resolution

the last in a long tirade

to all the girls out there, the under-25s and under-30 year old women, just coming into the full understanding of what lies between their hips and sags their lower bellies please hear me when i say this : all. that. shit. isn’t. reality.

happiness is not aestheticism, success is not wrist bones.

if you find yourself checking your belly in the mirror, or fervently consuming some coach’s content because you just can’t look away from how “well expressed” and “embodied” she is in her spaghetti strap tank top then this one is for you :

that isn’t what womanhood is.

womanhood is not policing or extracting or perfectionizing or controlling. you can’t become successful at womanhood with gritted teeth satisfaction of “healthy pretty popular.” womanhood is not conditional on having a perfect menstrual cycle, or the perfect husband, or the perfect babies, or the perfect choice to be childless. you can’t get woman enough by thinking certain thoughts about or at your body parts, you can’t earn woman enough by behaving a certain way.

“woman enough” is more like making a new year’s resolution to give yourself 30 seconds when you wake up in the mirror to listen for how the thoughts about your ugly under-eye shadows is actually just the echo of your mother’s voice in her most stressful and under supported times, desperate to survive her postpartum alone. and maybe feeling the pain of the ways she hurt you, and the pain of the ways she was hurt, and the pain of having all that pain living just above your cheekbones.

that’s it, really. soft weepy hearts laid bare in the bathroom amidst bed ratty ponytails and morning breath.

~

we have a responsibility (yes this is what “personal responsibility is actually about) to show ourselves how we really are. teachers especially, we are charged with the enormously significant responsibility of emotionally undressing yourself publicly so that you can be laid bare to be learned upon. that is what being a teacher is.

if you only show your face in videos where you look pretty and the angle is good, if you never release content where you look like a Normal Woman, which is who the fuck you really are, then you can let this be a firm handed invitation into some deep self reflection.

teachers are not performers.

teachers do not wear costumes. they don’t focus on sparkle or preferred camera angle more than their rightful position of humility in service to the development of the student and the self. lay down the armor of your lip flipper and live out loud the reality of how being a woman is a colorful ever changing kaleidoscope of breath taking beauty and slouched tummies and the sparkle of god in the irises and double chins and loud cackling laughter and needing dessert and life. show us LIFE.

let 2026 be the year of showing LIFE lifing, less the curation and judgment. show us a woman who is living, who is eating and being eaten.

if you can’t sell your shit unless you are coiffed, it’s time to iterate.

if you can’t let yourself be seen, belly rolls and all, time to develop yourself so that you can, or find a career that doesn’t involve teaching young women.

we need real hearts and real bodies and pain-love-grief-joy exposed in all our nakedness.

it’s been so boring and so mindless and so un-original and so curated and so empty for so long.

i am feeling resolved to be who i really am. join me.