As the years go by, you will learn that the beautiful thing about growing up isn’t just the candles blown, but the way you light up into someone new, the way you’ll learn about the traits you never knew you had, the way they flicker not just in the dark, the way they continue to shimmer even with the years passing by. And while you steady your hands to cut the pieces of your cake, you will find that your hands grow steadier with each passing year, and the slices grow

Sometimes maybe the best thing about being a woman is the way you can hide your worries behind a facial mask and the way you can label your bad days as “hormones” until you start wondering if maybe all these hiding have made you not heard enough - when you raise your hands in class but they aren’t always as high enough, when you leave work an extra five minutes earlier to rush for your sick child and you find in your appraisals that you just aren’t good enough,