(Be)coming Home

Shantel Loh
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

For the lonely women who covet companionship

For the sad women who feign happiness

For the anxious women who can’t “just calm down”

For the abandoned women fighting to defeat an inferior complex

For the overlooked women struggling to hurdle rejection

For the bold women who are mislabeled “insolent”

For the wild women who are portrayed as “tasteless”

For the hopeful women who dismiss naysayers

For the strong women who refuse to cry

For the assertive women who decline submission

For the sensual women whose sexuality is policed and/or shamed

For the full-figured, shapely and thin women whose bodies are satirized, objectified and mocked

For the women with disabilities who crave to be regarded as human always and “disabled” never

For the women who are physically, mentally, socially and spiritually muted by the world’s preference for spineless, tone deaf and mediocre manhood

For the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, girlfriends and wives who sacrifice themselves without reciprocity

For the trans women courageously facing society’s chaotic shunning and violent antipathy

For the Black women whose culture is too often appropriated, whose struggles are always derided, and whose trailblazing creativity is frequently credited to the privileged who stole it after, first, ridiculing it

For those of us who don’t belong, don’t feel safe, don’t feel loved and know that home is nowhere,

May you one day find the peace, love, hope and understanding that awaits you in the indestructible domicile that is your own seraphic, muliebral essence.

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