Covers for an imaginary book on the salt circles my younger self poured around themself as protection. Seeing oneself as not-like-the-other-girls is at once born of external terror, of arrogance, and of creeping and vast loneliness. We don’t have to keep doing this.
The way some of us assigned female at birth compete with one another for true womanhood, motherhood, purity, or leadership, is unnecessary and tragic. We’re not crabs in a bucket. This is not a zero-sum game. There is nothing we stand to lose by joining hands in solidarity – with our own communities as we describe them and with every other person interested in making this life more beautiful.
Love thy neighbor.