An Ode to Women Everywhere

Happy International Women’s Day!!

Even though we should celebrate women all year round; it’s nice to have a day dedicated to women (so basically like birthdays?). This is not particularly a bookish post, but just a way to emphasize my appreciation for all the ways one can be a woman. I love how I slowly unlearned our internalized sexism. It’s okay to fit the idea of feminity and it’s okay not to. It’s appreciation for trans women who are fighting for their lives, and being who they are; it’s appreciation for the women fighting for their rights, fighting for what they know is owed and that won’t settle for less. It’s appreciation for those who fit the beauty standards and those who fight for their own bodies to be recognized as beautiful. It’s for the women who have endured trauma, those who are still struggling in their path and those who are further in their journeys. Those with hidden struggles and those with visible ones. Those who embrace motherhood and those who don’t; those who are content by their own company and those who are happily accompanied. It’s for all of us, no matter who we are, what we look like and what we do.

Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.

— Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom.