re-membering women

reflections on international women's day in 2021

I grew up believing Women’s Day was a holiday unique to Eritreans, because we celebrated it every year within our communities. We revered our mothers publicly and loudly. We heralded the fact that our women fought side by side with our men to liberate the country.

But how about when they weren’t making babies or countries. What about the girls who danced? The girls who laughed? The girl who dared to know herself.

I have tried to resist my being and form for a long time. I have tried to resist my femininity, resist my spirit, resist my creativity, resist my voice, resist my being. I know that some of this prison was built by internalized patriarchy and externalized sexual violence. But I built some of this prison too - it was me denying my own power, afraid to be awake in a world that is dark. Afraid to seize the erotic power that emanated from my body and afraid to protect it. Afraid to reconcile the mother, the mistress and the muse. I was afraid to possess the power bestowed upon me by the lineage of mothers I come from, women from the high mountains who dared, because I’ve seen what people have tried to do to women like me. I know what they did to my mother.

As I connect more to my sister, my mother, my cousins, all the women who descend from this maternal lineage, I see how all of us have inherited this indomitable spirit, and discover the safety of stepping into this power because we are not alone. I also see the work that is to be done — the reinstatement of boundaries, unlearning what it means to be a “good girl.” I have the responsibility of strengthening my masculine, so that may feminine can be as soft, freaky, and fluid as she pleases. 

I accept this gift of receptivity that lies within my body, and am finding the ways and means to assert it in a world that is convinced that penetration and productivity is the only way to demonstrate power.

I thank the women who have showed me the way, shocking me into awareness of reality beyond the logic constructs of the defined. I thank the women who have dared to be complex, full, multidimensional, expansive. The women who have mirrored my rage, the women who have mirrored my grace, the women who have mirrored my beauty, the women who have mirrored both the Kali and the Kuan Yin within.  

To my mother, my mother’s mother, my mother’s mother mother, to the Ultimate Mother. I am a child of the Divine. I can no longer deny where I come from, who I am, and the intelligence of this body. I awaken the goddess within, and see the goddess within you. So let’s dance. Get free. The heavens are counting on us to rise.