A Love Letter To: Myself

Reading the letters From D.C.’s

By Sebastian Gonzalez de Leon

A Love Letter To Myself honors the journey of a woman’s quest for self love, acceptance, and empowerment. This 2 hour variety show is the annual fundraiser and showcase for Women In Comedy and is packed with laughs and intimate emotional connection with the audience from start to finish. A diverse group of powerful, local, female pillars in our communities across the country are invited and tasked to write and read aloud love letters to themselves on stage intertwined with laugh out loud moments from an all star comedy cast of performers.

The love letters are written and performed by accomplished women from all walks of life who are making a difference in their communities (business, politics, tech, and more) at our D.C. show at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company are listed here. We hope you enjoy reading them. During the live show these letters were read aloud and the letters were mixed in variety style with a huge, hilarious, all -female cast of all star stand-ups, improvisers, musical comedians, sketch comedians, and more.. Join the journey and maybe think about writing yourself a good old love letter eh?

Dear Brittany,

Growing up you were the type of young woman who just didn’t mess around. You were spoiled rotten by your mom and grandmother, introverted and really didn’t like boys. In school, you took work seriously, sometimes way too seriously. You also really couldn’t stand social injustice at an early age. Your career in activism began after petitioning your high school to offer African American history classes. You collected over 200 signatures, made the news and pissed off the administrators. Being raised by your mother and grandmother came in handy, didn’t it?

One thing you’ve struggled with greatly and overcame was resisting the notion that you are broken and not the “right” type of leader or woman that society demands in the 21st century. You’ve also struggled and overcame the idea that you are not lovable and worthy of investment in relationships or friendships. Because of the pain you have endured, you now have a better sense of what your non-negotiables are and no, you don’t have to compromise for the sake of what is expected of you. You are worthy and no, you weren’t asking for too much. You were just asking the wrong mother*ckers.

I love you because you are the most vulnerable you have ever been and that’s is your power my dear. I know. The rawness in your vulnerability came after losing your uncle to gun violence in the same neighborhood you grew up in as a kid and although that experience was the worst thing to ever happen, it forced you to stand up for yourself in all the ways people didn’t think you could.

At this point, you don’t have anything to lose, but your self-respect. Remember, tough times don’t last, tough people do. No matter how much, you’ve been through, you got this.

“They are afraid, a woman can be this free. this soft. this strong. this color.” — Ijeoma U

In solidarity,
Brittany.

Dear Noorjahan,

You were born with a mission.

Your parents named you Noorjahan Akbar- The Great Light of the World. They never were shy about their expectations. That made you stronger and bolder. It allowed you not to shrink yourself. It allowed you to think big, to dream bigger, and to work until you break your back- sometimes almost literally.

Your parents taught you to read, to write, to organize. They taught you to be brave. As a woman in this world, you needed that. They taught you to march for women’s rights, to stand with survivors of violence and rape, and to defend the right to free thought and speech. Your sisters taught you to be unashamed. Your brothers taught you to fight.

But no one ever taught you to protect you when shit hit the fan.

You were born enraged.

You saw how around you women cowered because of the Taliban, because of their own husbands, brothers, and fathers, and because violence and war always seemed only a breath away.

You saw how little girls learned to bend their shoulders as their breasts developed because they learned to hate and hide their bodies, so “men wouldn’t be tempted”.

You saw a fourteen-year-old girl who was kidnapped and raped for forty days and no one came to save her.

You saw how the men who called themselves heroes watched idly as your sisters got harassed, touched, sold off, stoned to death.

You started working when you were thirteen and like many young laborers, you were vulnerable. You were exposed to pain children should never be exposed to.

You saw yourself become small, as men you knew and men you didn’t know, felt emboldened to harm you, to touch you, to abuse you, simply because you were a girl in their world.

Despite all this, somehow the world expected you to remain intact. The world expected you to be a good girl- to be calm, and nice — — always fucking be nice. but you exploded.

You exploded without any regard for the many pieces of you that were going to be torn apart.

You were never trained to be obedient and quiet- just expected to be so. and when you failed- when you didn’t stay quiet, when moments of rage-filled your head with fire, when you began to explode — they called you Shalita, a bitch.

For years your family, your friends, and even you thought you had an anger problem. They joked about your temper. You began to question your own goodness because you were gaslighted into believing that there was no reason to be enraged. Like many other women, you were expected to smile even as your body became a battlefield.

Through hard work, you taught yourself to channel your anger into action, but even today, sometimes doubt seeps into you and you question yourself. When someone calls you a slut for writing about rape, when people attack you for the simple fact of being a woman who chooses who to love or how to dress, you question your own anger, not their hatred. You spend days, beating yourself up for “losing it again”. Why did I have to respond to that comment? Why did that hate email take up so much of my time and energy? Why? Why? Why? Can’t I get just let it go?

