Relephant Reads:

This is For the Women Who Don’t Give a F*ck. {Adult}
Strong Independent Woman Syndrome.
For the Women who Hold Too Much.

 

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I don’t know how you like your coffee on misty mornings.

I don’t know which rooftop you kick your favorite sneakers off to climb, what haunts your thoughts at night or what makes you want to stand up and fight.

But I do know you—and I know your heart.

You are the woman who zips her own dress up for work every morning. The woman laughing under the rain without anyone to help you jump over puddles. The woman who runs up stairs and double checks locks before ending every day. The woman curled up under sheets, in the corner of a bed meant for two.

I know you because we share the same heart.

We all arrived here through different roads, different highways and different dirt paths. Some of us are bruised. Some of us are spotless. How we got here doesn’t matter—only how we’re tied together.

We are the women who spend our sweatpants-wearing Sunday afternoons alone. The women who treat ourselves to fancy Valentine’s Day dinners. The women who buy ourselves carnations after making mistakes.

We are the women who’ve decided to bravely put love on the back burner. We know we’ll one day be mothers of beautiful children who’ll share the same clusters of freckles on their noses. We know there’ll come a time when we’ll look into someone’s eyes and see a reflection of our dreams.

We never for a second doubt that we deserve all this or that it’ll happen. But we know that now is not that time, and we accept it with grace and patience.

Couples in black and white romantic movies make us smile without wincing. We sing along to cheesy ballads on radios knowing that one day, one of them will be sung for us. We go to sleep every night happy no one’s taken our minds hostage. We aren’t waiting. We aren’t still, or frozen with hope. We are in a constant state of motion, dedicating everyday to ourselves and the goals our souls ache for.

To the women with warm hearts and cold hands, I hope you know how brave you are.

Solitude can get deafening sometimes, but self-sufficiency is a trait even warriors have trouble mastering. You are your own commander, fighting frostbite, fidgeting in your mittens. Never apologize for the fires you light.

Carry our flag with you and know you’ll never be alone.

Beside you stands an army of women marching to the same heartbeat in bedrooms that are oceans and countries away, carrying the same promises to themselves throughout their days. Who never allow anyone to tell them what they should have, or who they should need.

And never let anyone tell them when love should, or shouldn’t be.

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Author: Naomi Hon

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Chiara Cremaschi/Flickr