Self-love Means Sticking to the [Girl] Code

When I look at another woman, I see myself. Anytime another woman shows her heart, shows her scars, tells her story, I am instantly thankful because she had the courage to do something that she may not have realized she was doing. She had the courage to be a beacon of hope for another woman. She had the courage to show another woman that they are not alone in this fight.

Growing up, I lacked community from other women, not because I wasn’t open to being around, learning from, or connecting with other woman, but because the women I had experience with always seemed to burn me in the end. It always felt like I was too trusting of the wrong women. Women who were older than me, women who held roles of power, girls my age that befriended me, play aunts, my mom’s close friends, cousins my age, etc. Being told “there was just something about you that I didn’t like in the beginning” and a younger me reflecting on what behavior could have possibly caused this. Like did I say the wrong thing, did I not greet this person properly, was I being too awkward…grown me now realizes that other people will TRY to project their insecurities onto you. Grown me still gets this same treatment from time to time and grown me is like, “girl…fuck you”. If no one has told you, let me be the first…when you show up as yourself, when you have been polite, when you have been genuine and a person still does not feel you, that is their business. Please don’t make it yours.

There is an unspoken code that [most] men abide by . It’s like even if they don’t know or like each other there is still a sense of solidarity and principle. A code that women lack. We deem it more acceptable to say, “I don’t get along with other females”, “I get along better with guys”, “I am not like other girls”…as if somehow, the very nature of our being is unacceptable - even to us. We have taken pride in distancing ourselves from our femininity.

#GirlCode, can it actually exist? Can we fix each other’s crowns?

Fixing another woman’s crown extends beyond telling her a hair is out of place, getting lint off her clothing, letting her know there is toilet paper stuck to her shoe, or lipstick on her teeth. These are vain things. The internet has made it so easy to tear the next woman down. We air out each other’s dirty laundry for fun. We make it difficult for women to speak up about mistreatment and abuse. We compare ourselves to other women instead of basking in our own light. We talk about each other behind our backs. We copy each other’s work. We don’t honor the women who come before us, and the list goes on and on.

My charge for women today is this; even in the most opportune moments, the moments where you are pissed off, the moments where you have to sacrifice, the moments where you have absolutely nothing to gain, can you still fix another woman’s crown?