“Women in pain become birds.” I just read that. I often find myself looking around for the cameras that are surely filming me in this episode. And as I flutter through the inexplicable planned randomness of the page, I think, yes, but not in the way the author meant — small. No, I think women do become birds, but there is beautiful strength in that. A grandness of sky. Adapting in mid flight. Hovering. Not avoiding the breeze, but feeling it. Using it. All while dressed and feathered. 

I say this, not in praise of my own wings, but marveling at those before me. I have been nested and pushed by the best. Elsied and Ivyed into the blue. Words like small were replaced with capable, and I learned to fly. 

It’s not to say that days won’t be fragile. That we won’t be fragile. But we have been given everything we need. Mostly love.

I wrote it long ago. The truth of it still lifts me.  “She believed in the pure randomness of it all. It could happen to anyone at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love.”