Today is the International Day of the Girl Child and the theme for this year is GirlForce: Unscripted and Unstoppable.
This is a letter from my heart to every young girl born or living in a patriarchal society like ours. I know that your identity and destiny has already been foretold even before your existence. Written down with seemingly indelible ink in the hearts of unfeeling and immovable men and women who seek to suppress and fit you into a mold that has been created for you from ages past. Although you are young and still trying to find yourself, they have started projecting these narratives on you – telling you who are; what you are made for and how your life is supposed to be. But everything in you screams against it. Deep down, you know that you don’t just want to be what they say you are supposed to be. You want to be more or just something else entirely. You are at a constant war with yourself. You are fighting endless mind battles because what you want or need to be is completely opposite of or a little different from their expectations, dreams and aspirations for you. But you don’t have to keep fighting fate. What you really are has to eventually win or else you would never be at peace with yourself or feel fulfilled. You do not need to feel fear about what their displeasure or disapproval would bring to you because at the end of the day, you will be happy and that matters more than anything. You should know that your happiness is one factor the ones who decide your fate don’t regard or take into consideration but it should be topmost priority for you. That and also striving to make an impact in the world or leave the world a better place. But you can’t do that by letting them create your life’s path. The only way you can do that is by choosing to be find your identity or your purpose, pursue your passion and live your own dreams in your own way damning society’s script.
To do this effectively, you need to realize or know that there is nothing that you set your heart to accomplish that you cannot do. No height is too high and no achievement is too grand for you. If you want it, you work towards it and it is yours. You have the right to ambition. You have the right to climb the highest mountains and soar in the skies. You have the right to ascend the stars and travel distant galaxies. Nobody can stop you because you are a force of nature. The fire to be more than you were told you can be burns brazenly within you.
All the limitations you were ever told because of your gender and femininity are all a myth. History has shown us that these fables have been trumped over and over again and proven wrong by various amazing women who have gone before us. Some of whom had to be endure severe punishements and other forms of hardships for daring to believe and act differently from what society prescribed. As a young girl living today, I implore you to never take their hard earned sacrifices and heroic examples for granted rather let their lights and courageous deeds in times when it wasn’t convenient spur you unto being more than you thought you could even in the midst of opposition or seeming limitations.
You hold the key to who you eventually become. Not society. Not your parents. Not the stereotypes or the scripts they have written for you. You are the only thing that can quench the fire of ambition, quest for knowledge and stop yourself from being who you were made to be but I know you would never let that happen. You would stand tall and high, work hard and fight the things they have told you because you are beyond ordinary. You are the girl force – unscripted and unstoppable!

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