March 8th, 2014 "A Letter to My Female Students"

Among the uncertainties of life you may count on this, child: stockings will always rip on your
way out the door, and you will always feel fat when you most wish to feel thin. You will not ever be what you think you are, and there is freedom in this. You are neither as perfect nor as ugly as you think. You are tempered with all flaws of realness and this is to be prized and preferred over plastic. Dear girl, do not doubt your worth because he doesn't, or couldn't, see it; he doesn't have eyes sharp enough to bring you into focus, yet. Girl: you are not what you did with that boy. You are not any part of it, except what you claim. You do not need to change an inch of your body or hair, but, the skin you live in is yours and only yours; your body is both temple and canvas.. Paint it, pierce it, modify it, expand it, reduce it, but only ever for yourself. Dear girl: if I could live a thousand times over the pain I have felt in my womanhood to spare you the pain you will feel in yours, I would! But, in the living is the learning, and I can offer a surviving shoulder and strong arms. Come and receive strength, and then go and learn to speak these words through your own lips. And know you are loved with a love that is bigger than your biggest fear, and that I am too, and that all the scraped knees in the world or melting paper crowns cannot negate our regal birthright.