You are seen.
Today is a day, one of three hundred sixty-five, that has been ordained for you. I find that funny, strange even, that we have to pick one day to acknowledge women around the world. Because without women, without you, without me, there wouldn't be a world.
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| {via Unsplash} |
You are strong even when you taste dirt on your tongue from your face pressed against the ground one more time, yes, one more time because standing became too much.
You are valiant even when the world has decided that you don't fit the Joan of Arc model because of this or that or the other thing. Warrior isn't defined by the sword you lift but the way you wield what is placed in your hand.
You are royal even when your throne room is the inner most parts of the bathroom, tucked behind frosted glass while you hum and moan and groan contractions of physical birth and soul-rushes alike.
You are woman. Wild fighter weeping on the battlefield, blood-soaked between your legs as you pour out life month after month after month. Your body is a warzone, the kind that leaves you gasping and reeling and realizing that fertile ground is so often watered by tears and blood, ploughed by fingers gouging rich soil.
Boardroom to kitchen to backyard garden to podium. You are Malala and Mary Magdalene and Jael and Lady Liberty. You are lioness, re-born and re-birthed and re-breathed with breath that only comes from one place. Because words echo across time: little girl, Arise. And rise she did, little girl dead to woman alive, with her fingers against the palm that would one day pit deep with marks made for the love of her.
For women.
Because He loved women. When He rose, Hell left bleeding in His wake, it was woman that saw Him first. It was woman who understood the moment He said her name. Because she was worth those four letters on His tongue. First she was woman, then she was Mary.
So woman, today, you are seen. Be you standing strong with hammer and nail for nation-saving or crouching low beside a desert scrub, you are seen.