I’m writing today to let you know that you don’t have to let it go. Your moment of rage, of tear-filled anger, of blood rushing to your head, are valid. Your anger as a woman has led you to organize protests, to question warlords, to help change laws. It is not your anger that is the problem. It is theirs. It is the anger of toxic men that has set the world ablaze, not yours.

I’m writing today because I love your rage and I want you to love it more often, more openly, more productively. Don’t let anyone question your right to be angry, to speak up, to challenge the ways of the world.

Be thoughtful in how you express anger. Be thoughtful in how you challenge patriarchy. Be thoughtful in how you speak. But not to appease those who are using the firecrackers inside your head to light you on fire. Rather be thoughtful so you can succeed in smashing the patriarchy. And because the best revenge is your success.

Thank you!

Dear Rahne,

Hello Gorgeous,

Remember how your first girlfriend came out to her gay uncles who had never met you, and their response was, all, “Oh, honey, your poor girlfriend; does she know how hard it’s going to be to wind up ugly?”

Or when you read that statistic in some trivia book at the library when you were a child that informed you that transitioning from male to female would add ten years to your looks.

Now, of course, looks are not everything, but esteem is. If I look good, I feel good; and if I feel good, I look good. It’s a sustainable cycle.

Your esteem was always under attack.

As a child, the men and boys smelled weakness and fragility on you. The girls offered either sympathy or derision. The women pretended not to notice you.

It’s okay that your girlhood was so awkward and lonely, and drawn out well into your adult life. What you lived through was terrifying. Being a girl in a room full of adolescent boys made you a target. Their molds didn’t work on you, so they tried harder to make you fit.

You grew focused and strong and aware. You honed your instincts. You kicked yourself when you second-guessed your instincts, every time.

You found feminist liberation and made that your foundation. You began to adopt and develop mantras and little verbal spells. I remember the first one you cast, which you still always say: Fear Is Never Revolutionary.

You named yourself and walked into the world without backup. Despite constant fugues of dysphoria, you searched libraries of books, music, and film for advice and direction.

You figured it out. You worked and prayed and you kept your eye on the moon.

Soon enough, the people who knew your truest self-outnumbered those who held on to a distant false memory of who they imagined you were.

Soon enough, you found your voice.

Soon enough, you were told that you were an inspiration to others who wished to transition.

Once you knew concretely that your life had had a meaningful impact, everything else you have done was gravy.

Your music, your writing, your partnerships, your performances, your films, your home, your wife, your covens — all of it has been gravy, further flavoring a life well-lived. I wouldn’t change a thing.

As you approached what I like to call “getting your foyer remodeled” your support network really lit up. You have some spectacular friends. You tried to not worry them, but you were in such overwhelming anxiety, worried that things would fall through again, that there would a glitch or a disaster and you’d find yourself back at square one once more.

Your dysphoria flared constantly as a result; hotter and more painful than maybe any other time because fear had found its way into you. That insidious emotion, rooted in “reality” and spiraling in all directions. It was the worst. But you know, you learned a thing then.

Prior to your vaginoplasty, you were always painfully aware of your interstitiality, your body the site of constant betrayal. Navigating the world in that kind of persistent pain is quite a challenge. I still can’t believe you survived that and are standing here to tell this tale.

Thank you for your strength and tenacity. Thank you for doing things that scare you.

With all my love,

Oh wait

PS A life hack I just discovered last night: if you put some leftover red sauce spaghetti on a slice of soft wheat bread, it’s a lot like eating cold pizza, except it’s your sauce. You’re welcome.

All my love,
and fear is never revolutionary,
Rahne

Dear Susannah,

I see you up there on that stage and I can’t believe that that’s me. You look comfortable and confident. You are anything but invisible. I am so proud of how far you’ve come.

I know your secret, though. I know that it is still hard for you to stand up in front of a crowd. That you’ll always be a little nervous and a little drained by being seen.

I also know why you do it. You’ve seen that by saying the right words you can change how people think of themselves and you can empower them to be their best selves.

When you founded your organization, Running Start, were you thinking of me? I think you were.

You know what it’s like to not have a voice, to feel like the odd Woman out, to want to be more than you know how to be.

You work hard to be kind, patient and encouraging to the young women who go through your programs. You treat them the way you always wanted to be treated. You help them overcome the things that held you back. I’m so proud that you dedicated your life to me and girls like me.

Instead of giving in to insecurity and fear, you’ve always chosen to surround yourself with love- love of the young women you train, love of your incredible family and friends, and most importantly, love of yourself. I am so proud of what you’ve become.

Love,
Susannah