The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is become a woman. It is a becoming that will last all of my life, each new decade/season/year, bringing new versions of myself. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard. Because it goes on and on. There is no definitive end point or graduation ceremony. It is a task we seemingly have signed up for in perpetuity.
Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, it feels flawless. Sometimes you do feel like Helen Reddy screaming ‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ at the top of your lungs. You feel powerful and capable and strong and able.
Other times, a lot of other times, you feel powerless and small and uncertain and completely confused. It can happen in the blink of an eye. A small moment in a supermarket. A man looking at you the wrong way. A step too close to you. A lightning flash reminder that your physicality is smaller and weaker than the man opposite you.
This week, I turned my car into my street and saw a rubbish truck in the middle of the road. Instinctively, I hit the brakes and waited. However, a man had started crossing the road before my car had finished turning, and when I stopped, he too had to make an abrupt stop. I felt a bang on the back of my car and realised he had hit the trunk. I rolled down my window and shouted something along the lines of, ‘What the hell are you doing?’
The man, who at this point had crossed the road, put the bike he was pushing down on the pavement, walked right up to my window and leaned down, so he was almost face to face with me. He spoke deliberately. Patronisingly. Slowly.
Told me that his life was more important than this piece of metal I was driving. That I shouldn’t have stopped. And some other trite that is too boring to repeat.
Now what I wanted to do, was tell him to get the fuck out of my face. That if he touched my car ever again I’d beat the shit out of him. I wanted to tell him that he should wait until cars have finished turning before he decides to step onto the road. In truth, I wanted to smack him so hard that my hand stung for days.
I did none of those things. I didn’t say a word. I just stared silently at him until he finished his lecture and stepped away from my car. He then proceeded to wave goodbye to me in an entirely ironic and infuriating way, smug and satisfied with himself that he had exerted power and control over me.
What kept running through my mind was how close he was to me. What he might do to me if I said anything. That he wouldn’t have dared hit my car if a man was in the car with me. That he wouldn’t step so close to me if anyone else was with me. But there is something about a woman alone that is so enticing to men who cannot resist holding them down, in one way or another.
It was a glaring reminder that I can sing Helen Reddy and learn how to be a woman and glory in my womanhood and do all the things we’re supposed to, and the next moment I can blink and be put back in ‘my place’ by a man wearing dirty tracksuit bottoms.
I can’t bear the powerlessness of that interaction. I hate that I am a woman who knows what happens when men are physically stronger than you. I resent that my survival instincts overtake my desire to scream in fury at this man. I can’t stand that two other men watched the interaction and did nothing at all.
So the womanhood goes on. Maybe the lessons to be learned this week are ones of survival and self-preservation. Although I resent those lessons and I get petulant and childish and think what’s the point? I may as well give up on the whole independence thing because in truth they will always be biologically stronger than me.
That is, obviously, a ridiculous thought, but the point is we soldier on. I remind myself that somewhere, in some avenues I am powerful. That I can make things happen, and move, and change. I remind myself of the glory of women and while men remain, in most cases, physically stronger than us, and can overpower us, they are in fact, weaker in every other avenue.
I have four poems about women on my bedroom wall. Written by women. And I wanted to share one with you this week. I read it the moment I got home after the above interaction and I’ve read it every day since.
I have walked through enough fire to know
why a woman’s spine is made out of a thousand spears;
why there’s ash caked beneath my fingernails;
why my hair reeks of war.
Woman is synonymous for warrior.
I am a flag of posterity sewn back together,
time after time, by the tears of my ancestors.
I hear the cry of my grandmother
amidst the arson of life’s afflictions,
and her mother and her mother’s mother,
weeping for the battles we’ve been fighting since Eve.
There is something to be said about being born into a man’s world
through the cracked pelvis of a woman.
If our foremothers could fortify us within the furnace of our trails they would testify –
‘You have not succeeded hundreds of generations of warriors
to return to dust without a fight.
There is no temple more sacred than the mother’s womb;
no army more fierce than a sisterhood;
no breastplate more impenetrable than a woman’s love.
The truth of your triumph runs rampant through your bloodline.
Look around. You are not alone. No battle is fought solitarily.
When the sword weighs heavy;
when your neck grows weary;
when you pray for borrowed strength, their shoulders will sustain you.’
I have walked through enough fire to know
why a woman’s spine is made out of a thousand spears.
Men claim to be the stronger species but it is always women holding me up.
The author of this poem is an Australian poet named Cindy Cherie. She’s wonderful and her words brought me so much solace and comfort this week. I hope they do the same for you.
I hope you remember that your spine is made of a thousand spears.
The best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. Say it with me, the best is yet to come.
That poem 🔥
so powerful, and shaming for we men