What It Means To Be a Woman
Born with Pain Built In, Christina Mokwa + Katherine Alt (2025)
Digital collage
What It Means to Be a Woman
(in 500 Words or Less)
To be a woman is to live as monolith, as duality, as triad // to be a woman is to take a zoftig shape –– to hide your thousand eyes.
To be a woman is to silently sit at the center of the cosmogony, golden thread of your stomach extending to all life.
To be a woman is to be a door — a threshold — crossed and leaned on for lifetimes.
Taken for granted. Open. Liminal.
To be a woman is to be thrashed and beaten — to know the feeling of the cold floor on your delicate, amethyst cheek –– and to convince yourself that you will never, never allow yourself to be put there again.
To be a woman is to be a mourning dove, an everyday hopeful blackbird — singing despite the madness.
To be a woman is to live with one eye over your shoulder — always silently waiting to be dragged away. To be a woman is to be burdened with knowing the histories –– words like hysteria, sanatorium, and my personal favorite you need to calm down.
To be a woman is to speak of the unspoken gifts to your mother, only to watch her blanch –– and to know, unequivocally, how utterly alone you are.
To be a woman is to spend a lifetime making peace –– not spent fixing who you are, but simply no longer ignoring what you’ve always known is inside you.
To be a woman is an individual prescription.
To be a woman is to become bedfellows with pain, rage, discomfort –– a trio of unfulfilling lovers who never seem to know when to leave.
To be a woman is to twirl magic around your fingers like hair — errant and unthinking, utterly natural.
Being a woman is to keep your head and hips on a swivel — to count teeth and bodies –– to say please and thank you –– while the waiter asks how you’d like your tea.
To be a woman is to continually, obstinately carve a Middle Way // To be a woman is to be light on your feet while in chains –– nights filled with plans to make your great escape –– so as not to wake God.
To be a woman is to straddle worlds in the grocery isle, the car pickup line.
To be a woman is to hold the knife and be slaughtered.
To be a woman is blissful agony — daily death, and birth, and prayer.
Being a woman is a warm, deep laugh –– it is wonder, and stone fruit, and books away from prying eyes.
To be a woman is ultimate aliveness.
To be a woman is to love to the point of bursting.
*Written work by Christina Mokwa – © Christina Mokwa/Mokwa LLC/Mokwa Creative Company
