of my hair that matters, but the vibrancy of my intellect. It's not the bust size that matters, but my brain power.
I learned that yes, these child-bearing hips will one day make great babies and that I have a power no man will ever understand or steal. I have the power to make another human life.
When I learn that the doctrines the society sits so comfortably upon are wrong, I will feel empowered, invigorated, righted beyond belief. I'll feel alive and strong and hungry.
I will...
I will feel taller and faster and brave. I will feel womanly and feminine and vulnerable.
And so I start making promises. Promises to carry myself through the highs and the lows, the summers and the winters, the good and the bads. I make promises not to apologize, not to be silenced, not to be withered into submission just because I'm a woman.
I promise, instead, to fight back, fight harder, to laugh louder and longer into its seat whenever it dares to stand against me.
I make promises to be more accepting, more appreciative. I make promises not to make the same mistakes again, but to at least make them once - so at some point, I'll know better than to make them again.
I make promises because I deserve to be hopeful.
I deserve to be optimistic. I deserve to be everything that I want. I deserve to be happy, to be full, to be fed and loved and clothed and sad and scared and excited and terrified.
So the girls who don't yet know that there are differences in this world - to the ones who are learning, slowly, that there are certain paths we're told not to walk, to the ones who are too scared to fight back against the walls keeping them form the greener grass on the other side: Don't hold back, don't feel confined to the box you're currently standing in; don;t feel limited to the rules people tell you to follow; don't feel like you're not worth more.
You are. You are ambition, you are power, you are sugar and rain and strong coffee.
You are determination, you are beautiful, you are ice when the world needs cooling and heat when the winds roll in.
You are honey and cinnamon. You are poise and you are praise. You are the makers of promises, the dreamers of dreams.
You are very reason to hope.
