I’ve always hated the word “woman.” It’s awkward to say, two lumps shoved out by lip and tongue. For most of my life, the word has carried connotations that I wanted nothing to do with. I loved being a girl, wearing dresses while playing soccer, braiding my doll’s hair and dreaming of riding horses. Girlhood meant freedom and bare feet and listening to trees.

Womanhood was the prison waiting to claim me once I reached a certain age. It was wearing nylons and showing an excess of emotion and not resting your elbows on the table. It was wearing makeup and combing your hair and not making gross faces at your siblings.

I disaffiliated myself from the word “woman” accordingly.

After almost 20 years of life, however, I’ve finally surrendered and accepted my fate: for better or worse, I am a woman. And while I still feel strange when someone calls me one, I’ve come to understand and respect and love the word which now forms my identity.

I’m honored to take my place alongside the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives, and daughters who have lived before me. In skirts or pants, women have born pain and suffering with a strength that is uniquely theirs. They have stood for justice, for safety, they have loved past the limit of love, spooned broth to the dying, changed diapers, spoken out against oppression, listened and protected and challenged and fed those they love best.

And though not one individual may be said to have accomplished all this, though women have lied and nagged and stolen, though we all struggle with vanity and insecurity, as a sex, we have endured as only women can.

Men and women have both dealt out and received suffering; we have both been given and extended grace. But for today, I want to celebrate the community and history I have been born into. I'm thankful for the lives and words of all the women who have gone before me; I'm proud of my heritage.

I’m proud to be among women who have used their minds to know themselves and the world around them, to read and reason and write and teach, to face challenges without fearing defeat.

I’m proud to be among women whose bodies have stretched to encompass another life, whose physical beings know the meaning of sacrifice and pain in a way that men cannot.

I’m proud to be among women who have known that physical beauty and comfort feed the soul more than philosophical dialogues, who have sought in their manner of life and dress and home and food and occupation to be reminders of grace and goodness to the world around them.

I'm proud to be among women who have created clothes and baskets and books and paintings, who have used their skills to make art.

I'm proud to be among women who have wiped runny noses, bandaged scraped knees, tucked tired bodies to bed, listened to childhood dreams, taught and corrected and encouraged small souls.

I'm proud to be among women who are CEOs and hairdressers, mothers, artists, accountants; women who have dedicated their thought and time to some worthy enterprise, some aspiration greater than their own comfort and self-interest.

Let's celebrate and thank all the women in our lives who have been our friends, mothers, confidants, inspirations, and so much more. It's pretty great to be a female when you can claim as part of your legacy the beauty and strength of a multitude of women.