Letter to my tiny women.

My girls.

Every day I'm completely humbled and delighted to observe what amazing individuals each of you are. I marvel. I'm dazzled. I'm made breathless by your tiny-woman tenacity, your bravery, your intelligence, your compassion, your fierceness and your nurture.


You're tiny little she-people, and I'll admit that some days I get up intimidated at the task of raising you, and some days, I wake up and grin stupidly like a teen that's just been kissed for the first time over the fact that I get to spend the day with you. Some days, both.

Being a girl is a tricky thing, and I'll tell you why: we're powerful, and everyone knows it. Our bodies are shape-shifters, morphing as life demands. Our hearts are violently protective and exquisitely compassionate. Our minds can work like trees...like power lines, making connections between emotion, intuition and intellect in ways that defy convention, and we can have all of these things knocked out by breakfast.

One of our greatest strengths is that we're willing to be made vulnerable in order to sustain life and care for those who are completely helpless. Both men and women have exploited this gift in countless ways over thousands of years, rather than honoring life, and have twisted the powerful gift to look like weakness. This, dear ones, is a lie.

We are not weak, loves. We are fantastically strong, in body, mind and heart. Willingness to be tied to the fate of the vulnerable is not weak, dear ones. It is honorable, wise and good, though the temptation is to blame ourselves as weak (we are not) or to see those who depend on us as shackles (they are not). This world's conscience and wisdom are weak. We are not.

Because it's easy to have sex, but hard to birth and nurture a child, we are the target of many opinions, because we are the life-holders. Everyone and their aunt Louise has an opinion about everything from what kind of toilet paper we should use to our destiny and purpose in life. They would seek to define what sort of behavior makes one a "lady", what sort of things we should take interest in, what sorts of limitations we should accept. Women and men are equally guilty of this, loves, and with different agendas. Don't assume that every cage comes in predictable form.

There have always been those among us who think critically, and who inspire courage when a freedom becomes a convention, and the wings given to us become fetters.

Balance has come in waves like the tide, with a push and pull of opinions about what women should or shouldn't do, how much power we should or shouldn't have, how many children we should or shouldn't have, and how we should raise them, if at all. Everyone wants a piece of our lives. Everyone would like to own us, because we hold the future, in our wombs and arms and breasts.


When your great, great grandmother was a girl, women put lipstick on and marched into the streets as a statement of independent thinking. When your great grandmother was a girl, "nice" girls wore makeup and pretty dresses and vacuum cleaners. Then came the hippies, who won back women's right to not wear makeup or a bra. Then came women who donned their power suits and broke the glass ceiling at work.

Your great, great, great grandmother had her children at home, no doubt. You great grandmother was medicated into a stupor for her births. Your grandma was wide awake and proud for hers, and your own mama chose to have you at home. And so we continue to come full circles, again and again, as others tell us what's "best" for the ones we hold dear, we answer out of hope or fear, and then reap the harvest of our choices.

There's a push and pull, like waves of the ocean, calling us into balance, calling us to nurture, calling us to freedom, calling us, calling us...

Each new wave brings an element that was lost in the last, bringing life back to order, back to balance. The moon, who governs so much of our biology, also calls a sea of women to wash away harsh ideas and damage done like yesterday's sand castle on the beach. One scarcely recedes before the next crashes on it's heels in response.




Whatever wave you find yourself a part of, whatever part of balance you play in history, whichever path you chose, I pray with all my soul that you make it out of an independent mind, out of your unique intuition, and from a heart that feels no restraint from guilt. May you find your own unique voice in it all, and may you retain a pure, strong thread of Self and self-understanding as the waves crash over and over throughout your lifetime.

Trust your heart, dear ones. When in doubt, throw away all fear and all guilt and do what your instinct tells you to do. Understand that you needn't discard everything that makes you distinctly and wildly "woman" in order to count for something. Understand that you needn't let someone else define what makes a good woman for you, precious hearts. Be fluid, be flexible, be willing to flow like the waves of the ocean when you must.

If, in your moments of peace, your heart is happy and full, and if your spirit is singing, then you are being all you were meant to be. Wherever you are along that journey, as long as you're traveling, your mama will be so proud of you.