Face it. Being a young woman has its trials and tribulations. In my specific scenario, I ended up being a seventeen-year old mom, uncertain of what her future would hold, afraid of what the world would utter behind her back. And still, as time passed and life episodes ripened my passage into this journey we call life, many times I stood quietly in corners, shy and intimidated in my pursuits.

What to do? When to do it? Will everyone agree? Will I be loved? Will I be disliked?

Well, to hell with it.

You see, a grand revelation has protruded into my reality and I'm loving it. I'm 29 and I'm going to keep it real for you today.

Artwork by Escha van den Bogerd

Yeah, that sums it all up. It's wisdom in its simplicity. I feel confident, assured, alert, intelligent, sexy, and content. Finally, in my 29 years on this planet, I am feeling comfortable in my skin.

It's not that as a younger woman I have not possessed these qualities. They have always been there but never have they existed in my soul as bold as they do now. Before, I was mortified of ridicule, afraid of gossipers, silenced by nay-sayers. But now…

If I choose to hang my head, it is from humility and never from shame or sadness.

Because now from within me comes a passionate confidence that exudes from my eyes, in my voice, deriving from my heart. It is a raging sentiment that differentiates the amateur, budding girl from the existential, blooming, phenomenal woman.

They say that with age develops a man's good looks. I say that with age a woman only gets better. She stretches in her wisdom, takes stake in her claims, and assumes her perfectly deserving role of a queen.

Because we women are marvelous and as we mature we revel in our completeness. The self-assuredness that we lack as young girls we envelope in our passage through time. We recognize our grace, our beauty, our irreplaceability and wear it proudly on our heads like shining crowns.

It is a state of mind only attained through wealth of experience, through time, through knowledge, through blood, sweat, and tears. It differs from the confidence of a young woman…

It is a full, embellished, pure state of being where you are secure in your womanhood, in your existence, where you don't turn back to hear the whispers in the crowd.

It is the onset of this new type of confidence that allows a woman to sink in all her glory.

And, with that, I and so many others like me, proclaim to the corners of this Earth:

I'm gonna live my life.

Comments (1)

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S. Rodriguez said:

I love this piece! It embodies so many truths that we sometimes can not see until someone eloquently spells it out, literally. Thank you again for an inspiring message.

June 06, 2008

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