Embracing The Woman In Me

Growing up, I never truly understood what it meant to be a woman. I was told stories, taught values, and given rules. Some made sense, while others did not. It was only on the day I got my period that I felt an unspoken shift, a quiet but heavy change in how the world saw me. Suddenly, there was a certain way I was expected to sit, speak, move, and exist. It was a way that felt different from what I was used to. It was not my parents who told me these things. It was the world around me. And somewhere along the way, It was me telling those to myself.

As a child, I witnessed what misogyny truly was. It was not only in words but in glances, silences, and the invisible lines drawn around girls. It was confusing, disheartening, and quietly suffocating. I began to believe that women were somehow the reason behind their own oppression. Being a girl, I thought I was the problem. Slowly, I started resenting the parts of me that made me one. The softness, the curiosity, and the desire to simply be myself felt wrong.

So I chose a disguise, one that looked a little less like me and a little more like “freedom”. I started dressing like a boy, wearing shirts and pants, cutting my hair short, and taking my bicycle out for rounds. I convinced myself that rebellion was masculinity. I did not realize then that it was not just comfort I was seeking. It was far away. Distance from the version of myself that the world told me to shrink. I preferred pants over skirts and black over pink. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that strength could only exist if femininity did not.

For years, I felt guilty for enjoying the comfort of being mistaken for a boy. It felt like safety and protection from judgment, expectations, and difference. I hid not only from people but also from myself. I did not understand then that liking something associated with another gender did not make me less of who I was. It only made me human.

It is strange, looking back now, how I once hated everything I have come to love. The laughter, the gentleness, the compassion, and the quiet power that comes with being a woman were all things I had overlooked in my search for strength. I had mistaken softness for weakness, when in truth, it takes unimaginable courage to be soft in a world that demands you to harden.

Today, I understand that strength and softness are not opposites. They are two sides of the same truth. Femininity is not fragility. It is power expressed with grace. I have learned to love the parts of me I once tried to hide and to celebrate the tenderness I once called weakness. I no longer run from womanhood. I walk toward it, fully and fearlessly.

Being a woman was never my limitation. It was, and always will be, my greatest strength.

Written By Rameesha Sheriff